Search and docs · Brave

Set up Brave Search

Brave's own server for web, news, image, video and local search through the Brave Search API.

Publisher: Brave Official
Run locally: npx -y @brave/brave-search-mcp-server --transport stdio
Transports: stdio, streamable-http
Authentication: A Brave Search API key in BRAVE_API_KEY.
Environment: BRAVE_API_KEY
What it can touch: Read-only.
Licence: MIT
Source: github.com/brave/brave-search-mcp-server
Status: Active

Install

This server runs on your machine as a child process of the client. You need the runtime its command uses, such as Node.js for npx, uv for uvx or Docker, plus any variables listed under Environment.

Claude Code

shell

claude mcp add --scope project --env BRAVE_API_KEY='<BRAVE_API_KEY>' brave-search -- npx -y @brave/brave-search-mcp-server --transport stdio

Cursor

.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "brave-search": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@brave/brave-search-mcp-server",
        "--transport",
        "stdio"
      ],
      "env": {
        "BRAVE_API_KEY": "${env:BRAVE_API_KEY}"
      }
    }
  }
}

Codex

~/.codex/config.toml

[mcp_servers.brave-search]
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "@brave/brave-search-mcp-server", "--transport", "stdio"]
env_vars = ["BRAVE_API_KEY"]

Config for other clients →

Other servers in search and docs

MCP Steering Group

Fetch

Fetches a web page and converts it to Markdown so the model can read it. Part of the MCP project's reference set.

AWS

AWS Knowledge

AWS-hosted search over AWS documentation, blog posts, What's New entries and regional availability.

Microsoft

Microsoft Learn

Search and fetch official Microsoft and Azure documentation and code samples.

Exa

Neural web search, page contents and code-context search for agents, hosted by Exa or run locally with an API key.

Tavily

Search, extract, crawl and map websites through Tavily's agent-oriented search API, hosted or run locally.

Firecrawl

Scrape, crawl, search and extract structured data from websites as Markdown or JSON.

Sources

github.com/brave/brave-search-mcp-server