{"id":622,"date":"2026-10-12T11:05:56","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T11:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/katteb.com\/blog\/?p=622"},"modified":"2026-10-12T11:05:56","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T11:05:56","slug":"brave-search-ai-agent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/katteb.com\/blog\/brave-search-ai-agent\/","title":{"rendered":"Brave Search AI Agent: Brave API Pricing per 1,000 Requests, Storage Rules and Where an Agent Fits"},"content":{"rendered":"
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TL;DR.<\/strong> On 12 October 2026 the Brave Search API page<\/a> and the Brave API pricing page<\/a> listed two self-serve plans, both prepaid: Search<\/strong> at $5.00 per 1,000 requests (50 requests per second) and Answers<\/strong> at $4.00 per 1,000 queries plus $5.00 per million input tokens and $5.00 per million output tokens (2 requests per second). Each plan includes $5 of free credit every month, which is 1,000 free Search requests. Spellcheck and Autosuggest cost $5.00 per 10,000 requests; Enterprise is priced by conversation. The Search API Terms of Use<\/a> (last updated 1 September 2026) forbid storing or building a database of results beyond transient storage, which matters more than the price for some builds. Below, four priced scenarios compare building on the API with running a ready-made agent such as Katteb, every figure in US dollars, per month, pre-tax.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

People who search “brave api pricing” usually fall into one of two groups. The first is a developer choosing a web search API for a chatbot, a retrieval pipeline or an agent, who wants to know what 10,000 or 200,000 calls will cost. The second is a founder, marketer or analyst who has heard that “agents search the web with Brave” and wants to know whether they need a Brave key at all to get research done every week. The answer is different for each group, and a pricing table on its own only helps the first.<\/p>\n

This guide covers both. It explains what Brave sells, how a request is counted, the storage rule that decides whether the API fits your design, the jobs a Brave-powered AI agent is used for, and four scenarios with the arithmetic written out so you can check it. Where a fair comparison is not possible, we say why instead of inventing a number.<\/p>\n

What is the Brave Search API?<\/h2>\n

The Brave Search API gives programmatic access to the index behind Brave Search. Unlike many “search APIs” that relay a query to Google or Bing and parse the page, Brave runs its own crawl. Brave’s product page says the index holds more than 40 billion pages, refreshed by more than 100 million page updates a day. That independence is the main reason developers pick it: the results are Brave’s own, with Brave’s own ranking.<\/p>\n

From one key you can reach several surfaces. The Web Search documentation<\/a> describes the classic web endpoint with freshness filters (last 24 hours, 7 days, 31 days, a year or a custom range), country and language targeting, up to five extra snippets per result, search operators such as site:<\/code> and filetype:<\/code>, and Goggles, Brave’s custom re-ranking rules. Alongside it sit an LLM Context endpoint shaped for models and agents, images, videos, news, an Answers endpoint that returns a written answer with citations, and spellcheck and autosuggest.<\/p>\n

How do you get a Brave Search API key?<\/h3>\n

You create an account on the Brave API dashboard, subscribe to the plan you need (Search, Answers, or the smaller Spellcheck and Autosuggest products), and the dashboard issues a key that you send in the X-Subscription-Token<\/code> header. Both main plans are prepaid: you buy credit up front and requests draw it down. The monthly $5 credit is applied automatically.<\/p>\n

The important decision comes before the key. Choose the plan with the storage rule (covered below) in mind, because the key is issued against a plan and the terms travel with it.<\/p>\n

Brave API pricing, read from the official pages<\/h2>\n

Everything in this table was read on 12 October 2026 from Brave’s own pages. Prices are in US dollars and exclude tax.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Product<\/th>\nPrice (USD)<\/th>\nCapacity<\/th>\nFree credit<\/th>\nWhat you get<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Search<\/td>\n$5.00 per 1,000 requests<\/td>\n50 requests\/second<\/td>\n$5 every month<\/td>\nWeb results, LLM context, news, videos, images<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Answers<\/td>\n$4.00 per 1,000 queries + $5.00 per 1M input tokens + $5.00 per 1M output tokens<\/td>\n2 requests\/second<\/td>\n$5 every month<\/td>\nWritten answers grounded on one or more searches, with citations, streaming, OpenAI SDK compatible<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Spellcheck<\/td>\n$5.00 per 10,000 requests<\/td>\n100 requests\/second<\/td>\n$5 every month<\/td>\nSpellcheck, autosuggest, enriched autosuggest<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Autosuggest<\/td>\n$5.00 per 10,000 requests<\/td>\n100 requests\/second<\/td>\n$5 every month<\/td>\nQuery completion as users type<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Enterprise<\/td>\nCustom (not published)<\/td>\nCustom<\/td>\n–<\/td>\nZero Data Retention, custom agreements and NDAs, invoicing<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/figure>\n

Three details change real bills more than the headline rate:<\/p>\n