Search the web and find local businesses with Brave

Brave Search MCP Server

An MCP server implementation that integrates the Brave Search API, providing both web and local search capabilities.

Features

• Web Search: General queries, news, articles, with pagination and freshness controls
• Local Search: Find businesses, restaurants, and services with detailed information
• Flexible Filtering: Control result types, safety levels, and content freshness
• Smart Fallbacks: Local search automatically falls back to web when no results are found

Tools

• brave_web_search

  • Execute web searches with pagination and filtering
  • Inputs:
    • query (string): Search terms
    • count (number, optional): Results per page (max 20)
    • offset (number, optional): Pagination offset (max 9)

• brave_local_search

  • Search for local businesses and services
  • Inputs:
    • query (string): Local search terms
    • count (number, optional): Number of results (max 20)
  • Automatically falls back to web search if no local results found

Configuration

Getting an API Key

1. Sign up for a Brave Search API account
2. Choose a plan (Free tier available with 2,000 queries/month)
3. Generate your API key from the developer dashboard

Usage with Claude Desktop

Add this to your claude_desktop_config.json:

Docker

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

NPX

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

Usage with VS Code

For quick installation, use the one-click installation buttons below...

For manual installation, add the following JSON block to your User Settings (JSON) file in VS Code. You can do this by pressing Ctrl + Shift + P and typing Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON).

Optionally, you can add it to a file called .vscode/mcp.json in your workspace. This will allow you to share the configuration with others.

Note that the mcp key is not needed in the .vscode/mcp.json file.

Docker

{
  "mcp": {
    "inputs": [
      {
        "type": "promptString",
        "id": "brave_api_key",
        "description": "Brave Search API Key",
        "password": true
      }
    ],
    "servers": {
      "brave-search": {
        "command": "docker",
        "args": [
          "run",
          "-i",
          "--rm",
          "-e",
          "BRAVE_API_KEY",
          "mcp/brave-search"
        ],
        "env": {
          "BRAVE_API_KEY": "${input:brave_api_key}"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

NPX

{
  "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}"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Build

Docker build:

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