# Brave Search API + MCP vs SearchAPI.io

> Brave Search API + MCP has a score of 68.1 (B) against SearchAPI.io's 51.4 (D). Both do web search. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 72 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-searchapi-io
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.md (~1,700 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

Brave Search API + MCP has a score of 68.1 (B) against SearchAPI.io's 51.4 (D). Both do web search. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 72 points.

- Brave Search API + MCP: grade B, 68.1/100, rank #132 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/brave-search-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/brave-search-mcp.json
- SearchAPI.io: grade D, 51.4/100, rank #351 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/searchapi-io.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/searchapi-io.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Brave Search API + MCP for schema & documentation (+13), agent ergonomics (+20), security & auth (+30), payments & pricing (+40), maintenance & community (+72), transparency & trust (+20).

Pick SearchAPI.io for reliability (+35).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Brave Search API + MCP | SearchAPI.io | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 90 | SearchAPI.io +35 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 59 | Brave Search API + MCP +13 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 52 | Brave Search API + MCP +20 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 58 | 28 | Brave Search API + MCP +30 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 70 | 30 | Brave Search API + MCP +40 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 87 | 15 | Brave Search API + MCP +72 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 62 | Brave Search API + MCP +20 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **68.1 · B** | **51.4 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Brave Search API + MCP | SearchAPI.io |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Brave | SearchApi |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search` | `https://www.searchapi.io/api/v1/search` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | payer tooling only | no |
| Licence | MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | 8 | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | `io.github.brave/brave-search-mcp-server` | `io.searchapi/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-09-17 | none |
| Popularity | 1.4k stars, 22k npm/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3/5 (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.

**SearchAPI.io.** 99.9% SLA on every plan and no incidents on the status page since August. MCP exposes over 100 tools with no toolsets.

## 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

### SearchAPI.io

1. Send the key as `Authorization: Bearer`, not `api_key=` in the URL
2. Connect the MCP through OAuth or the `X-MCP-Token` header, not the registry's `?token=` URL
3. Call the REST API with `engine=` when context is tight. The MCP loads over 100 tool definitions
4. Page Google results with `page`. `num` is fixed at 10
5. Pace bursts. One hour can use at most 20 per cent of the plan's monthly searches

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