Brave Search answers a large share of its queries with AI, and it does so from its own web index rather than a licensed one, which matters to publishers, developers and privacy teams alike. Brave Search is a web search engine from Brave Software that runs on an independent index, adds AI-generated answers through Answer with AI and Ask Brave, and sells the same index to developers through the Brave Search API. Ask Brave was introduced on 29 September 2025 as the next version of Brave's AI answers, combining search results and AI chat in one interface. This page sets out what each part does, how answers are grounded and cited, what data Brave says it keeps, what the API offers and costs, and what site owners can control. It is written for publishers, marketers, developers, privacy teams and everyday users who want facts from Brave's own pages rather than commentary.
Last checked: 2026-11-15.
This is an independent reference page from NHI Mgmt Group based on public provider documentation; it is not sponsored or endorsed by any provider. It draws on Brave's public Search documentation as of November 2026; product features change, so confirm details against Brave's current pages.
Key takeaways
- Own index, not a reseller. Brave describes its index as built from scratch by its own crawler plus opt-in signals from Brave users through the Web Discovery Project, and its API page gives the index size as more than 40 billion pages.
- Two AI answer layers. Answer with AI (April 2024) gives short cited summaries above the results; Ask Brave (September 2025) adds longer answers, follow-up chat, related videos and products, and a Deep Research option.
- Short-lived AI chats. Brave says Ask Brave chats are encrypted with keys held on the user's device, are erased after 24 hours of inactivity, are not used for training, and that Brave does not keep IP addresses.
- The index is sold as an API. As of 2026-11-15 the Search plan is listed at $5 per 1,000 requests and the Answers plan at $4 per 1,000 requests plus $5 per million input and output tokens, with prepaid credits and no subscription.
- noindex, not robots.txt, removes pages. Brave's crawler does not use a separate user agent, follows Googlebot access rules, and states that robots.txt is not used to prevent indexing; the noindex directive is the delisting route.
What is Brave Search?
Brave Search is a search engine that works in any browser at search.brave.com and can be the default engine in the Brave browser. Brave says some users who downloaded the browser on or after 19 October 2021 may have Brave Search set as their default. Its main point of difference, as Brave states it, is that the results come from Brave's own index, so the service would keep running without the large incumbent engines.
| Field | Value (as of 2026-11-15) |
|---|---|
| Provider | Brave Software |
| Product parts | Brave Search (results), Answer with AI (short AI summaries), Ask Brave (AI chat and search), Brave Search API (developer access) |
| Index | Independent, more than 40 billion pages (API page figure) |
| Index signals | Brave's own crawler plus the opt-in Web Discovery Project; Brave says the index is built from signals of more than 130 million people |
| Query volume reported by Brave | Almost 10 billion queries a year, about 27 million a day (provider figure, April 2024) |
| AI answer share reported by Brave | About a third of queries trigger an answer, around 10 million answers a day (provider figure, April 2024) |
| Model provider for Ask Brave | Nebius, under zero data retention (privacy policy); production model not stated; Nemotron 3 Ultra and Qwen3 named in API page evaluation charts |
| Price for users | Free, ad-supported; Brave Search Premium removes ads (price not stated on the help page) |
| Interface languages | US English, UK English, French, German and Japanese settings listed by Brave |
The figures are Brave's own and are not independently audited.
How do you access Brave's AI answers?
Brave offers two AI answer features in Brave Search, Answer with AI on the results page and the Ask Brave chat mode, plus API access for developers, covered under cost below.
What is Answer with AI?
Answer with AI is Brave's original answer engine, announced on 17 April 2024. It combines information from several sources into one answer shown alongside the normal results. Brave describes these points:
- Trigger: queries phrased as questions get an answer by default; for other queries the user can press the Answer with AI button. Brave reported manual button use at under 1% of queries.
- Grounding: the answer is built from Brave Search results and cites its sources, with the usual blue links below.
- Coding answers: an update on 23 August 2024 folded CodeLLM, Brave's coding answer feature, into Answer with AI.
- Caveat: Brave states that grounded does not mean verified and asks users to check critical facts.
Brave says it treats an Answer with AI request like an ordinary query, with no user history, sessions or profiles, and that the IP address is dropped before the request reaches Brave.
What is Ask Brave, and how do you use it?
Ask Brave, launched on 29 September 2025, is a single interface that merges search and AI chat. Brave calls it the next version of its AI answers: it decides how much detail a question needs, from plain results to a fuller answer, and lets the user keep going with follow-up questions. Answers can include related actions such as videos, web pages and products. It is free and works in any browser.
| Way to open Ask Brave | How it works |
|---|---|
| Double question mark | With Brave Search as the default engine, end a query with "??" to send it straight to Ask Brave |
| Ask button | Next to the Search button on search.brave.com |
| Ask tab | On the search results page |
| Homepage | Set the browser homepage to search.brave.com/ask |
Deep Research: for questions where thoroughness matters more than speed, Ask Brave can run several rounds of searching, which Brave describes as dozens of queries across thousands of pages, and it shows the research steps as it goes. Brave reports that the grounding technology behind it scored 94.9% on the SimpleQA factual accuracy benchmark (provider-reported figure, September 2025; Brave did not publish an independent check in the launch post).
Turning it off: all AI features in Brave Search can be switched off in the settings menu.
How does Brave Search find and cite sources?
Brave names two inputs. The first is its crawler. The second is the Web Discovery Project, an opt-in browser setting (Settings, then Search engine) that contributes anonymous signals about pages people visit, which can be turned off at any time.
- Fallback mixing: the Brave Search page says the engine can optionally check Google for "fallback mixing" and that Brave aims to reduce that over time. The privacy policy describes this as opt-in: Brave anonymously queries Google, mixes the results in, and adds clicked results to its own index.
- API results: the Search API page states that every API result comes from Brave's own index with no fallback to Google or Bing.
- Ranking and removal: Brave says it does not filter, downrank or censor results except where the law requires, naming DMCA takedowns and GDPR right to be forgotten requests.
- Goggles: a beta feature, reached from the Goggles tab on the results page, that lets anyone write rules and filters to narrow the searchable space or re-rank results. Goggles also work in the API to pick which sites ground a model.
Which models power Brave Search?
Brave names Nebius as the model provider for Ask Brave, running under zero data retention, but its privacy policy does not name the model. Its API page names open-weight models in its evaluation charts, "Ask Brave (Nemotron 3 Ultra)" and "Ask Brave v2 (Qwen3)", without stating which model serves production answers today.
How much does Brave Search cost?
Brave Search, Answer with AI and Ask Brave are free and ad-supported; Brave Search Premium removes ads (price not shown on the help page). Developers pay for the Brave Search API per request.
What is the Brave Search API?
The Brave Search API gives developers and AI companies programmatic access to the same index. Brave markets it for grounding large language models as well as for classic search features.
| Endpoint group | What it returns (Brave's description) |
|---|---|
| Web search | Human-readable results, with Goggles, extra alternate snippets and schema-enriched results |
| LLM Context | Grounding passages for agents: context size configurable from about 1k to about 33k tokens, strict, balanced or lenient relevance thresholds, URL and timestamp per source, optional last 24 hours filter |
| Answers | Summarised, cited answers with streaming, through an OpenAI SDK compatible chat completions interface |
| Image, video and news | Vertical results |
| Places | Points of interest |
| Summarizer | Documented flow: a web search request with summary=1 returns a key, which is passed to the summarizer endpoints on api.search.brave.com (summary, streaming, title, enrichments, follow-ups, entity info) |
How much does the Brave Search API cost?
| Plan | Price (USD, as of 2026-11-15) | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|
| Search | $5 per 1,000 requests | 50 queries per second |
| Answers | $4 per 1,000 requests plus $5 per million input and output tokens | 2 queries per second |
| Enterprise | Custom terms, contact sales | Custom capacity |
- Billing: prepaid credits, no subscription and no minimum; Brave asks for a card to prevent abuse.
- Free credit: each plan lists $5 of free credit a month, while the page header mentions up to $20 in free calls a month. Check the current terms before relying on either figure.
- Data use: Brave states queries stay on infrastructure it operates end to end, are not shared or used for training, and that the service is SOC 2 Type II attested. Enterprise adds full zero data retention terms, NDAs and invoicing.
- Storage and training rights: storing results or using them to train models requires a custom plan with storage rights, arranged through sales.
Pricing source: Brave Search API. API keys are sent in the X-Subscription-Token header, so treat them as secrets.
How do ads work in Brave Search?
Brave's search page says Brave Search is ad-supported with a privacy-first approach, and that its search ads are not currently eligible for Brave Rewards. Its privacy policy says ad clicks and views are recorded for measurement without processing personal data. Users who want no ads can upgrade to Brave Search Premium. Brave does not state whether ads appear inside AI answers.
What can publishers control?
Brave's crawler page sets the rules, and some differ from what site owners may expect.
- No separate user agent: Brave's crawler does not advertise a distinct user agent. Brave says this avoids discrimination against it by sites that allow only Google.
- Googlebot rules apply: if Googlebot cannot crawl a domain or page, Brave's crawler will not crawl it either.
- robots.txt does not delist: Brave states that robots.txt is not used to prevent a page from being indexed.
- Delisting: add the robots noindex directive, then ask Brave to re-fetch the page through its submit URL form.
- Dead pages: submit the URL through the same form or email Brave's not-found address.
- Personal data: use Brave's right to be forgotten process.
- AI training: the crawler page makes no statement on using crawled content for AI training. The API page states that training on API results needs a custom plan.
Because AI answers are built from Brave's own results, a page's visibility in Answer with AI and Ask Brave starts with being indexed by Brave. For crawler controls across many AI services, see the AI Crawler and Scraper Controls.
What privacy controls exist?
The Brave Search privacy policy and the launch posts give the following, as of 2026-11-15.
| Data | What Brave states |
|---|---|
| Search queries | Stored de-identified with query text, device platform, operating system, country, language and date; not linked to a user, device or IP address. No retention period stated by Brave |
| IP addresses | Not retained; for bot detection they are processed temporarily and deleted within seconds; used without storage for anonymous local results |
| Ask Brave processing | AWS servers in the United States |
| Ask Brave conversation state | Kept for the conversation and erased after 24 hours of inactivity |
| Ask Brave encryption keys | Held on the user's device, not on Brave's servers |
| Shared Ask Brave conversations | Kept for up to 7 days |
| Model provider | Nebius, under zero data retention: prompts and responses are not stored after processing and are not used for training; Nebius never sees the user's IP |
| Personal data typed into a chat | May be processed |
| Usage metrics | Opt-in, aggregated and anonymous |
| Ads | Clicks and views counted without personal data; country inferred from IP, which is not kept |
The practical reading: Brave's design avoids user profiles, but anything a user pastes into Ask Brave is processed by the model provider for that request. That is the point organisations should address in policy, not the retention period.
When was Brave Search released, and how has it changed?
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 19 October 2021 | Brave Search can be the default engine for some new Brave browser downloads from this date |
| 17 April 2024 | Answer with AI announced; Brave reports almost 10 billion queries a year |
| 23 August 2024 | CodeLLM merged into Answer with AI |
| 29 September 2025 | Ask Brave launched with follow-up chat, related actions and Deep Research |
| As of November 2026 | Search API lists Search, Answers and Enterprise plans and an LLM Context endpoint |
As of 2026-11-15. Brave's pages do not give a single launch date for Brave Search itself, so none is stated here.
What are Brave Search's limitations?
- Grounded is not verified: Brave's own wording. Open the cited page for anything legal, medical, financial or security related.
- Production model not stated: Brave names Nebius as the model provider for Ask Brave and names models only in its evaluation charts, so behaviour can change without a visible version change.
- Provider benchmarks: the 94.9% SimpleQA score is Brave's figure.
- Short chat life by design: conversations disappear after 24 hours of inactivity, so save anything needed for records.
- Interface languages: the settings list five language options.
- Index coverage: sites that block Googlebot also block Brave, so some content may never reach Brave answers.
Common questions about the service
Is Brave Search free?
Yes. Brave Search, Answer with AI and Ask Brave are free and ad-supported. Brave says its ads are delivered without personal data, and Brave Search Premium, a paid version available in the Brave browser, removes ads. The Brave Search API is a separate paid product.
Does Brave Search use Google?
Not by default. Brave says it serves results from its own index built from scratch. An optional "fallback mixing" setting lets Brave Search check Google, and Brave reports how often that happens through its independence score. The API has no fallback.
Where identity and security fit
Two points matter for organisations. First, staff using any consumer AI search for work may paste sensitive data into a prompt; Brave's short retention does not remove that exposure, so set a policy using the Safe Use of AI Chatbots Guide. Second, teams that build agents on the Search API hold an API key that bills prepaid credit and returns web content into a model; store it in a secrets manager, scope it per application, and treat retrieved pages as untrusted input, as covered in LLM Grooming and AI Search Poisoning.
Practitioner checklist
- Check that key pages are indexed by Brave; remember that blocking Googlebot also blocks Brave's crawler.
- Use noindex, not robots.txt, for pages that must not appear in Brave results or answers, then submit them for re-fetch.
- Decide whether staff may use Ask Brave for work and what data may never be pasted into it.
- For API projects, choose between Search, Answers and LLM Context by output needed, and budget tokens for Answers.
- Store Brave Search API keys as secrets, rotate them, and monitor credit use for misuse.
- Get storage or training rights in writing before caching API results or training on them.
- Recheck pricing, free credit and rate limits on Brave's API page before committing; the figures change.
Standards and references
- Brave: Brave Search
- Brave: Introducing Ask Brave
- Brave: Answer with AI announcement
- Brave Search: Privacy policy
- Brave Search: Crawler
- Brave Search: Premium
- Brave: Search API
- Brave Search API: Summarizer documentation
Related NHI Mgmt Group resources: AI Answer Engines Hub · Safe Use of AI Chatbots Guide · AI Crawler and Scraper Controls