Brave Search API pricing
The Brave Search API charges $5 per 1,000 requests, and each month's first $5 of usage is free, so the first 1,000 searches a month cost nothing and 10,000 cost $45. Its Answers plan costs $4 per 1,000 requests plus $5 per million input and output tokens, with the same $5 monthly credit. A card is required, even for the free credits.
Brave's two plans
| Plan | Price | Free a month | Capacity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search | $5 per 1,000 requests | $5 | 50 queries a second |
| Answers | $4 per 1,000 requests + $5 per million tokens | $5 | 2 queries a second |
Search returns "Complete search results (URLs, text, news, images, and more), with additional LLM context optimized for AI." Extra snippets: "Get up to five snippets picked in real time to maximize contextual relevance to a search."
What does a month of searches cost?
| Searches a month | List price | After the $5 credit | Per 1,000, after it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $5 | $0 | $0.00 |
| 2,000 | $10 | $5 | $2.50 |
| 5,000 | $25 | $20 | $4.00 |
| 10,000 | $50 | $45 | $4.50 |
| 50,000 | $250 | $245 | $4.90 |
| 100,000 | $500 | $495 | $4.95 |
| 1,000,000 | $5,000 | $4,995 | $5.00 |
On Brave's Search plan: "Includes $5 in free credits every month"; "Credits are automatically applied to your account". The list price is before that credit.
What do AI answers cost?
| Tokens per answer | 1,000 answers | 10,000 answers |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $9 | $90 |
| 2,000 | $14 | $140 |
| 5,000 | $29 | $290 |
$4 per 1,000 requests plus $5 per million input and output tokens together, at list price; the token counts are examples, not Brave's figures.
Quick answers
How much does the Brave Search API cost?
$5 per 1,000 requests on its Search plan, with $5 of free credit every month: 10,000 searches a month cost $50 at list price, $45 after the credit, and 100,000 cost $495.
Is the Brave Search API free?
Partly: both plans include $5 in free credits every month, applied to your account automatically, which covers 1,000 searches. "The credit card requirement serves as an anti-fraud measure to protect Brave from bad actors who want to abuse our API. For free plans, the card is only used to confirm your identity and will not be charged."
What are the Brave Search API's free tier limits?
The free credit is $5 a month, 1,000 searches at $5 per 1,000; past it, searches are billed at the same rate. The Search plan lists a capacity of 50 queries a second, the Answers plan 2.
Can I store Brave Search API results?
Not on every plan: "If you would like to store the API results in part or whole (for example, to train or tune an LLM), you will need to subscribe to a plan that explicitly grants storage rights."
How much do Brave's AI answers cost?
$4 per 1,000 requests plus $5 per million input and output tokens: 1,000 answers of 2,000 tokens each cost $14 before the monthly credit.
Brave Search API against the other search APIs
10,000 searches a month, each API's cheapest published option in its default search type:
Price your own volume on every one in web search APIs for LLMs. Head to head: Tavily vs Brave Search API.
Source: Brave Search API, read on the date below.
Prices checked against each platform's own pricing page on .