Search engine + AI answers · Brave

Brave Search (Ask Brave)

Brave's independent index (35+ billion pages). The same index is licensed to other AI products through the Brave Search API.

Compiled by Kuldeep Paul · Updated Oct 29, 2026

Operator: Brave
Launched: Jun 22, 2021 · web search Sep 29, 2025
Search index: Brave's independent index (35+ billion pages). The same index is licensed to other AI products through the Brave Search API.Sources: ppc.land, brave.com
Crawlers: Bravebot — blocked by 5.3% of top sites
Referrer in analytics: search.brave.com
UTM tagging: None added
Ads: Brave Search shows private search ads; AI answers are unsponsored.
Citations: Inline citations.
Official docs: search.brave.com

What this means for visibility

Because Claude and others have used the Brave Search API, Brave rankings can carry into third-party AI answers.

Usage, as stated

As of	Metric	Value	Stated by	Source
Sep 2025	Daily AI Answers users	15 million+	Brave	brave.com

Questions

What search engine does Brave Search (Ask Brave) use?

Brave's independent index (35+ billion pages). The same index is licensed to other AI products through the Brave Search API.

Which crawlers does Brave Search (Ask Brave) use?

Brave Search (Ask Brave) relies on Bravebot. Because Claude and others have used the Brave Search API, Brave rankings can carry into third-party AI answers.

How do I track Brave Search (Ask Brave) traffic in analytics?

Clicks from Brave Search (Ask Brave) arrive with the referrer search.brave.com. Add it to an AI channel in GA4 using a source regex.

Does Brave Search (Ask Brave) show ads?

Brave Search shows private search ads; AI answers are unsponsored.

Analysis using this data

The opt-out asymmetry: you can block the small AI engines, not the big oneThe AI surfaces with the most users are the ones publishers can't refuse and can't measure.

Other AI engines

ChatGPT · ChatGPT Atlas · Google AI Overviews · Google AI Mode · Gemini · Perplexity · Comet · Claude · Microsoft Copilot · Meta AI · Grok · DeepSeek · Le Chat · You.com · Kagi Assistant · DuckDuckGo (Duck.ai & Search Assist) · Amazon Rufus (retired)

How to cite this data

This dataset is free to use, including commercially, under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. The one rule is attribution:

Credit the source as “Kuldeep Paul, kuldeep.cc” wherever you use a figure, chart or table from it.
Link to this page (https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/brave), not to the download file, so readers can check the source of every number.
Include the date. These figures change; say “as of Oct 29, 2026” or link to the version you used.
Mark changes. If you filter, recalculate or chart the data yourself, say so (“analysis based on data from…”).
Cite the original source for single figures when you quote one reported number; it is linked in every row.

In running text: according to Kuldeep Paul's Brave Search (Ask Brave) — AI search engine reference (kuldeep.cc). More in the methodology.

APA

Paul, K. (2026). Brave Search (Ask Brave) — AI search engine reference [Data set]. kuldeep.cc. https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/brave

MLA

Paul, Kuldeep. "Brave Search (Ask Brave) — AI search engine reference." kuldeep.cc, 29 October 2026, https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/brave.

Chicago

Paul, Kuldeep. 2026. "Brave Search (Ask Brave) — AI search engine reference." Dataset. kuldeep.cc. Updated Oct 29, 2026. https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/brave.

BibTeX

@misc{paul2026brave, author = {Paul, Kuldeep}, title = {Brave Search (Ask Brave) — AI search engine reference}, year = {2026}, howpublished = {\url{https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/brave}}, note = {Dataset, CC BY 4.0, updated 2026-10-29} }

HTML link

<a href="https://kuldeep.cc/data/ai-search/brave">Brave Search (Ask Brave) — AI search engine reference</a> (data: Kuldeep Paul, kuldeep.cc)