# Grounding with Bing Search vs Brave Search API + MCP

> Grounding with Bing Search and Brave Search score within a point of each other for web search, 63.7 and 62.9 out of 100. Brave Search is cheaper for web search, $5 against $14 per 1,000 requests. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-brave-search-mcp
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-brave-search-mcp.md (~5,700 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Grounding with Bing Search and Brave Search API + MCP score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 63.7 (B) and 62.9 (B). Brave Search API + MCP leads on reliability, agent ergonomics and transparency & trust. Both do web search. Brave Search API + MCP is cheaper for web search, $5 against $14 per 1,000 requests.

- Grounding with Bing Search: grade B, 63.7/100, rank #502 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/bing-grounding.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/bing-grounding.json
- Brave Search API + MCP: grade B, 62.9/100, rank #537 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/brave-search-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/brave-search-mcp.json
- Best web search APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/search/index.md
- All 308 search comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/search/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Grounding with Bing Search (B)

Good for: Teams already building on Foundry Agent Service who want cited answers from Bing without handling a search key.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 79 against 58

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where Brave Search API + MCP loses 3 points for them

Watch for: The Bing tools never return raw results to developers, only a model-written answer with citation links

### Brave Search API + MCP (B)

Good for: Agents that want an independent, non-Google index at a flat price, or that want page text in one call through LLM Context.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 80 against 68
- Agent ergonomics, 72 against 61
- Transparency & trust, 81 against 66

Also in its favour:
- Cheaper for web search, $5 against $14 per 1,000 requests
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source

Watch for: The x402 pay-per-call proxy answered 404 on 1 November 2026, and its guide is gone from the docs


## Why the edge

### Security & auth: Grounding with Bing Search +21

- Grounding with Bing Search (79): Callers authenticate to the Foundry project with Microsoft Entra ID tokens and RBAC roles (Foundry User to run agents, Foundry Project Manager to add connections), with just-in-time Contributor through Entra PIM for provisioning. The Bing resource key sits in a project connection and the agent never holds it. No key in a URL (28 of 30). The tools only read. Custom Search confines grounding to configured public domains, and an admin can turn web search off for a whole subscription. There is no per-agent read-only toggle to set, since the tools have no write path (15 of 20). The web search page tells developers to treat web search results as untrusted input and to keep secrets and personal data out of prompts, and the tool best practices page says the same of all tool outputs. Raw results are not passed back to the caller (10 of 15). Run steps show each tool call and the Bing query sent, and Azure's activity log covers resource changes. No per-query audit log for Bing was found (10 of 15). Microsoft runs a coordinated vulnerability disclosure policy and bounty programmes through MSRC. microsoft.com's security.txt passed its Expires date on 23 September 2026 and still carries it on 6 November, and the Azure compliance attestations are not shown to cover a service whose data leaves the compliance boundary (16 of 20). 28 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 16 = 79.
- Brave Search API + MCP (58): Plain API keys in the `X-Subscription-Token` header. Several keys per account, revocable from the dashboard, with rotation advice, but no scopes (20). Read-only by nature, with tool allow and deny lists in the MCP server. The HTTP transport binds to 127.0.0.1 and checks Origin (18). Results are untrusted web text and LLM Context returns page content, and we found no prompt-injection guidance in the API docs or the MCP README (0). No per-call audit log found. Rate-limit headers show quota use only (0). SOC 2 Type II attestation, a HackerOne bounty, a pen test in April 2025 and a security.txt at brave.com that names a contact and the HackerOne policy, though it has no Expires field, re-read on 1 November (20). 20+18+0+0+20 = 58.

### Transparency & trust: Brave Search API + MCP +15

- Grounding with Bing Search (66): Closed service. The terms of use, updated November 2025, are separate from the Online Services terms and sit under the customer's Microsoft agreement (15 of 30). The docs and the terms agree that the Data Protection Addendum and the Product Terms' privacy and security terms don't apply, that Microsoft and the customer are independent controllers, and that the query and parameters leave the Azure compliance and geographic boundary. The terms defer storage and use of query data to the general Microsoft Privacy Statement and state no retention period (15 of 30). The Bing Search APIs retirement was announced on 16 May 2025 for 11 August 2025, under three months' notice, and the web search page marks the Deep Research tool deprecated with a replacement. Microsoft's lifecycle policy covers Azure services, but no deprecation terms for Grounding with Bing were found (10 of 20). Data location for Bing processing isn't stated, and no sub-processor list for it was found (5 of 20). 15 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 45.
- Brave Search API + MCP (81): The MCP server is MIT. The API is closed with published terms, so between the two bands (20). Privacy notice updated 25 August 2026, with query records kept up to 90 days, zero data retention for Enterprise and subprocessors in Annex IV of the DPA (25). Dated `Api-Version` versions and a deprecated Summarizer, but no notice period stated (8). Brave Software Inc. in the US is named, and subprocessors sit in the DPA annex. We found no data-location statement (10). 20+25+8+10 = 63.

### Reliability: Brave Search API + MCP +12

- Grounding with Bing Search (68): Graded on the hosted lines, for the Foundry Agent Service tools agents call. Azure status page with post-incident reviews and a Foundry Agent Service component (20). The history page read on 6 November lists one review in the 90 days from 8 August that names Foundry Agent Service, intermittent failures and latency in Sweden Central from 10:03 to 15:58 UTC on 29 September 2026. It was one region and partial, and the review doesn't name Grounding with Bing, so minor only, the reading the Azure Translator listing got for the same review (20). The pricing page publishes 150 transactions a second and 1 million a day for each Grounding with Bing resource (15). The web search troubleshooting table says to answer 429 with exponential backoff and retries. No Retry-After or tool-specific overload guidance was found, and searches have no side effects (8 of 15). No SLA naming Grounding with Bing was found. The terms make it a First Party Consumption Service apart from the Online Services terms, and the Online Services SLA document wasn't opened (0). Grounding with Bing Custom Search is marked preview and Grounding with Bing Search is not, but no page read states general availability for it or for the web_search tool, and the .NET SDK is in preview (5 of 10). 20 + 20 + 15 + 8 + 0 + 5 = 68.
- Brave Search API + MCP (80): status.brave.app (Better Stack) lists a Brave Search API component monitoring api.search.brave.com, showing 100% uptime with every two-day mark from 6 May to 1 November 2026 operational, and a Search API Dashboard monitor at 99.996%. The 1 October note read the page as unmonitored, but its marks go back to May (20). No incident in the 90 days from 3 August on the page or its feed, and the docs' own status log still ends on 27 March 2025, so a clean record on a readable page (20). Rate limits published per plan, 50 QPS Search, 2 QPS Answers, 100 QPS Spellcheck and Autosuggest, in a 1-second sliding window, per the 1 October check (15). 429 on overrun, `X-RateLimit-Reset` in seconds and exponential backoff guidance. Searches are reads, so no idempotency keys are needed (15). No SLA on any self-serve plan (0). GA (10). 20+20+15+15+0+10 = 80.

### Agent ergonomics: Brave Search API + MCP +11

- Grounding with Bing Search (61): Read as a server-side search tool inside an agent run. The tools return a model's answer with citations rather than raw results, and `search_context_size` sets how much context web search uses. A caller can't size or inspect the result set itself, since the Bing tools never return their output. Custom Search confines grounding to chosen domains without code (18 of 25). `count`, freshness, market and language filters, and domain restriction through Custom Search. No pagination or offset (13 of 20). Troubleshooting tables give causes and fixes for connection ID, RBAC and 429 problems, but the tools document no error codes (8 of 20). Searches only read, so a retry is safe apart from the per-transaction charge. No MCP annotations are documented for the toolbox's web search tool (10 of 20). The web_search route needs only a project, a model deployment and the Foundry User role. bing_grounding also needs a paid Bing resource and a project connection. SDKs in Python, C#, JavaScript and Java (12 of 15). Prompt caching gets no hits with the Bing tools, because they add a timestamp to every request. 18 + 13 + 8 + 10 + 12 = 61.
- Brave Search API + MCP (72): Eight tools, under ten, with `--enabled-tools` and `--disabled-tools` to trim the list. Country and language enums make the web search schema long (22). `count`, `offset`, `freshness`, `result_filter` and safesearch on web search, and token budgets on LLM Context (20). 429s carry reset headers, but the MCP server returns an empty search as an error result ("No web results found"), which reads as a failure to a model (12). Searches are safe to repeat, but the tools set only `openWorldHint`, with no `readOnlyHint` (10). Only `query` is required. No official SDK in any language (8). 22+20+12+10+8 = 72.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Grounding with Bing Search | Brave Search API + MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 68 | 80 | Brave Search API + MCP +12 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 68 | 72 | Brave Search API + MCP +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 61 | 72 | Brave Search API + MCP +11 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 79 | 58 | Grounding with Bing Search +21 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 20 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 77 | Grounding with Bing Search +3 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 66 | 81 | Brave Search API + MCP +15 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **63.7 · B** | **62.9 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Grounding with Bing Search | Brave Search API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Microsoft | Brave |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://{account}.services.ai.azure.com/api/projects/{project}/openai/v1/responses` | `https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | stdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| Price for web search | $14 per 1,000 requests | $5 per 1,000 requests |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the customer's Microsoft agreement and the separate Grounding with Bing terms of use, which exclude it from the Microsoft Data Protection Addendum | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 3 | 8 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.brave/brave-search-mcp-server` |
| Last release | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-17 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-11-01 | 2026-09-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-01 | 2026-08-25 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 1.4k stars, 22k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

## How the scores have moved

### Grounding with Bing Search

No score change since it was listed.

### Brave Search API + MCP

- -5.1 on 1 November 2026: product, correction, negative event, time
- -0.1 on 8 October 2026: checklist

## Verdicts

**Grounding with Bing Search.** First-party Bing grounding inside Foundry Agent Service, called with Entra ID so the agent never holds a search key, at a published $14 per 1,000 transactions. The tools return a model's answer with citations, never the raw results, and data sent to them falls outside Microsoft's Data Protection Addendum and Azure's compliance boundary.

**Brave Search API + MCP.** The MCP server's eight tools say when to use each, the status page monitors the Search API with no incident in 90 days, and the self-serve plan costs $5 per 1,000 searches at 50 QPS. Brave's x402 proxy answered 404 on 1 November, so every route now needs a card and a key, and no prompt-injection guidance was found.

## Before you call either

### Grounding with Bing Search

1. Use the citations in the response annotations as the sources; the tool output itself is not returned, and the terms require showing the URLs and the Bing query link
2. Expect each run to bill one transaction per tool call at $14 per 1,000, plus model tokens, and set count and freshness in the tool configuration
3. Treat cited page text as untrusted input and don't put secrets or personal data in prompts, since queries leave the Azure compliance boundary
4. On 429 back off exponentially; no Retry-After header is documented for the tool

### Brave Search API + MCP

1. Call /res/v1/llm/context when you need page text rather than links. It saves a separate fetch
2. Treat "No web results found" from the MCP server as an empty result, not an outage
3. On 429, wait for `X-RateLimit-Reset` seconds. There's no `Retry-After` header
4. Skip `brave_summarizer`. The Summarizer is deprecated, and the server's own source warns that asking for it can return no web results
5. Don't rely on the x402 proxy at search.agent.s.brave.app. It answered 404 on 1 November 2026, so use a keyed plan

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Grounding with Bing Search or Brave Search API + MCP?

Grounding with Bing Search and Brave Search API + MCP score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 63.7 (B) and 62.9 (B). Brave Search API + MCP leads on reliability, agent ergonomics and transparency & trust.

### Which is cheaper for web search, Grounding with Bing Search or Brave Search API + MCP?

Brave Search API + MCP, at $5 per 1,000 requests against $14 per 1,000 requests for Grounding with Bing Search. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.

### Do Grounding with Bing Search and Brave Search API + MCP need an API key?

Grounding with Bing Search uses an OAuth sign-in. Brave Search API + MCP takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Grounding with Bing Search and Brave Search API + MCP without installing anything?

Yes. Grounding with Bing Search has a hosted endpoint at https://{account}.services.ai.azure.com/api/projects/{project}/openai/v1/responses and Brave Search API + MCP at https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search.

### Are Grounding with Bing Search and Brave Search API + MCP open source?

No open-source release is listed for Grounding with Bing Search. Brave Search API + MCP is open source (MIT).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-brave-search-mcp.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-brave-search-mcp.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "bing-grounding", "b": "brave-search-mcp"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare bing-grounding brave-search-mcp`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/bing-grounding.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/brave-search-mcp.json

## Other comparisons with Grounding with Bing Search or Brave Search API + MCP

- [Web Search Tool on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore vs Grounding with Bing Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentcore-web-search-vs-bing-grounding.md)
- [Web Search Tool on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore vs Brave Search API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentcore-web-search-vs-brave-search-mcp.md)
- [Arcmira vs Grounding with Bing Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/arcmira-vs-bing-grounding.md)
- [Arcmira vs Brave Search API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/arcmira-vs-brave-search-mcp.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Cloudflare Web Search API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-cloudflare-web-search.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs DeepSeek Search and Fetch API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-deepseek-search-api.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Exa API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-exa-mcp.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Kagi Search API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-kagi-search.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Linkup](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-linkup.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Mojeek Web Search API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-mojeek.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs NewsCatcher](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-newscatcher.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Parallel Search and Task APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-parallel-search-api.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Perplexity Search API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-perplexity-search-api.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs SerpApi](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-serpapi.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Serper](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-serper.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs SERPHouse](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-serphouse.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-serpkite.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs SpecStream](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-specstream.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Tavily API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-tavily-mcp.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Valyu](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-valyu.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs You.com APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-you-com-api.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs Cloudflare Web Search API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-cloudflare-web-search.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs DeepSeek Search and Fetch API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-deepseek-search-api.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs Exa API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-exa-mcp.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs Kagi Search API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-kagi-search.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs Linkup](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-linkup.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs Mojeek Web Search API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-mojeek.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs NewsCatcher](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-newscatcher.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs Parallel Search and Task APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-parallel-search-api.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs Perplexity Search API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-perplexity-search-api.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs SerpApi](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-serpapi.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs Serper](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-serper.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs SERPHouse](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-serphouse.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-serpkite.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs SpecStream](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-specstream.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs Tavily API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-tavily-mcp.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs Valyu](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-valyu.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs You.com APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-you-com-api.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Grep AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-grep-ai.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs Grep AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-grep-ai.md)

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp