Brave Search vs Tavily

Both give agents web search behind an API key from the vendor.

	Brave Search	Tavily
Category	Data & Search	Data & Search
Status	Official · Brave	Official · Tavily
Transport	Local (stdio)	Remote HTTP + local stdio
Auth method	Brave Search API key	Tavily API key
Scopes / permissions	Not documented	Not documented
Tools listed	6	3
In Config Builder	Yes	Manual setup
Last verified	Oct 15, 2026	Oct 15, 2026
Summary	Web, news, image, video and local search through the Brave Search API.	Real-time web search and extraction built for AI agents.
Key tools	brave_web_search brave_local_search brave_news_search brave_image_search brave_video_search brave_summarizer	tavily-search tavily-extract Site map and crawl tools

Brave Search setup

Run with npx

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "brave-search": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@brave/brave-search-mcp-server"],
      "env": { "BRAVE_API_KEY": "YOUR_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Full spec sheet →+ Add to config

Tavily setup

Claude Code (remote)

claude mcp add --transport http tavily https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/?tavilyApiKey=<your-api-key>

Full spec sheet →

Built from the verified data on each spec sheet. Check the official pages before relying on details.