Brave Search Doesn’t Use Bing Anymore

Brave Search has completely removed its reliance on Bing for search results.

Brave confirmed(Opens in a new window) yesterday that all search results are now served by its own index. When Brave Search first appeared in June 2021, around 13% of search queries were provided by Bing, which then dropped to just 7% less than a year later. Now the Bing search API isn’t required at all, but Brave admits Bing’s removal “may have an effect for certain queries, or for some regional or language-specific results.”

The shift to completely independent search results is timely because Microsoft recently increased pricing for access the Bing API. No Bing also means Brave touting its service as “search without a trace” can be more easily backed up and proven because it’s no longer reliant on anyone else for queries.

Brave also took the opportunity to announce it’s currently “the fastest growing search engine since Bing” and handles an average of 22 million queries every day. Search results have been improved after several months of work to allow higher quality answers to “nuanced, long-tail queries,” and Brave is now planning to release its own Brave Search API so others can access its index.