bravealternativessearch-api

Brave Search API Alternatives: What Developers Actually Use

Comparing Brave Search API alternatives for developers. Multi-platform coverage, free tiers, MCP support, and attribution requirements compared.

May 7, 2026

7 min read

After Brave killed its free tier in 2026, developers moved to Scavio, Serper, Tavily, SearXNG, and Exa depending on their use case. The right alternative depends on whether you need structured SERP data, RAG-optimized results, or just cheap web search at volume.

What happened with Brave

Brave Search API removed its free tier in early 2026. The current pricing is $5 per 1,000 requests with a $5 free credit for new accounts, and all results require attribution (you must display "Powered by Brave Search"). For hobby projects and prototypes, that attribution requirement alone is a dealbreaker. For production apps, $5/1K is mid-range but the index quality for non-English queries and niche topics has been inconsistent based on developer reports across r/scrapingtheweb and r/SideProject.

The alternatives, with real pricing

Scavio

Multi-platform search API: Google, Amazon, YouTube, Walmart, Reddit. 500 free credits/month, $30/month for 7,000 credits, or $0.005/credit on demand. No attribution required. Returns structured JSON with organic results, AI Overviews, People Also Ask, and shopping results depending on the platform.

Best for: developers who need Google-quality SERPs, multi-platform search, or structured e-commerce data. The free tier is enough for prototyping and small production apps.

Python

import requests

resp = requests.post(
    "https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/search",
    headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_KEY"},
    json={
        "platform": "google",
        "query": "best python web framework 2026",
        "country": "us",
        "num_results": 10
    }
)

results = resp.json()
for item in results.get("organic_results", []):
    print(f"{item['position']}. {item['title']}")
    print(f"   {item['link']}")

Serper

Google SERP API. 2,500 free credits on signup (not recurring), then $0.30–$1.00 per 1,000 queries at scale depending on plan. Fast, reliable, Google-only. The free credits run out quickly if you are testing at volume, and there is no ongoing free tier.

Best for: production apps that need high-volume Google search and can budget $50+/month.

Tavily

AI-search API optimized for RAG pipelines. 1,000 free queries/month, $30/month paid tier. Acquired by Nebius in February 2026. Returns LLM-ready content with source attribution. The response format is designed for feeding into language models, not for displaying traditional SERP results to users.

Best for: RAG applications and AI agents where you want pre-processed, summarized content rather than raw SERP data.

SearXNG

Free, self-hosted metasearch engine. 251+ search engine backends. Zero API cost because you run it yourself. The catch: you need to host and maintain a server, handle rate limiting against upstream engines, and manage IP reputation. Public SearXNG instances get rate-limited heavily by Google.

Best for: privacy-focused projects, developers who want zero recurring costs and are comfortable with Docker/VPS management.

Exa

Neural search API that finds content by meaning, not keywords. Strong for academic papers, technical content, and niche topics where keyword matching fails. Pricing varies by plan. The results are genuinely different from Google — sometimes better for deep research, sometimes worse for commercial queries.

Best for: research agents, knowledge bases, and use cases where semantic similarity matters more than PageRank.

Head-to-head comparison

Cheapest at low volume: Scavio (500 free/month recurring) or SearXNG (free if self-hosted).
Best free trial: Serper (2,500 one-time credits) for a quick prototype, Tavily (1,000/month) for ongoing free usage.
Multi-platform: Only Scavio covers Google + Amazon + YouTube + Walmart + Reddit in one API.
RAG-optimized: Tavily returns LLM-ready content. Exa returns semantically similar documents.
No vendor lock-in: SearXNG is the only fully self-hosted option.

MCP support

If you are building with Claude Code or other MCP-compatible agents, Scavio exposes an MCP endpoint at https://mcp.scavio.dev/mcp that works directly in Claude Code and other MCP clients. Tavily and Brave also have community MCP servers. Serper and SearXNG require custom MCP wrappers.

Migration from Brave

If your code currently calls the Brave Search API, the migration path to Scavio is straightforward: change the endpoint URL, swap the API key header, and adjust the response parsing. Brave returns results in a web.results array; Scavio returns them in organic_results. The field names differ but the structure is similar.