Brave Search MCP Server
Official Brave MCP server giving agents web and local search via the Brave Search API.
About
The official Brave Search MCP server. It exposes Brave's independent web search index (web search plus AI-summarized answers) to agents. It is published as a Docker image (docker.io/mcp/brave-search) and an npm package, and supports passing the API key via BRAVE_API_KEY or a mounted secret file (BRAVE_API_KEY_FILE) — the latter being the right choice in Docker setups.
Requires a Brave Search API key (usage-billed); the free tier covers light use.
What it can do
- Web search over Brave's independent index
- AI-summarized answers
- API key via env var or mounted secret file
- Docker and npx deployment options
Setup
- Get a Brave Search API key at brave.com/search/api.
- Add to your MCP client config: command
npx, args["-y", "@brave/brave-search-mcp-server"]with envBRAVE_API_KEY(or use the Docker image with-e BRAVE_API_KEY). - Restart the client and test a search query.
Prerequisites
An MCP-compatible client; Brave Search API key (free tier available).
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 8/10
Scored 8/10 (verified tier). Official Brave project (~1.5k stars, MIT, pushed days ago, 36 releases in 12 months), README install and secret-handling verified. Docked for usage-billed API dependency (a paywalled search backend is thinner than a self-hosted one) and the usual search-content prompt-injection surface. Solid but not exceptional.
★ 1,496 GitHub stars
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 6.2/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 8.9/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 9.4/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 8.0/10
- · 1,496 GitHub stars (log-scaled vs catalog peers)
- · last push 4d ago; 36 releases/12mo; 43 open issues
- · manual review: official Brave; BRAVE_API_KEY required; usage-billed; API key in env; license: MIT (GitHub API)
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.