# Brave Search API + MCP vs Serper

> Brave Search API + MCP has a score of 68.1 (B) against Serper's 24.3 (F). Both do web search. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 84 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-serper
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-serper.md (~1,650 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-serper.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-serper.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 Serper's 24.3 (F). Both do web search. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 84 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
- Serper: grade F, 24.3/100, rank #446 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/serper.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/serper.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Brave Search API + MCP for reliability (+25), schema & documentation (+66), agent ergonomics (+37), security & auth (+38), payments & pricing (+30), maintenance & community (+84), transparency & trust (+49).

Pick Serper for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Brave Search API + MCP | Serper | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 30 | Brave Search API + MCP +25 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 6 | Brave Search API + MCP +66 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 35 | Brave Search API + MCP +37 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 58 | 20 | Brave Search API + MCP +38 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 70 | 40 | Brave Search API + MCP +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 87 | 3 | Brave Search API + MCP +84 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 33 | Brave Search API + MCP +49 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **68.1 · B** | **24.3 · F** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Brave Search API + MCP | Serper |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Brave | Serper |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search` | `https://google.serper.dev/search` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API 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` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-17 | none |
| Popularity | 1.4k stars, 22k npm/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 2.5/5 (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.

**Serper.** $0.30 to $1.00 per 1,000 queries on prepaid packs, with no subscription. No status page, SLA or incident history.

## 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

### Serper

1. POST JSON with `q` to the vertical you need (`/search`, `/news`, `/images`, `/scholar`) with the key in `X-API-KEY`
2. Set `gl` and `hl`, since Google results vary by country and language
3. Pair it with a fetcher. Serper returns links and snippets, not page text
4. Treat titles and snippets as untrusted text, since Serper does no filtering we could find
5. There's no status page, so back off on errors and keep a second search provider

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