Tool Friday #10 — Brave Search Review
Most people know Brave as “the privacy browser.” That undersells it by a lot.
Brave is a browser, a search engine, and a search API. Three products, one company. And unlike most privacy tools, it doesn’t ask you to sacrifice speed or quality.
100 million monthly users. An independent search index — one of only three in the world that doesn’t depend on Google or Bing. And an API that quietly became one of the best ways to give AI agents access to the web.
This is Tool Friday #10. Let’s break it down.
The browser
Brave is Chromium-based. Same engine as Chrome, minus the tracking. All your Chrome extensions work. Pages load 3-6x faster because ads and trackers are blocked at the browser level — no extension needed.
What I’d want to know before switching:
It’s not a toy. 42 million daily active users. Built by Brendan Eich — the guy who created JavaScript and co-founded Mozilla. This isn’t a weekend project.
Shields are the killer feature. Every page load, Brave blocks ads, trackers, cross-site cookies, and fingerprinting attempts. Built-in. No uBlock Origin needed (though it works if you want it).
The switch cost is zero. Import bookmarks, passwords, extensions from Chrome in 2 minutes. I switched months ago and forgot I did.
What you lose: Some Google-specific integrations (Meet, Docs notifications) work slightly differently. Nothing broken, just different.
The search engine
This is where it gets interesting.
Brave Search runs on its own index. Not a Google wrapper. Not a Bing reskin. They built their own crawler, their own ranking algorithms, their own infrastructure. In 2024, they removed the last Bing fallback — 100% independent.
Why this matters:
Different results. Google optimizes for consumers and advertisers. Search for a B2B SaaS company on Google and you get their homepage, their ads, and 8 SEO articles about them. Brave gives you the homepage, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and press coverage. More useful when you’re researching, not shopping.
No filter bubble. Google personalizes results based on your history. Brave doesn’t track you, so it can’t personalize. You get the same results as everyone else. For research, this is a feature, not a bug.
Answer with AI. Brave added AI summaries at the top of search results. Like Google’s AI Overviews, but without the tracking. Works well for quick factual questions.
The honest take on quality: For everyday searches, Google is still slightly better — especially local results (restaurants, services, directions). For B2B research, competitive analysis, and finding direct sources, Brave is equal or better.
Deep dive: the API
Here’s where Brave becomes a tool for builders.
Brave Search has an API. And that API plugs directly into AI workflows — including Claude Code via MCP (Model Context Protocol).
What this means in practice
Once you connect Brave Search as an MCP server in Claude Code, your AI agent can search the web mid-task. You don’t tell it to search. It searches when it needs current information.
I set this up months ago. Here’s what changed:
Prospecting. I built a pipeline across 23 accelerator portfolios. Half the startups had no website listed. Instead of googling each one manually, Claude searched Brave automatically and found 31 out of 31 missing websites.
Domain verification. 10 startup websites from my scrape returned errors — dead links, expired domains. Before cutting them, Claude ran Brave searches on the company names. Found 4 rebrands: companies that were alive but had changed their domain. Would have lost those leads.
Competitive research. When I build CI reports, the first step is finding everything public about a company. Brave returns cleaner results for this — less SEO spam, more direct sources.
Email enrichment. Before hitting paid APIs, Claude searches "firstname lastname" site:company.com. Free check before spending credits. Catches 10-15% of emails this way.
Setup (2 minutes)
The official MCP server exists: @modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search. Brave even has a setup guide on their site.
- Get an API key at brave.com/search/api
- Add it to your Claude Code MCP config
- Done — Claude uses it automatically when it needs web data
API pricing (the honest version)
When I signed up, there was a free tier. That plan no longer exists for new signups.
Current pricing:
| Plan | Cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free credit | $0 | $5/month in credits (~1,000 queries) |
| Search | $5 per 1,000 requests | Web, news, image search. 50 queries/sec |
| Answers | $4 per 1,000 requests + token costs | AI-summarized answers with citations |
| Enterprise | Custom | Zero data retention, invoicing, NDAs |
My account is grandfathered on the old free plan. I’ve used about 1,400 queries in three months — mostly during one intense prospecting week. For most builders, the $5 monthly credit covers casual use. If you’re running automated pipelines, $5 per 1,000 queries is still cheap compared to alternatives.
Alternatives
| Tool | Best for | Compared to Brave |
|---|---|---|
| Google Custom Search | Existing Google ecosystem | Better local results. 100/day free. More setup. Tracking. |
| SerpAPI | Scraping Google results | More data per result. $50/month minimum. Overkill for most. |
| Tavily | AI-native search | Built for AI agents. Good quality. $0.01/query. No standalone search engine. |
| Perplexity | Answer engine | Returns answers, not links. Different use case. |
| DuckDuckGo | Privacy search (no API) | Similar privacy stance. Uses Bing’s index. No real API for builders. |
What I like
Three-in-one. Browser + search + API from the same company. Everything works together.
The search index is real. Not a wrapper. Independent results that surface different (often better) sources for B2B research.
The API is invisible. Once set up in Claude Code, I forget it exists. It just works.
Speed. Pages load faster in the browser. API responses are fast. Search results load clean without ad clutter.
What I don’t like
Local search is weaker. Looking for a restaurant or a plumber? Google still wins.
Brand recognition. Sending a Brave Search link to a client feels different than sending a Google link. Shouldn’t matter, but it does.
API pricing changed. The free tier disappearing is a bummer. The $5 credit softens it, but “free” was a better story.
Index gaps on very new content. Companies founded this month sometimes don’t appear yet. Fast but not instant.
The verdict
Brave is three products in a trench coat — browser, search engine, and API — and all three are genuinely good.
The browser is the easiest switch you’ll make this year. The search engine is the best alternative to Google I’ve used. The API is the quiet killer: if you’re building with AI and your agent needs web access, this is the simplest path.
Score: 9/10
The point off for weaker local results and the free tier disappearing. For everything else — especially B2B research and AI-powered workflows — it’s excellent.
Download Brave at brave.com. Try the search at search.brave.com. API at brave.com/search/api.
Tool Friday is a weekly series where I review one tool I actually use. No sponsorships, no affiliate links — just tools that made my work better.