Tools & keys · Search
Brave Search API setup
Results from Brave's own independent web index.
Optional
Updated
Free tier
Brave's free plan includes a monthly search credit; a card is required to sign up.checked September 2026
Larvabot's cap
Stops at 900 a month (free: 1,000). Change it in Settings → Free-quota guard.Fallback position
#4 of 9 for search. See the orderWhat it does
Brave Search runs its own index of the web rather than reselling Google or Bing, and offers it as an API.
- Another monthly search source before self-hosted and one-time options
Get set up
- Subscribe to the free plan at brave.com/search/api
- Copy the key into Settings → Search → Brave Search API key
Where it goes
In the dashboard, open Settings and find the Search section. Secret values are encrypted before they're saved and only their last four characters are ever shown again.
Settings → Search
Brave Search API keyencrypted
BRAVE_API_KEY••••••••••••
Staying free
Larvabot caps Brave at 900 searches a month.
How the quota guard works →Fallback order
For search, Larvabot tries these in order and skips any that aren't set up, are out of free quota or are busy.
- 1Tavily
- 2Linkup
- 3Exa
- 4Brave Search API
- 5SearXNG (your server)
- 6Larvabot search server
- 7Serper (Google results)
- 8Jina Search
- 9DuckDuckGo HTML
More search tools
Curious why Brave Search API made the cut? Brave Search API in the free stack →