Brave Search

What it is

An MCP server implementation that integrates the Brave Search API and provides web and local search tools. It supports pagination, freshness and safety filtering, and local search falls back to web search when no local results are found. The catalog notes it has been replaced by the official server (@brave/brave-search-mcp-server).

Who it's for

• Developers who want to give an MCP client such as Claude Desktop or VS Code web search through Brave
• Users maintaining an existing setup based on the archived @modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search package

Requirements

Setup

1. Get a Brave Search API key

   Sign up for a Brave Search API account at https://brave.com/search/api/, choose a plan (free tier available with 2,000 queries/month), and generate your API key from the developer dashboard at https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com/app/keys.

2. Configure Claude Desktop with NPX

   Add this to your claude_desktop_config.json, replacing YOUR_API_KEY_HERE with your key.

   jsonCopy

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "brave-search": {
         "command": "npx",
         "args": [
           "-y",
           "@modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search"
         ],
         "env": {
           "BRAVE_API_KEY": "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"
         }
       }
     }
   }

3. Configure Claude Desktop with Docker

   Alternatively, run the server through Docker by adding this to claude_desktop_config.json.

   jsonCopy

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "brave-search": {
         "command": "docker",
         "args": [
           "run",
           "-i",
           "--rm",
           "-e",
           "BRAVE_API_KEY",
           "mcp/brave-search"
         ],
         "env": {
           "BRAVE_API_KEY": "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"
         }
       }
     }
   }

4. Build the Docker image (optional)

   To build the image locally, run this command.

   bashCopy

   docker build -t mcp/brave-search:latest -f src/brave-search/Dockerfile .

Examples

{
  "mcp": {
    "inputs": [
      {
        "type": "promptString",
        "id": "brave_api_key",
        "description": "Brave Search API Key",
        "password": true
      }
    ],
    "servers": {
      "brave-search": {
        "command": "npx",
        "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search"],
        "env": {
          "BRAVE_API_KEY": "${input:brave_api_key}"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "query": "<search terms>",
  "count": 10,
  "offset": 0
}

{
  "query": "<local search terms>",
  "count": 5
}

Pros & cons

Images