---
title: "Brave Search API guide (2026): API key, free credit, parameters and limits"
category: "guides"
url: https://keirolabs.cloud/blog/brave-search-api-guide-2026
---

## The 60-second version

**The Brave Search API gives you results from Brave's own web index, one of the few independent indexes left after Microsoft retired the Bing Search API.** Brave says the index covers more than 40 billion pages with over 100 million updates a day ([Brave](https://brave.com/search/api/)).

- **Get a key:** sign up at the [Brave Search API dashboard](https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com), subscribe to a plan (a card is required to confirm identity, even for free use), then create a key under API Keys.
- **Free:** every plan includes **$5 of free credit a month**, applied automatically. On the Search plan that is **1,000 free queries a month**.
- **Price:** **Search is $5 per 1,000 requests** at up to 50 queries per second. **Answers is $4 per 1,000 requests plus $5 per million tokens**, at 2 queries per second.
- **Auth:** send the key in the **`X-Subscription-Token`** header, not `Authorization`.

**Brave is the right pick when you need a large, independent keyword index at high throughput.** For page content or semantic search, pair it with an extraction API or look at the alternatives below.

## What is the Brave Search API?

**It is programmatic access to Brave Search, the search engine inside the Brave browser, which runs on an index Brave built itself rather than one licensed from Google or Bing.** You send a query; you get JSON with web results, and, depending on the endpoint, news, images, videos or local places.

That independence is the main reason developers choose it. When Microsoft shut down the Bing Search API in August 2025, every product that quietly resold Bing lost its supply overnight ([what happened](/blog/bing-search-api-alternatives)). Brave's results come from Brave, so that risk does not apply.

It is a keyword search API, closer to a classic search engine than to AI-first APIs like Exa or Tavily: results come with titles, URLs and short descriptions, plus up to five extra snippets per result if you ask. Brave also describes "additional LLM context optimized for AI" on its Search plan.

## How do you get a Brave Search API key?

1. **Create an account** at [api-dashboard.search.brave.com](https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com).
2. **Subscribe to a plan.** Brave asks for a credit card to confirm your identity; it says free usage is not charged.
3. **Open API Keys and create a key.** Name it after the project that will use it.
4. **Store it as `BRAVE_API_KEY`** and send it in the `X-Subscription-Token` header.

The $5 monthly credit applies automatically, so the first 1,000 Search plan queries each month are free. You only pay beyond that.

## How do you make your first Brave search?

**One GET request to `https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search` with your key in `X-Subscription-Token`.**

```bash
curl "https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search?q=independent+search+index&count=10" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -H "X-Subscription-Token: $BRAVE_API_KEY"
```

In Python, with no SDK needed:

```python
import os, requests

def brave_search(q: str, count: int = 10, freshness: str | None = None) -> list[dict]:
    params = {"q": q, "count": count, "extra_snippets": "true"}
    if freshness:
        params["freshness"] = freshness  # pd, pw, pm, py or 2026-01-01to2026-06-30
    r = requests.get(
        "https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search",
        headers={"Accept": "application/json", "X-Subscription-Token": os.environ["BRAVE_API_KEY"]},
        params=params, timeout=20,
    )
    r.raise_for_status()
    return [{"title": x["title"], "url": x["url"], "snippet": x.get("description", ""),
             "extra": x.get("extra_snippets", [])}
            for x in r.json().get("web", {}).get("results", [])]

for hit in brave_search("Brave Search API rate limits", freshness="pm"):
    print(hit["title"], hit["url"])
```

Web results sit under `web.results`. The response can also include other blocks, such as `locations`, and a `query` object that tells you whether more results are available.

## Which Brave Search API parameters matter?

From Brave's [web search documentation](https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com/app/documentation/web-search/get-started):

| Parameter | Values | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| `q` | text | The query; search operators go inside it |
| `count` | up to 20, default 20 | Results per page; you may get fewer |
| `offset` | 0 to 9 | Page number, so at most 10 pages per query |
| `country` | two-letter code, e.g. `DE` | Results for that country |
| `search_lang` | language code | Content language of results |
| `ui_lang` | e.g. `en-US` | Language of response metadata |
| `safesearch` | `off`, `moderate` (default), `strict` | Adult content filter |
| `freshness` | `pd`, `pw`, `pm`, `py` or a date range | Last day, week, month, year, or `2026-01-01to2026-06-30` |
| `extra_snippets` | `true` | Up to 5 extra excerpts per result |
| `goggles` | URL or inline definition | Re-rank or filter results with your own rules |

**Turn on `extra_snippets` for AI use.** The default description is one short paragraph; extra snippets give a model several passages from the page without a second request.

**Goggles are Brave's unusual feature:** rule files that boost, demote or remove sites from results. A goggle that boosts official documentation and drops content farms can raise answer quality more than switching providers.

## How much does the Brave Search API cost?

Plans from [brave.com/search/api](https://brave.com/search/api/), checked October 15, 2026:

| Plan | Price | Free credit | Rate limit | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| **Search** | $5 per 1,000 requests | $5 a month | 50 queries per second | Web, news, images, videos and more, Goggles, extra snippets, schema-enriched results |
| **Answers** | $4 per 1,000 requests + $5 per million input and output tokens | $5 a month | 2 queries per second | Summarized answers grounded on one or more searches, with citations; OpenAI SDK compatible |
| **Enterprise** | contact sales | n/a | custom | Custom endpoints, zero data retention, custom agreements |

At 100,000 searches a month the Search plan costs about $495 after the free credit. **Storing results requires a plan that explicitly grants storage rights**, which Brave handles in custom agreements; the standard plans do not mention it. If you cache results in a database, ask before you build on it. Our [Brave pricing breakdown](/blog/brave-search-api-pricing-2026) compares the cost per useful result with eight other providers.

## What other Brave endpoints are there?

The Search plan covers more than web results. Brave's documentation includes separate endpoints for **news, images, videos and local points of interest**, plus **suggest** (autocomplete) and **spellcheck**. They share the same key and header.

The **Answers** plan is a different product: Brave searches, then a model writes a cited answer, and you pay per request plus tokens. Use it instead of building your own search-then-summarize step, if 2 queries per second is enough.

## How do you use Brave Search with MCP?

**Brave publishes an official MCP server, `@brave/brave-search-mcp-server`, that you run locally with your API key.** It needs Node.js 22 or later:

```bash
claude mcp add brave-search --env BRAVE_API_KEY=$BRAVE_API_KEY \
  -- npx -y @brave/brave-search-mcp-server
```

It exposes `brave_web_search`, `brave_local_search`, `brave_image_search`, `brave_video_search`, `brave_news_search` and `brave_summarizer`, and lets you allow or block individual tools. Unlike Exa or Tavily, Brave has no keyless hosted server, so every MCP call bills your key. Compare it with nine other servers in [the best MCP servers for web search](/blog/best-mcp-servers-web-search-scraping-2026).

## What are the best Brave Search API alternatives?

| Alternative | Price per 1,000 searches | Choose it when |
|---|---|---|
| **Keirolabs** | from $0.25 (search), $0.10 (Google SERP) | You want search plus page content on one key, cheaper, with 1,250 free credits a month |
| **Exa** | $4 (instant), $7 (auto) | You want semantic search and find-similar |
| **Tavily** | $8 pay as you go | You want results pre-chunked for RAG frameworks |
| **Parallel** | from $1 | You want dense excerpts at the lowest per-call price |
| **Perplexity Search API** | $5 | You want Perplexity's ranking at the same price as Brave |

Prices from each vendor's site or our guides: [Exa](/blog/exa-ai-api-guide-2026), [Tavily](/blog/tavily-api-guide-2026), [Parallel](/blog/parallel-search-api-pricing-2026), [Perplexity](/blog/perplexity-api-guide-2026), [Keirolabs](https://keirolabs.cloud/pricing). Disclosure: Keirolabs is ours.

## Common Brave Search API mistakes

- **Sending the key as a Bearer token.** Brave reads the key from `X-Subscription-Token`, and requests without it are rejected.
- **Expecting more than 200 results.** `count` tops out at 20 and `offset` at 9.
- **Treating the free credit as a free plan.** It is $5 of credit inside a paid plan, and the card on file is charged beyond it.
- **Caching results without storage rights.** Check your agreement before you store results long term.
- **Feeding only descriptions to a model.** Turn on `extra_snippets`, or fetch the pages you need.

## The short answer

Brave Search API is the largest independent keyword index you can buy by the request: $5 per 1,000 searches, 50 queries per second, and $5 of free credit (1,000 searches) every month. Get a key from the dashboard, send it as `X-Subscription-Token`, turn on `extra_snippets` for AI use, and try Goggles before you conclude the results are not good enough. For semantic search or bundled page content, look at the alternatives above.