Brave Search API
News endpoint on an independent web index, billed per request
Founded: 2015 | San Francisco, USA | Team: 201–500
Web search indexLLM/agent tooling
What is Brave Search API?
Brave Software, a San Francisco company founded in 2015, sells API access to the index behind Brave Search, which it crawls itself instead of reselling Google or Bing results. The news endpoint returns recent articles with source, age and thumbnail fields, and the same key covers web, image and video search. That matters for developers who lost Bing News Search when Microsoft retired its search APIs in 2025. Reports from 2026 say Brave moved everyone to metered billing at about $5 per 1,000 requests and ended the free plan, though some Brave docs still describe older tiers. You get snippets, so full text needs a separate fetch.
Typical uses: AI & LLM apps, News & content apps, SEO. What sets it apart: Results from its own crawler, independent of Google and Bing.
What does the Brave Search API API include?
REST APIJSONMCP server
| Capability |
|---|
| Web search index |
| LLM/agent tooling |
Brave Search API pricing
Short answer: the pricing model is metered per request. Entry price: $5 per 1,000 requests.
| Access model | What it means |
|---|---|
| Pay-as-you-go | Billed per request or credit, with no monthly minimum |
| Enterprise contract | Negotiated licence covering volume, rights and SLA |
API prices and quotas change often. Check Brave Search API's own pricing page before you commit, and confirm that your use is covered by the licence.
Brave Search API pros and cons
| Advantages | Things to consider |
|---|---|
| +One of the few independent indexes left after Bing APIs closed | -The free plan was reportedly removed in 2026 |
| +Fast responses with high per-second limits on paid plans | -Snippets only, without archive or full text |
| +An MCP server for agent use | -Thinner coverage of small local outlets than Google |
| +Plans that state data rights for AI use |
Brave Search API vs alternatives
How Brave Search API compares to the other top News APIs.
| API | Best for | Key difference | Rating | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NewsCatcher | Developers who want clean, deduplicated news without writing... | Summaries, story clusters, entities and geotags arrive in the response, so the processing code you would otherwise write is already done | 4.7 | Full comparison |
| NewsData.io | Developers who want a working news call within... | A free allowance that refills daily, with country and language filters on every plan | 4.6 | Full comparison |
| Perigon | Indie developers and startups wanting enriched data at... | Entity, topic and cluster data from the $25 plan up, with all tiers priced publicly | 4.5 | Full comparison |
| NewsAPI.ai (Event Registry) | Developers building multilingual event or research tools. | Event records that join coverage of one story across languages | 4.3 | Full comparison |
| GNews | Small commercial apps needing a cheap, simple news... | Commercial rights and full article content for under €50 a month | 4.3 | Full comparison |
| Webz.io | Data engineers backfilling years of news for datasets. | History back to 2008 and the widest claimed source count here | 4.2 | Full comparison |
| Exa | RAG and agent developers needing semantic news retrieval. | Search by meaning with page text returned in the same request | 4.2 | Full comparison |
| Tavily | Agent builders adding a news tool in a... | Built-in LangChain and LlamaIndex integrations that return prompt-ready text | 4.1 | Full comparison |
| World News API | Location-aware apps on a small budget. | Latitude, longitude and radius filters from the $39 plan, plus a URL text extractor | 4.1 | Full comparison |
| NewsAPI.org | Learning projects and prototypes that follow existing tutorials. | The largest pile of tutorials, wrappers and answered questions of any news API | 4.0 | Full comparison |
| SerpApi Google News | Developers who need exactly what Google News ranks. | Google News rankings and story groupings as structured JSON | 4.0 | Full comparison |
| GDELT Project | Zero-budget data projects and research prototypes. | No key, no fee and global coverage refreshed every 15 minutes | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| Serper Google News | Agent prototypes needing cheap Google News lookups. | About $1 per 1,000 Google queries on the entry pack, by third-party figures | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| Marketaux | Fintech developers needing ticker-tagged news cheaply. | Entity-level sentiment on every article, free plan included | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| Alpha Vantage News & Sentiment | Hobby quants wanting news sentiment beside price data. | Ticker and topic sentiment scores from the same key as market data | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Massive (ex-Polygon.io) News | Trading-app developers already using Polygon or Massive data. | Per-ticker sentiment with a written reason, included in stock data plans | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Mediastack | Low-traffic sites needing a cheap commercial headline feed. | Commercial use and historical news from $24.99 a month | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Guardian Open Platform | Students and researchers needing free full-text articles. | Free full article bodies from a major newspaper, with editorial tags | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Diffbot | Developers collecting news from a fixed list of... | Parser-free extraction from any article URL, linked to a Knowledge Graph | 3.7 | Full comparison |
| Finnhub | Personal fintech projects needing news and prices from... | A 60-calls-a-minute free key covering company news and market data | 3.7 | Full comparison |
| DataForSEO Google News | High-volume Google News rank tracking on a budget. | About $0.60 per 1,000 Google News result pages in the Standard queue | 3.7 | Full comparison |
| TheNewsAPI | Personal dashboards needing a cheap general feed. | Possibly the lowest paid entry price here, if third-party pricing is current | 3.6 | Full comparison |
| NYT Developer APIs | Students and historians working with Times metadata. | Searchable headlines and abstracts for every Times issue since 1851 | 3.5 | Full comparison |
| Benzinga | Trading platforms needing a licensed market newswire. | Original market headlines with ratings and earnings events in one feed | 3.5 | Full comparison |
| Quantexa News API (Aylien) | Teams maintaining an existing Aylien integration. | Aylien's fine-grained entity and category tagging | 3.4 | Full comparison |
| APITube | Developers comparing coverage in a side-by-side trial. | Sentiment and entity filters offered on lower tiers | 3.4 | Full comparison |
| Currents API | Coursework and hackathons needing a free feed. | A free tier that tutorials and roundups often recommend | 3.3 | Full comparison |
Brave Search API FAQ
What is Brave Search API?
News endpoint on an independent web index, billed per request
How much does Brave Search API charge?
Pricing model: metered per request. The cheapest paid access listed is $5 per 1,000 requests. Free access: none listed.
Which formats and SDKs does Brave Search API support?
Brave Search API offers REST API, JSON, MCP server.
Is Brave Search API right for enterprise?
Yes, Brave Search API sells enterprise contracts. Main caveat: The free plan was reportedly removed in 2026.
What are the best Brave Search API alternatives?
The best alternatives to Brave Search API depend on your use case. Top options are:
- NewsCatcher: summaries, story clusters, entities and geotags arrive in the response, so the processing code you would otherwise write is already done
- NewsData.io: a free allowance that refills daily, with country and language filters on every plan
- Perigon: entity, topic and cluster data from the $25 plan up, with all tiers priced publicly
Compare Brave Search API with other News APIs
Brave Search API vs NewsCatcher Brave Search API vs NewsData.io Brave Search API vs Perigon Brave Search API vs NewsAPI.ai (Event Registry) Brave Search API vs GNews Brave Search API vs Webz.io Brave Search API vs Exa Brave Search API vs Tavily Brave Search API vs World News API Brave Search API vs NewsAPI.org Brave Search API vs SerpApi Google News Brave Search API vs GDELT Project Brave Search API vs Serper Google News Brave Search API vs Marketaux Brave Search API vs Alpha Vantage News & Sentiment Brave Search API vs Massive (ex-Polygon.io) News Brave Search API vs Mediastack Brave Search API vs Guardian Open Platform Brave Search API vs Diffbot Brave Search API vs Finnhub Brave Search API vs DataForSEO Google News Brave Search API vs TheNewsAPI Brave Search API vs NYT Developer APIs Brave Search API vs Benzinga Brave Search API vs Quantexa News API (Aylien) Brave Search API vs APITube Brave Search API vs Currents API
Verify all details directly with Brave Search API before making a decision.