Brave Search

Brave Search gives your agents privacy-focused web, image, video, news, and local search, plus AI-generated summaries, all powered by Brave’s independent search index. Because Brave doesn’t track users or personalize results, the results your agent gets back are the same neutral, unfiltered results anyone would get, which makes them well suited for research and fact-finding tasks.

What It Can Do

Category	Capability
Web search	Organic web results with rich metadata, optionally mixed with FAQ, discussion, news, video, and location results. Useful for general research and grounding an agent’s answers in current information.
Image search	Finds images relevant to a query.
Video search	Finds videos related to a topic, with duration, thumbnail, and publisher metadata.
News search	Finds recent articles and coverage on a topic.
Local search	Looks up business and place details, like ratings, phone numbers, and hours, for locations surfaced by a prior web search.
Summarizer	Generates an AI summary of a web search’s results, with optional inline source citations.

See Tools and Plan Requirements below for the full list of tools behind these capabilities.

Connecting Brave Search

Brave Search authenticates with a single Subscription Token, so there’s no OAuth app to register and no admin setup required before connecting.

1. Choose your plan

   Brave organizes API access into two plans, Search and Answers. Every tool covered in this doc runs on Search except the summarizer, which needs Answers. See Tools and Plan Requirements below for which tools need which plan.

2. Subscribe and copy your Subscription Token

   Go to the Brave Search API dashboard and sign in or create a Brave account. Subscribe to Search, and to Answers as well if you want the summarizer tool, then copy your Subscription Token from the dashboard. The same token authenticates both plans.

   Each plan includes $5 of credit every month, which covers roughly 1,000 requests on Search. Pricing is set by Brave, not Airia, current rates and plan names are listed on the Brave Search API pricing page and can change independently of this page.

3. Add it to Airia

   Find Brave Search in the server catalogue when building an MCP Deployment or MCP Gateway, or add it from Server Management. When prompted for a credential, paste in the Subscription Token you copied above.

4. Test the connection

   Save the connection, then ask your agent something like “Search the web for the latest news on quantum computing.” A working connection returns organic results with titles, descriptions, and URLs.

Tools and Plan Requirements

Brave Search authenticates with a single Subscription Token rather than an OAuth app, so there’s no scope to grant, every tool authenticates the same way. What actually gates a tool is which Brave Search plan the token is subscribed to, Search or Answers. Tools on the Search plan work as soon as you connect a token subscribed to it; the summarizer needs the token to also be subscribed to Answers.

Web Search

Tool	What it does	Plan required
brave_web_search	Performs a web search and returns organic results with titles, descriptions, and URLs. Can also return FAQ, discussion, news, video, and location results mixed in, depending on the query.	Search

Image Search

Tool	What it does	Plan required
brave_image_search	Searches for images relevant to a query, returning titles, thumbnails, dimensions, and source URLs.	Search

Video Search

Tool	What it does	Plan required
brave_video_search	Searches for videos related to a topic, returning titles, descriptions, durations, and thumbnails.	Search

News Search

Tool	What it does	Plan required
brave_news_search	Searches for recent news articles on a topic, returning titles, URLs, descriptions, and article snippets.	Search

Local Search

Tool	What it does	Plan required
brave_local_search	Looks up details, like ratings, phone numbers, and opening hours, for locations returned by a prior brave_web_search call. Needs location IDs from that call’s locations.results[].id field.	Search

Summarizer

Tool	What it does	Plan required
brave_summarizer_search	Generates an AI summary of a web search’s results, with optional inline citations and entity information. Needs a summary key from a prior brave_web_search call made with summary set to true.	Answers

Troubleshooting

Connection test fails or returns an authentication error

Confirm you copied the Subscription Token from the Brave Search API dashboard, not another value on the page, and that your account is subscribed to at least the Search plan. A token with no active subscription is rejected outright.

brave_summarizer_search fails even though other tools work

The summarizer needs two things the other tools don’t: your token subscribed to the Answers plan, and a summary key from a prior brave_web_search call made with summary set to true. Check both before assuming the connection is broken.

brave_local_search returns no results

brave_local_search looks up locations by ID, it doesn’t search by name or address on its own. Run brave_web_search first and pass a location ID from that call’s locations.results[].id field.

Learn More

• Brave Search API Overview & Pricing
• Brave Search API Dashboard