Brave Search is a search engine launched in 2021 by Brave Software, the company behind the Brave browser. It is notable for running its own independent web index rather than relying mainly on Bing or Google. Brave also sells access to its index through the Brave Search API, which some AI products use for retrieval. Like DuckDuckGo, it markets itself on not profiling users.
An independent index
Few engines in Western markets maintain a large index of their own. Brave built its index after acquiring the Tailcat search project and has expanded it since. It has said it may fall back to other sources for some queries when its own results are thin, and that it has reduced that dependence over time.
Why it matters beyond its own users
The Brave Search API gives developers and AI companies a way to query a web index without depending on Google or Bing. That means some AI assistants and agents may retrieve sources from Brave's index. Which products use it is not always disclosed, so treat claims about specific assistants with care.
Getting crawled
Brave does not offer a console like Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools. Check Brave's own documentation for how its crawler identifies itself and which robots.txt rules it follows, and make sure your important pages are reachable with plain HTML and internal links.
Common mistakes
Assuming all engines share one index
Brave's index is separate, so a page indexed in Google is not automatically indexed in Brave.
Questions
No. The browser can use any search engine, and Brave Search works in any browser. They are made by the same company.
Sources
