Brave Search API vs Firecrawl

• Runs on Brave's own independent index, so there is no hidden fallback to Google or Bing for long-tail queries.
• LLM Context endpoint returns ranked, token-budgeted passages instead of raw links, which cuts prompt size.
• Prepaid credits with no subscription or minimums make costs easy to cap.
• Goggles let you re-rank or restrict results to trusted domain sets.
• SOC 2 Type II attested, with Zero Data Retention options for compliance-sensitive teams.
• Official MCP server makes it simple to plug into Claude and other agent clients.

• A credit card is required even to use the free monthly credits.
• Storing or reusing results (for example to fine-tune a model) needs a plan that grants storage rights.
• Headline benchmark wins are vendor-reported or run by Brave, so verify on your own queries.
• No no-code interface; it is built for developers working through the API.
• Answers endpoint is limited to 2 queries per second on the standard plan.

• One API covers search, scrape, crawl, map and interaction, so agents need fewer separate tools.
• Returns clean markdown or JSON that cuts input tokens versus raw HTML.
• Open source with a very active GitHub community, which lowers lock-in risk.
• Free plan of 1,000 credits a month with no credit card makes prototyping easy.
• Connects to AI agents and MCP clients with a single command.

• Shared credit system means search, JSON extraction and interaction cost different amounts, so budgeting takes monitoring.
• Pages that return 403 or 404 errors still cost 1 credit.
• Benchmark and token-saving claims are vendor-published, not independently verified.
• Aimed at developers; there is no end-user research interface.
• SSO and SCIM are limited to the Enterprise plan.