Brave Search API alternatives
A genuinely independent index of 40B+ pages, sold as a conventional search API with an LLM-context option. Long the default independent choice.
Verified 5 August 2026·Figures from vendors' own pages
Free developer tier removed February 2026Brave Search API at a glance
- Vendor
- Brave Software
- Category
- Own-index search APIs
- Own index
- Yes — 40B+ pages, no Google or Bing dependency
- Price per 1,000
- $5
- Free tier
- $5 in monthly credits — the perpetual free tier was retired in February 2026
- Rate limit
- 50 queries / sec (Search); 2 / sec (Answers)
- MCP server
- Yes
- Graph traversal
- No
- Coverage transparency
- No
Pricing detail. Search is $5 per 1,000 requests. The Answers plan is $4 per 1,000 plus $5 per million tokens.
The alternatives
unlob
$0.40/1kOur own index, admitted rather than ranked. Metadata-only passage hits, six coverage-graph traversal tools, an MCP server, and an endpoint that tells you why any URL is or is not in the index. Smaller than the well-funded incumbents, and considerably cheaper than all of them.
Exa
$7/1kNeural, embeddings-first search over a proprietary index, sold alongside content extraction, answers and agentic research products.
Parallel Search
$1/1kA suite of web search, extraction and research APIs on a proprietary index, from the former Twitter CEO. The closest competitor to unlob by thesis.
Mojeek
A UK independent crawler and index, running since 2004. Small by comparison, but genuinely its own — and the oldest independent index still standing.
DataForSEO
$0.60/1kIndustrial SERP infrastructure built for SEO tooling rather than agents. The cheapest per query in the field, with the lowest-level API to match.
Serper
$1/1kThe cheapest way to get raw Google results into an agent. Fast, minimal, and entirely dependent on Google continuing to be scrapeable.
Google Custom Search JSON API
$5/1kGoogle's own programmable search endpoint. Real Google results, a hard 10,000/day ceiling, and terms written for site search rather than agents.
Grounding with Google Search
$14/1kGoogle's first-party grounding for Gemini. The best index in the world, billed per search query on top of tokens, and only usable from Gemini.
Perplexity Sonar
$14/1kSearch and synthesis in one call. You get an answer rather than results, which is convenient until you need to control retrieval yourself.
Sources
- Brave Search API pricingread 5 August 2026
Frequently asked questions
What is the best alternative to Brave Search API?
It depends what you are replacing. If you need an independent index at the lowest price, unlob is $0.40 per 1,000 queries against Brave Search API's $5. If you need the largest possible index, Brave Search API may still be the right tool — we say so on our comparison page rather than pretending otherwise.
Does Brave Search API own its own web index?
Yes — 40B+ pages, no Google or Bing dependency. That matters because a provider without its own index inherits the deprecation and repricing risk of whoever it depends on.
How much does Brave Search API cost?
Search is $5 per 1,000 requests. The Answers plan is $4 per 1,000 plus $5 per million tokens.
Try the cheapest own-index alternative
10,000 free requests a month, no card. Test coverage and latency against your own queries before you commit to anything.