# Parallel vs. Brave
On Openbenchmarks, Parallel Fast completed 66.7% of coding-agent retrieval tasks against 38.0% for Brave, at a fifth of the price per search. Brave matches Parallel on the Artificial Analysis Search Index and answers single-fact lookups slightly more accurately.
## What does Parallel do?
Parallel is one developer platform covering search, extraction, research, entity discovery, and monitoring. On the agentic endpoints, every field comes back with a citation and a confidence score.
## Parallel vs. Brave at a glance
Published list prices, documented capabilities, terms, and dated benchmark results as of October 14, 2026.
| Dimension | Parallel | Brave |
|---|---|---|
| Search list priceper 1,000 requests, per 1,000 requests | Leads.$1 (Turbo or Fast), $5 (Basic or Advanced) (Leads) | $5 (Web Search or LLM Context) |
| Coding-agent retrieval, Openbenchmarks, September 2026 | Leads.66.7% (Fast, search only) (Leads) | 38.0% (LLM Context, search only) |
| Company news lookup accuracy, Openbenchmarks | 93.3% (Basic), 86.0% (Fast) | Leads.94.0% (LLM Context) (Leads) |
| Artificial Analysis Search Index, September 28, 2026 | 75 advanced, 73 basic | 75 LLM Context |
| Building on results | Leads.Derivative works allowed, one end customer per query (Leads) | No derivative works, transient storage only |
| Research, monitoring, and entity discovery | Leads.Task, Monitor, FindAll, and Entity Search APIs (Leads) | Answers, with a multi-search research mode |
| Published index size | Billions of pages, no exact count | Leads.Over 40 billion pages, over 100 million updates a day (Leads) |
| Search rate limit, default | 600 requests per minute | Leads.50 per second, about 3,000 per minute (Leads) |
## More retrieval tasks completed for coding and multi-hop agents
Openbenchmarks is an independent hub that publishes its harness and every raw vendor response. Its coding-agent board gives a fixed agent 100 documentation tickets and passes a ticket only when the answer cites a source from that run. Searching alone, Parallel Fast completed 66.7% and Parallel Turbo 64.7%, against 38.0% for Brave LLM Context. Brave documents no page fetch endpoint, so it has no search and fetch result on that board.
On multi-turn company search, a fixed agent hunts for every company that matches three or four constraints. From search results alone, Parallel Basic scored 46.5 F1 against 28.0 for Brave Web Search. Its precision was 88.7 against 66.9, and its recall 34.4 against 19.3.
Brave won single-fact lookups. On 300 company news questions, Brave LLM Context answered 94.0% correctly against 93.3% for Parallel Basic and 86.0% for Parallel Fast. It also put the answer in its top five results more often, 94.7% against 92.0%.
The independent Artificial Analysis Search Index scores the two even. In its September 28, 2026 data, Brave LLM Context and Parallel advanced both scored 75, and Parallel basic scored 73. On the components, Brave scored 78 on DeepSearchQA F1 against 81 for Parallel advanced, both scored 77 on BrowseComp, and Brave scored 69 on AA-Omniscience against 67.
Parallel’s own published runs and OpenRouter’s search boards do not include Brave, so this page reports neither.
Coding-agent task completion, search only
Higher is better
Multi-turn company search F1, search only
Higher is better
Company news lookup accuracy
Higher is better
Artificial Analysis Search Index (independent)
Higher is better
Coding-agent row: Openbenchmarks web search for coding agents, board updated September 26, 2026, 100 tickets over three runs, Parallel Fast against Brave LLM Context. Company search row: Openbenchmarks multi-turn company search, board updated October 2, 2026, 45 questions over three runs, Parallel Basic against Brave Web Search. Company news row: Openbenchmarks company news, 300 questions with up to 10 results each, Brave added September 1, 2026, Parallel Basic against Brave LLM Context. Artificial Analysis row: that firm’s live data as of September 28, 2026, a GPT-5.6 Luna agent with the search provider as the only variable.
## Snippets, page chunks, or excerpts: what your agent reads
Brave sells two search shapes at one price. Web Search returns a results page for people: titles, URLs, a short description, and up to five extra snippets per result, 20 results per page. LLM Context is built for models. It runs one search, extracts the passages that match the query, and returns them ranked under a token budget, 8,192 tokens and 20 URLs by default and up to 32,768 tokens and 50 URLs. Tables and code can arrive as JSON strings inside a snippet.
Parallel Search takes a natural-language objective of up to 5,000 characters plus one to five keyword queries. It returns 10 ranked URLs, each with excerpts compressed toward that objective, and max_chars_total caps the whole payload. Extract fetches any URL as excerpts or full markdown for $1 per 1,000. Brave documents no fetch endpoint, so an agent that needs a whole page needs a second tool.
Payloads measured on the same questions were close. On Openbenchmarks’ company news board, Brave LLM Context returned 2,064 snippet tokens per query, Brave Web Search 817, Parallel Fast 1,839, and Parallel Basic 2,330. A median coding-agent task read 12,460 tokens with Parallel Fast against 14,103 with Brave.
What the model reads shows up in its bill. Artificial Analysis measured model token spend per 1,000 tasks at $11.29 for Parallel advanced, $17.46 for Brave LLM Context, and $21.65 for Parallel basic.
Brave’s Goggles go further than Parallel’s domain filters. They re-rank and filter results by custom rules, and they work on LLM Context too.
Brave changed the LLM Context extraction pipeline on July 31, 2026. Pin the earlier API version if your prompts depend on the old chunk shape.
Sources included per request at list price
Higher is better
Median tokens read per coding-agent task
Lower is better
Model token spend per 1,000 Artificial Analysis tasks
Lower is better
Sources row: documented maximums, checked October 14, 2026. Parallel includes 10 results and bills each extra one at $1 per 1,000. Brave LLM Context returns up to 50 URLs at one price. Tokens row: Openbenchmarks coding-agent board, updated September 26, 2026, search only, Parallel Fast against Brave LLM Context. Spend row: Artificial Analysis data of September 28, 2026. Parallel basic spent $21.65.
## Cost per useful answer, not just per call
Brave charges $5 per 1,000 requests for Web Search and LLM Context alike. Parallel charges $1 per 1,000 on Turbo or Fast and $5 on Basic or Advanced. So the gap is five to one on the fast tiers and even on the deeper ones.
List price is half the bill. Openbenchmarks divides list price by accuracy. On company news, Parallel Fast cost $1.16 per 1,000 correct answers, Brave LLM Context $5.32, and Parallel Basic $5.36. On the coding-agent board, a median Parallel Fast task cost $0.054 in search and model tokens and completed 66.7% of tickets. A median Brave task cost $0.082 and completed 38.0%.
Artificial Analysis reports search and model spend per 1,000 benchmark tasks. At the same score of 75, Parallel advanced cost $47.93 in search and $11.29 in model tokens, $59.22 in all. Brave LLM Context cost $61.96 in search and $17.46 in model tokens, $79.42 in all. Brave finished each task faster, in 22.0 seconds against 40.7.
Brave is cheaper per run on multi-hop company search. A median Brave Web Search run cost $0.268 against $0.419 for Parallel Turbo and $1.12 for Parallel Basic. Both Parallel modes found more of the right companies, at 34.7 F1 for Turbo and 46.5 for Basic against 28.0.
Turbo or Fast against Brave Search, per 1,000 requests
Lower is better
Basic or Advanced against Brave Search, per 1,000 requests
Lower is better
Company news, per 1,000 correct answers
Lower is better
Search plus model cost, per 1,000 tasks at a score of 75
Lower is better
List prices checked October 14, 2026. Brave has one search price, so both Parallel tiers are set against it. Correct-answer row: Openbenchmarks company news, list price divided by accuracy, Parallel Fast against Brave LLM Context. Per-task row: Artificial Analysis data of September 28, 2026, search spend plus candidate model tokens per 1,000 tasks, Parallel advanced against Brave LLM Context. Enterprise pricing differs on both platforms.
## How much does the Brave Search API cost?
Brave sells prepaid credits by plan. The Search plan costs $5 per 1,000 requests and covers Web Search, LLM Context, news, video, image, and place search. Answers costs $4 per 1,000 searches plus $5 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens. Every plan includes $5 in free credits a month, and only successful requests are billed.
| Plan | List price | What it covers | Rate limit | Per 1,000 requests |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search | $5 per 1,000 requests | Web Search, LLM Context, news, video, image, and place search | 50 per second | $5 |
| Answers | $4 per 1,000 searches plus $5 per 1M tokens each way | Cited answers from one search or research mode | 2 per second | $15.67 in Brave’s own example |
| Spellcheck | $5 per 10,000 requests | Query spelling correction | 100 per second | $0.50 |
| Autosuggest | $5 per 10,000 requests | Query completion as users type | 100 per second | $0.50 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom terms, capacity, and zero data retention | Custom | Custom |
Brave’s Answers example uses 2 searches, 1,234 input tokens, and 300 output tokens, $0.01567 per answer.
The terms shape the bill too. Brave’s Search API Terms of Use, last updated September 1, 2026, bar storing or caching results beyond the transient storage your application needs, creating derivative works of results, and using results to train, fine-tune, or benchmark AI models. Brave keeps a record of queries for up to 90 days for billing and troubleshooting, and offers zero data retention on Enterprise.
Agents can also pay per request without an account. Brave serves Search plan endpoints over x402 stablecoin micropayments at a separate host. Answers still needs an API key.
Parallel charges per request, with no plans or prepaid packs. Search costs $1 per 1,000 requests on Turbo or Fast and $5 per 1,000 on Basic or Advanced, with 10 results included. Extract costs $1 per 1,000 URLs. New accounts get up to $80 in credits at signup and $5 more each month, so the monthly credit covers 5,000 Fast searches against 1,000 on Brave.
Weighing SERP APIs as well? Read Parallel vs. SerpApi vs. Brave vs. Bing for a wider comparison.
Sources: brave.com/search/api, Brave Search API pricing, Brave rate limiting, Brave LLM Context, Brave Answers, Brave agent payments, Brave Search API Terms of Use, Brave Search API privacy notice, Brave Search API security, parallel.ai/pricing, docs.parallel.ai/getting-started/pricing, checked October 14, 2026.
## Research, monitoring, and entity discovery as endpoints
Brave Answers writes a cited answer on an OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Its research mode runs several searches in sequence and can take minutes. Brave bills $4 per 1,000 searches plus $5 per million tokens in and out, and allows 2 requests per second by default.
Parallel’s Task API accepts 2,000 runs per minute across nine fixed-price processors, from $5 to $2,400 per 1,000 runs, so you know the cost before a run starts. Each run returns JSON against your schema, with a Research Basis per field: the source URLs, the supporting excerpts, the reasoning, and a confidence rating.
Monitor runs a query on a schedule and posts new events to your webhook. FindAll turns a description into a verified list of matching entities. Brave documents no endpoint for either.
Research requests per minute, default
Higher is better
Default limits from each provider’s documentation, checked October 14, 2026. Parallel counts Task runs created per minute. Brave allows 2 Answers requests per second, shown here as 120 per minute. Both raise limits on request.
## Feature by feature
Pricing, capabilities, performance, integrations, and data terms, side by side.
### Pricing and total cost
Brave has one search price. Parallel prices search by mode, page fetches with Extract, and deep research per processor. Brave includes more results per call at its price.
| Feature | Parallel | Brave |
|---|---|---|
| Searchper 1,000 requests, per 1,000 requests | Leads.$1 Turbo or Fast, $5 Basic or Advanced (Leads) | $5 Web Search or LLM Context |
| Results included per request | 10, with each extra result $1 per 1,000 | Leads.Up to 20 web results or 50 LLM Context URLs (Leads) |
| Page fetchper 1,000 URLs, per 1,000 URLs | Leads.$1 with Extract, excerpts or full markdown (Leads) | No fetch endpoint documented |
| Cited answers | $10 to $250 per 1,000 with Responses | $4 per 1,000 searches plus $5 per 1M tokens each way |
| Deep researchper 1,000 runs, per 1,000 runs | Leads.$5 to $2,400, fixed per processor (Leads) | Answers research mode, billed per search and token |
| Free tier | Leads.Up to $80 at signup, plus $5 every month (Leads) | $5 in credits every month |
### Core capabilities
Brave covers more search verticals and lets you re-rank results with Goggles. Parallel adds page extraction, per-field evidence, monitoring, and entity discovery.
| Feature | Parallel | Brave |
|---|---|---|
| Search input | Leads.An objective plus one to five keyword queries (Leads) | One query of up to 600 characters |
| Output for models | Ranked URLs with excerpts compressed to the objective | LLM Context: ranked page chunks under a token budget |
| Ranking controls | Domain include and exclude, freshness date, location | Leads.Goggles re-ranking rules, freshness, country, language (Leads) |
| Search verticals | Web and image search | Leads.Web, news, video, image, and place search (Leads) |
| Citations on research | Leads.Research Basis per field, with confidence (Leads) | Inline citations in Answers |
| Structured research output | Leads.Task Specs with input and output schemas (Leads) | Not documented |
| Monitoring and entity discovery | Leads.Monitor, FindAll, and Entity Search APIs (Leads) | No dedicated endpoints documented |
### Performance and scale
Per call, Parallel Turbo measured a mean of 348ms on company news against 601ms for Brave LLM Context. Per benchmark task, Brave finished in less time. Brave allows five times the default search rate.
| Feature | Parallel | Brave |
|---|---|---|
| Search latency, advertised | About 200ms Turbo, 700ms Fast | No figure published |
| Search latency, measured mean on company news | 348ms Turbo, 942ms Fast | 601ms LLM Context |
| Artificial Analysis Search Index, September 28, 2026 | 75 advanced, 73 basic | 75 LLM Context |
| Artificial Analysis time per task | 40.7s advanced, 25.6s basic | Leads.22.0s LLM Context (Leads) |
| Search rate limit, default | 600 per minute | Leads.50 per second, about 3,000 per minute (Leads) |
| Research rate limit, default | Leads.2,000 Task runs per minute (Leads) | 2 Answers requests per second |
| Query languages at the lowest price | Turbo handles English and Japanese | Leads.Country and language settings at its one $5 price (Leads) |
### Integrations and ecosystem
Both offer an OpenAI-compatible route and keyless agent payments. Parallel hosts its MCP server and connects to data warehouses. OpenClaw picks Brave as its default search provider when a Brave key is set.
| Feature | Parallel | Brave |
|---|---|---|
| MCP | Leads.Free keyless hosted Search MCP, plus Task MCP (Leads) | Open-source server you run yourself |
| OpenAI-compatible route | Responses API with streaming and follow-ups | Answers on Chat Completions with streaming |
| Keyless agent payments | x402 and the Machine Payments Protocol | x402 stablecoin payments on Search plan endpoints |
| Agent framework defaults | Supported in OpenClaw, LangChain, Vercel AI SDK, and more | Leads.OpenClaw’s default provider when its key is set (Leads) |
| Data warehouse integrations | Leads.Snowflake, BigQuery, Spark, DuckDB, Polars, Google Sheets (Leads) | Not documented |
### Security, privacy, and data terms
Both hold SOC 2 Type II and offer zero data retention on enterprise plans. Parallel lets you build on results for your own customers. Brave’s terms give it narrower rights over your queries.
| Feature | Parallel | Brave |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 Type II | Yes | Yes |
| HIPAA compliance | Leads.Yes (Leads) | Not stated in API docs |
| Zero data retention | Enterprise | Enterprise, query logs kept up to 90 days otherwise |
| Rights to results | Leads.Build on output for one end customer per query (Leads) | Brave owns results, transient storage only |
| Use of your queries | May train Parallel’s models, de-linked from individuals | Leads.Licensed to serve results and run the service (Leads) |
| Training models on results | Barred | Barred, and so is benchmarking AI models |
## Which one should you pick?
Parallel suits agents that run multi-step retrieval and research and need to fetch pages, keep results, or track changes. Brave suits apps that want a large independent index, many verticals, and high search throughput at one price.
### Pick Parallel when
- Your agent answers hard technical or multi-hop questions, where Parallel completed more tasks on Openbenchmarks.
- You want search at $1 per 1,000 requests, with page extraction at the same price.
- You need research runs with a citation, reasoning, and a confidence score on every field.
- You want to monitor the web on a schedule or build verified lists of companies and people.
- You need to keep results and build on them for your own customers, or need a HIPAA-compliant provider.
### Pick Brave when
- You want a large independent index whose size is published and which also serves a consumer search engine.
- Single-fact lookups are your main workload, where Brave LLM Context answered 94.0% correctly.
- You need more than 600 search requests per minute or up to 50 sources per call on a default key.
- You want news, video, and place search, or Goggles rules that re-rank results your way.
- Your privacy review wants a provider that licenses your queries only to serve results.
## Switching from Brave
Web Search, LLM Context, and Answers have direct Parallel counterparts. News, video, and place search do not, so keep Brave for those and port the rest.
- 01
Map the calls you already make
Web Search and LLM Context become Parallel Search. Answers becomes Responses for a quick cited answer, or Task when you want JSON against a schema. Pages you used to fetch with a separate scraper can move to Extract.
- 02
Translate the parameters
Turn the query string into an objective, and pass your tuned keywords alongside it as search queries. The LLM Context token budget maps to max_chars_total, freshness to the source policy date, and country to location. Goggles site rules become domain include and exclude lists, without custom re-ranking weights.
- 03
Validate before you commit
New accounts earn up to $80 at signup plus $5 in credits every month. That covers a real evaluation on your own query mix before anything moves to production.
FAQ
Is Parallel better than Brave?
For agents that do multi-step retrieval, yes. On Openbenchmarks, Parallel Fast completed 66.7% of coding-agent tickets against 38.0% for Brave, and Parallel Basic scored 46.5 F1 on multi-hop company search against 28.0. Brave answered single-fact lookups slightly more accurately, 94.0% against 93.3%, and matches Parallel advanced at 75 on the Artificial Analysis Search Index.
How much does the Brave Search API cost?
Brave’s Search plan costs $5 per 1,000 requests for Web Search, LLM Context, news, video, image, and place search, at 50 requests per second. Answers costs $4 per 1,000 searches plus $5 per million input and output tokens, at 2 requests per second. Every plan includes $5 in free credits a month. Parallel Search costs $1 per 1,000 on Turbo or Fast and $5 on Basic or Advanced.
Parallel vs. Brave: which is cheaper?
Per search, Parallel Turbo and Fast cost a fifth of Brave’s $5 per 1,000. Basic and Advanced cost the same as Brave. Per correct company news answer, Parallel Fast cost $1.16 per 1,000 against $5.32 for Brave LLM Context. Brave includes more results per call, and was cheaper per run on multi-hop company search at a lower F1.
What does each API return to an agent?
Brave Web Search returns titles, URLs, and short snippets. Brave LLM Context returns page chunks ranked under a token budget, 8,192 tokens by default. Parallel Search returns 10 ranked URLs with excerpts compressed toward your objective, and Parallel Extract returns any page as excerpts or full markdown. Brave documents no fetch endpoint.
Does Brave run its own index?
Yes. Brave crawls and ranks the web itself rather than reselling Google or Bing. Its API page claims more than 40 billion pages and 100 million page updates a day, and its security docs describe 20 billion or more indexed pages out of 100 billion known URLs. Parallel also runs its own index, and publishes no page count.
Where does Brave still win?
Brave publishes its index size and serves news, video, image, and place search. It allows about 3,000 search requests a minute against Parallel’s 600, includes up to 50 sources per call, and offers Goggles rules that reorder its results. It answered single-fact news lookups more accurately, finished Artificial Analysis tasks in less time, and its terms license your queries only to serve results.
How current is this comparison?
Parallel reviewed Brave’s docs, prices, terms, and privacy notice on October 14, 2026, this page’s last update. Artificial Analysis data is from September 28. Openbenchmarks figures come from its coding-agent board of September 26, company search board of October 2, and company news board. Parallel’s own runs and OpenRouter’s boards do not include Brave.
FAQ
For agents that do multi-step retrieval, yes. On Openbenchmarks, Parallel Fast completed 66.7% of coding-agent tickets against 38.0% for Brave, and Parallel Basic scored 46.5 F1 on multi-hop company search against 28.0. Brave answered single-fact lookups slightly more accurately, 94.0% against 93.3%, and matches Parallel advanced at 75 on the Artificial Analysis Search Index.
Brave’s Search plan costs $5 per 1,000 requests for Web Search, LLM Context, news, video, image, and place search, at 50 requests per second. Answers costs $4 per 1,000 searches plus $5 per million input and output tokens, at 2 requests per second. Every plan includes $5 in free credits a month. Parallel Search costs $1 per 1,000 on Turbo or Fast and $5 on Basic or Advanced.
Per search, Parallel Turbo and Fast cost a fifth of Brave’s $5 per 1,000. Basic and Advanced cost the same as Brave. Per correct company news answer, Parallel Fast cost $1.16 per 1,000 against $5.32 for Brave LLM Context. Brave includes more results per call, and was cheaper per run on multi-hop company search at a lower F1.
Brave Web Search returns titles, URLs, and short snippets. Brave LLM Context returns page chunks ranked under a token budget, 8,192 tokens by default. Parallel Search returns 10 ranked URLs with excerpts compressed toward your objective, and Parallel Extract returns any page as excerpts or full markdown. Brave documents no fetch endpoint.
Yes. Brave crawls and ranks the web itself rather than reselling Google or Bing. Its API page claims more than 40 billion pages and 100 million page updates a day, and its security docs describe 20 billion or more indexed pages out of 100 billion known URLs. Parallel also runs its own index, and publishes no page count.
Brave publishes its index size and serves news, video, image, and place search. It allows about 3,000 search requests a minute against Parallel’s 600, includes up to 50 sources per call, and offers Goggles rules that reorder its results. It answered single-fact news lookups more accurately, finished Artificial Analysis tasks in less time, and its terms license your queries only to serve results.
Parallel reviewed Brave’s docs, prices, terms, and privacy notice on October 14, 2026, this page’s last update. Artificial Analysis data is from September 28. Openbenchmarks figures come from its coding-agent board of September 26, company search board of October 2, and company news board. Parallel’s own runs and OpenRouter’s boards do not include Brave.
