# Brave Search MCP (MCP server)

> Brave Search MCP is an MCP server that adds search and knowledge tools to AI assistants such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor. An MCP Server implementation that integrates the Brave Search API, providing, Web Search, Local Points of… It has 130 GitHub stars, is released under the GPL-3.0 license and runs locally with npx -y brave-search-mcp.

An MCP Server implementation that integrates the Brave Search API, providing, Web Search, Local Points of Interest Search, Video Search, Image Search, News Search and LLM Context Search capabilities

## Key facts

| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Repository | https://github.com/mikechao/brave-search-mcp |
| GitHub stars | 130 |
| License | GPL-3.0 |
| Language | TypeScript |
| Transport | stdio |
| Packages | npm: brave-search-mcp |
| Remote URL | none |
| Needs API key | yes |
| Official | no |
| Works with | Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code |
| Category | AI & search |
| Latest release | v2.1.0 (Mar 2, 2026) |
| Last commit | May 28, 2026 |

## Install

### Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json)

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "brave-search-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "brave-search-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "BRAVE_API_KEY": "your-value"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

Settings > Developer > Edit Config. macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/, Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\. Restart Claude Desktop afterwards.

### Claude Code

```sh
claude mcp add --env BRAVE_API_KEY=your-value --transport stdio brave-search-mcp -- npx -y brave-search-mcp
```

### Cursor (.cursor/mcp.json)

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "brave-search-mcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "brave-search-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "BRAVE_API_KEY": "your-value"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

Project file; use ~/.cursor/mcp.json to enable it in every project.

### VS Code (.vscode/mcp.json)

```json
{
  "inputs": [
    {
      "type": "promptString",
      "id": "brave_api_key",
      "description": "BRAVE_API_KEY",
      "password": true
    }
  ],
  "servers": {
    "brave-search-mcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "brave-search-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "BRAVE_API_KEY": "${input:brave_api_key}"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

Config formats checked against the official docs on 2026-10-07.

## Environment variables

- `BRAVE_API_KEY` (secret): Shown in the README's example configuration.

## Tools

- `brave_web_search`
- `query`: The term to search the internet for
- `count`: The number of results to return (max 20, default 10)
- `offset`: The offset for pagination
- `freshness`: Filters search results by when they were discovered
- `brave_image_search`
- `brave_news_search`
- `brave_local_search`
- `brave_video_search`
- `brave_llm_context_search`

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