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Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

Brave Search API + MCP vs Exa API + MCP

Brave Search API + MCP has a score of 68.1 (B) against Exa API + MCP's 66.1 (B). Both do web search. The largest gap is agent ergonomics, 24 points. Exa API + MCP accepts x402. Brave Search API + MCP doesn't.

Brave Search API + MCPBrave · HTTP API B68.1/100#132 of 452 Exa API + MCPExa · MCP server B66.1/100#163 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Brave Search API + MCP for

  • security & auth (+15)
  • transparency & trust (+17)

Pick Exa API + MCP for

  • reliability (+12)
  • schema & documentation (+14)
  • agent ergonomics (+24)
  • payments & pricing (+20)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBrave Search API + MCPExa API + MCPEdge
Reliability16%205567Exa API + MCP +12
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27286Exa API + MCP +14
Agent ergonomics13%16.27296Exa API + MCP +24
Security & auth14%17.55843Brave Search API + MCP +15
Payments & pricing10%12.57090Exa API + MCP +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88788Exa API + MCP +1
Transparency & trust7%8.88265Brave Search API + MCP +17
Negative events≤150-9
Total68.1 · B66.1 · B

Facts side by side

FactBrave Search API + MCPExa API + MCP
KindHTTP APIMCP server
VendorBraveExa
Hosted endpointhttps://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/searchhttps://mcp.exa.ai/mcp
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTPstdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPay per useFreemium
x402payer tooling onlyyes, from $0.007/call
LicenceMITMIT
Tools exposed84
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryio.github.brave/brave-search-mcp-serverai.exa/exa
Last release2026-09-172026-10-01
Popularity1.4k stars, 22k npm/wk4.9k stars, 1.1M npm/wk, 1.4M PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3.5/5 (2)4.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

Brave Search API + MCP

x402 proxy sells web, LLM Context, news, video, image and local search at $0.005 a call, and a failed search isn't charged. The status page marks the Search API "not monitored" and shows no incident history.

Exa API + MCP

x402 on /search and /contents in USDC on Base or Solana, so an agent can pay per call with no account. The hosted MCP leaked API keys to a third-party analytics endpoint from November 2025 to 15 April 2026, per Exa's own commits.

Before you call either

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 x402 proxy doesn't sell it
  5. Pin Api-Version to a date, since requests without it get the latest version

Exa API + MCP

  1. Send the key as x-api-key or a Bearer header, never ?exaApiKey= in the MCP URL
  2. Ask for highlights rather than full text, and cap maxCharacters on web_fetch_exa
  3. Request only the results you'll read. More than 10 costs extra, and x402 calls stop at 10
  4. On 429, honour Retry-After. The QPS limit is shared by every key on the team
  5. Add ?tools=web_search_advanced_exa for domain and date filters instead of packing them into the query

Other comparisons with Brave Search API + MCP or Exa API + MCP

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