📌Overview

Purpose: To implement an MCP server that seamlessly integrates the Brave Search API for enhanced web and local search functionalities.

Overview: The Brave Search MCP Server allows users to perform comprehensive web and localized searches, offering a user-friendly experience with robust filtering and failover capabilities.

Key Features:

• Web Search: Enables users to conduct general searches, access news, and retrieve articles, complete with pagination and options for result freshness, delivering relevant content efficiently.

• Local Search: Facilitates finding local businesses, restaurants, and services with detailed information, enhancing user convenience in locating nearby options.

• Flexible Filtering: Provides users with customizable control over result types, safety levels, and content freshness, ensuring tailored search results to meet specific needs.

• Smart Fallbacks: Automatically reverts to web search when local search yields no results, ensuring users always access the most relevant information.

---

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"
      }
    }
  }
}

Build

Docker build:

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

License

This MCP server is licensed under the MIT License. You are free to use, modify, and distribute the software under the terms of the MIT License.