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Free Search

Free Search is an MCP server that adds web browsing tools to AI assistants such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor. No-API-key web search, page fetching and document reading across many engines. It has 157 GitHub stars, is released under the MIT license and runs locally with uvx free-search-mcp.

github.com/sweetcornna/free-search-mcp (opens in a new tab)

Data as of from the GitHub API and the official MCP registry; description from the project's repository. Report an error

View on GitHub (opens in a new tab)

Install Free Search

Generated from the server's MCP registry entry. Replace your-value with your own values.

Claude Desktop

claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "free-search": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "free-search-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "SEARCH_MCP_PROXY": "your-value"
      }
    }
  }
}

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

Claude Code

claude mcp add --env SEARCH_MCP_PROXY=your-value --transport stdio free-search -- uvx free-search-mcp

Cursor

.cursor/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "free-search": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "free-search-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "SEARCH_MCP_PROXY": "your-value"
      }
    }
  }
}

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

VS Code

.vscode/mcp.json
{
  "inputs": [
    {
      "type": "promptString",
      "id": "search_mcp_proxy",
      "description": "SEARCH_MCP_PROXY",
      "password": true
    }
  ],
  "servers": {
    "free-search": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "free-search-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "SEARCH_MCP_PROXY": "${input:search_mcp_proxy}"
      }
    }
  }
}

Config formats checked against the official docs on Oct 7, 2026: modelcontextprotocol.io (opens in a new tab), code.claude.com (opens in a new tab), cursor.com (opens in a new tab), code.visualstudio.com (opens in a new tab).

Environment variables

Variables the server reads at startup.

NameRequiredDescription
SEARCH_MCP_PROXYsecretNoOptional outbound proxy URL (http://, https:// or socks5://) for engines that block your network.
SEARCH_MCP_REGIONNoOptional default region-language for results, e.g. us-en, uk-en, cn-zh. Default: us-en.
SEARCH_MCP_CACHE_DIRNoOptional directory for the local search/page cache. Default: ~/.cache/search-mcp.

About Free Search

Music: “Ethereal Space (cdk Mix)” by cdk, ccmixter.org/files/cdk/34151 , licensed CC BY 3.0 . free-search-mcp is a local-first Model Context Protocol server that needs no API key. It lets any LLM (Claude, GPT, a local Ollama model, …) search the web, fetch and clean up pages, and read documents, and you never sign up for a search API.

  • claude
  • duckduckgo
  • llm
  • mcp
  • model-context-protocol
  • mojeek
  • playwright
  • python
  • search
  • websearch

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FAQ

Free Search FAQ

Still curious? Email info@appsgit.com.

How do I install the Free Search MCP server?

Add the command uvx free-search-mcp to your MCP client: put it in claude_desktop_config.json for Claude Desktop, run claude mcp add for Claude Code, or add it to .cursor/mcp.json (Cursor) or .vscode/mcp.json (VS Code). The snippets on this page are ready to paste.

Is Free Search free?

The server is open source under the MIT license, so running it is free. It does not declare any required API key.

Is Free Search actively maintained?

The most recent commit was on Oct 22, 2026. The latest release is v0.16.0, published Oct 22, 2026. appsgit only lists MCP servers with a commit in the last six months.