AI answers are becoming the search result, and every engine writes its own. Brave Search is the privacy-first outlier: an independent index whose AI Mode tells its audience a different story about your brand or topic than mainstream engines do. The Brave AI Mode API turns that answer surface into data. Give it a query and it returns the AI-generated answer, the sources it cites, and the supporting web results as one structured JSON record.

What each run returns

• The AI-generated answer text for your query

• The references the answer cites, with title and URL

• The supporting web results beneath the answer

• The country and language of the search

One row holds the whole answer surface, so diffing runs week over week is straightforward.

Example Tasks and Use Cases

Brave Search API alternative: AI answers as JSON - no key signup and no plan tiers, just per-query billing for the answer surface.

Check Brave AI answers for many keywords - batch a whole keyword portfolio in one run with the queries array.

Track brand mentions in Brave AI search answers - run your brand queries on a schedule and watch how the framing shifts.

Track sources cited in Brave AI answers - see which domains Brave's AI trusts for your topic, and whether yours is among them.

Export Brave AI answers to CSV - runs entirely in the Console for the no-code crowd.

Brave Search AI for Claude via MCP, no API key - wire it into Claude as a tool over MCP.

Works with MCP

Registered through Apify's MCP server, the Actor becomes a tool that Claude, Claude Code, and Cursor can call, so an agent can consult Brave's AI Mode mid-conversation with no Brave API key to provision. Ask what Brave's AI says about a topic, and who it cites, and you get structured rows back with no scraping code.

Keywords and Topics

Brave search MCP, Brave search AI, Brave AI answers, generative engine optimization, AEO monitoring, AI citation tracking, privacy search API, structured SERP JSON, Brave AI Mode scraper.