Brave Software

license

Proprietary(API-only)

source

closed(no self-hostable index

managed

cloud SaaS with API keys, per-request plans, 50 requests per second on the Search plan

The index is closed behind an API key; the only openly licensed artifact is `@brave/brave-search-mcp-server` (MIT), a client rather than the service itself. The terms also go further than most competitors, forbidding use of the results to train, benchmark or improve AI models under clause (xiii) of the Use Restrictions.

• https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com/documentation/pricing recorded 2026-09-17

  Plan cards: Search at $5.00 per 1,000 requests, Answers at $4.00 per 1,000 queries plus token charges, Spellcheck and Autosuggest at $5.00 per 10,000. Establishes that the service is metered per request behind an account.

• https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com/documentation/resources/terms-of-service recorded 2026-09-17

  Use Restrictions: the customer shall not "(i) store, cache, or create a database of Search Results", "(xii) redistribute, resell, or sublicense the Search Results", or "(xiii) use the Search Results to create, evaluate, train, re-train, fine-tune, benchmark or otherwise improve artificial intelligence models or services". No self-hosting or source-available option.

Brave publishes no usage figures for the API itself, and the only related package, the @brave/brave-search-mcp-server client, is one access route among several rather than a measure of how the service as a whole is used. Serper and Google's Grounding with Google Search present the same gap and are left unscored too.

• https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com/documentation/pricing recorded 2026-09-17

  The vendor's own pricing and product documentation, carrying rates and limits and no request, customer or developer count - which is why no level is recorded.

Brave's Search plan bundles LLM Context, which returns extracted page chunks and source metadata, with Web Search under the same $5-per-1,000-request price, giving one product both discovery and page content. That puts it level with Firecrawl, which sells the same combination; composing a cited answer instead requires the separate Answers plan, priced on its own.

• https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com/documentation/services/answers recorded 2026-09-17

  The Answers endpoint - "AI-generated answers backed by verifiable sources" - and the sentence that fences it off from this product: "Access to the API is available through the Answers plan. Activate the Answers plan to unlock these capabilities." Establishes that answer composition is not part of the Search plan being scored here.

• https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com/documentation/services/llm-context recorded 2026-09-17

  "Traditional Web Search returns titles and short snippets for a results page. LLM Context returns extracted page chunks and source metadata in a shape and length that satisfies the needs of an LLM without need for further scraping." Feature bullet: "Pre-Extracted Content - Get actual page content (text, tables, code) ready for LLM consumption - no scraping needed."