Brave Search MCP vs Slack MCP Server

A side-by-side look at pricing, capabilities, pros, cons, and our editorial scores.

	Brave Search MCP MCP Servers	Slack MCP Server MCP Servers
Tagline	Give any MCP client web and local search powered by the Brave Search API.	Archived reference MCP server that lets Claude and other MCP clients read and post in a Slack workspace via a bot token.
Category	MCP Servers	MCP Servers
Pricing	Freemium· Free: $0 USD · Team: $4 USD per user/month · Enterprise: $21 USD per user/month	Free· Free / open-source (MIT). Requires a Slack workspace and a Slack bot token; Slack itself is free/paid.
Model	—	—
Editorial score	—	—
Use cases	Grounded web search inside Claude DesktopAgent fact-checking and citation lookupIDE-side research from Cursor or WindsurfLocal business and restaurant discoveryCheap RAG augmentation for small chatbotsMCP server learning and forkingPrivacy-respecting alternative to Google search in agents	Channel triage and summarisationAutomated thread digestsPosting AI-generated status updatesCross-channel search and reportingStandup and retro note postingOn-call escalation repliesUser and profile lookup for routingReaction-based workflow signallingMCP server reference implementation
Pros	Two focused tools (web + local search) that are easy to reason about and stable to prompt against Small, single-file TypeScript implementation that's trivial to read, fork, or self-host Ships as both an npm package and a Docker image, with VS Code one-click install Backed by Brave's independent index, so results don't depend on Google/Bing rate limits or ToS Free tier covers 2,000 queries/month, enough for personal agents and prototyping MIT-licensed reference implementation from the MCP project itself Local-search fallback to web means agents rarely get an empty result set	Official reference implementation from the modelcontextprotocol project — small, readable TypeScript that documents the MCP tool pattern well Covers the eight highest-value Slack primitives (list, post, reply, react, history, thread, users, profile) with minimal ceremony Ships as both an npx package and a Docker image, so it drops straight into Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP client with a JSON config snippet Standard Slack bot-token auth (xoxb-) with clearly scoped OAuth permissions — easy to reason about and to revoke Open-source under MIT, so forking or vendoring for internal hardening is straightforward Good starting point for learning how to write your own MCP server against a REST API
Cons	Repository is archived (read-only since May 29, 2025) and no longer receives fixes or new features Superseded by Brave's own official server, which adds image/video/news/summarizer tools and HTTP transport Free tier is capped at 1 query per second, which throttles multi-step agents Local search is US-centric and quality varies sharply outside North America No streaming HTTP transport in this version, stdio only, which complicates remote/multi-tenant deployments Brave's index, while good, is smaller than Google's and can miss long-tail queries	Archived by the maintainer on 29 May 2025 — no upstream bug fixes, security patches, or Slack API compatibility updates Read-only surface for channels (public channels only by default) and no DM, private-channel, search, files, or canvas support out of the box No pagination helpers or rate-limit backoff beyond what the Slack SDK provides, so bulk history pulls in large workspaces can be fragile Requires a workspace admin to install a bot app and mint a token, which is a real blocker in locked-down enterprise Slack tenants Bot-token model means every action is attributed to the bot user, not the human operating the assistant, which complicates audit trails
Website	github.com	github.com

Pick Brave Search MCP if

✅ Two focused tools (web + local search) that are easy to reason about and stable to prompt against
✅ Small, single-file TypeScript implementation that's trivial to read, fork, or self-host
✅ Ships as both an npm package and a Docker image, with VS Code one-click install
✅ Backed by Brave's independent index, so results don't depend on Google/Bing rate limits or ToS

Pick Slack MCP Server if

✅ Official reference implementation from the modelcontextprotocol project — small, readable TypeScript that documents the MCP tool pattern well
✅ Covers the eight highest-value Slack primitives (list, post, reply, react, history, thread, users, profile) with minimal ceremony
✅ Ships as both an npx package and a Docker image, so it drops straight into Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP client with a JSON config snippet
✅ Standard Slack bot-token auth (xoxb-) with clearly scoped OAuth permissions — easy to reason about and to revoke

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