Search the web

Brave Search API

Web search API backed by Brave's own index that returns ranked results, news, images, or extracted page content for LLMs.

Rate limits

Search plan: 50 queries per second1
Answers plan: 2 queries per second1
Window: 1-second sliding window; HTTP 429 when exceeded3
Monthly quota: Plan-specific, reported in X-RateLimit-Limit header; 0 means unlimited3

Other limits

Query length (LLM Context): 1-600 characters, 75 words at most7
Query length (MCP server): 400 characters, 50 words10
Context size (LLM Context): 1,024 to 32,768 tokens; default 8,1927
URLs per LLM Context response: 1 to 50; default 207

Read from Brave Software’s own pages on 2026-11-04. Every number links to the page a value came from. For agents, the same facts as markdown: /tools/search-the-web/brave-search-api.md