Summarizer search

Overview

Brave Summarizer Search API leverages advanced AI to provide intelligent summaries and answers based on real-time web search results. Our “Answer with AI” feature goes beyond traditional search by understanding your query, gathering relevant information from across the web, and synthesizing it into clear, comprehensive responses with citations.

Access to Summarizer is available through the Pro AI plan. Subscribe to Pro AI to unlock these advanced features.

Key Features

AI-Generated Answers

Get comprehensive, AI-synthesized answers to your questions with citations

Multiple Endpoints

Access summaries through various specialized endpoints for different use cases

Entity Enrichment

Get detailed information about entities mentioned in summaries

Inline Citations

Answers include inline references to source materials

API Reference

Summarizer API Documentation

View the complete API reference, including endpoints, parameters, and example requests

Use Cases

Summarizer Search is perfect for:

AI Assistants: Build intelligent chat interfaces with web-grounded answers
Research Tools: Quickly synthesize information from multiple sources
Question Answering: Provide direct answers to user questions
Content Summarization: Generate summaries of web content on any topic
Knowledge Applications: Create applications that need factual, cited information

Available Endpoints

The Summarizer API provides multiple specialized endpoints:

# Main endpoints
https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search
https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/summarizer/search
https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/summarizer/summary
https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/summarizer/summary_streaming

# Specialized endpoints
https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/summarizer/title
https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/summarizer/enrichments
https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/summarizer/followups
https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/summarizer/entity_info

Looking for the OpenAI-compatible endpoint? Check out AI Grounding for direct AI answers using the /res/v1/chat/completions endpoint with OpenAI SDK compatibility.

How Summarizer Works

The Traditional Flow (Web Search + Summarizer)

This method gives you full control over the search results and summary generation:

Step 1: Web Search with Summary Flag

First, make a web search request with the summary=1 parameter:

curl -s --compressed "https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search?q=what+is+the+second+highest+mountain&summary=1" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" \
  -H "X-Subscription-Token: <YOUR_API_KEY>"

Step 2: Extract the Summarizer Key

If the query is eligible for summarization, the response includes a summarizer object with a key:

{
  "summarizer": {
    "type": "summarizer",
    "key": "{\"query\": \"what is the second highest mountain\", \"country\": \"us\", \"language\": \"en\", \"safesearch\": \"moderate\", \"results_hash\": \"a51e129180225a2f4fe1a00984bcbf58f0ae0625c97723aae43c2c6e3440715b}"
  }
}

Treat the key as an opaque string. The format may change in the future, so always pass it as-is without parsing.

Step 3: Fetch the Summary

Use the key to retrieve the complete summary:

curl -s --compressed "https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/summarizer/search?key=<URL_ENCODED_KEY>&entity_info=1" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" \
  -H "X-Subscription-Token: <YOUR_API_KEY>"

Summarizer requests are not billed - only the initial web search request counts toward your plan limits.

Advanced Features

Inline References

Get inline citations within the summary text:

curl -s --compressed "https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/summarizer/search?key=<KEY>&inline_references=true" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -H "X-Subscription-Token: <YOUR_API_KEY>"

This adds reference markers throughout the summary text, allowing users to see which sources support each statement.

Entity Information

Retrieve detailed information about entities mentioned in the summary:

curl -s --compressed "https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/summarizer/search?key=<KEY>&entity_info=1" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -H "X-Subscription-Token: <YOUR_API_KEY>"

The response includes descriptions, images, and metadata about key entities.

Complete Python Example

Here’s a full example demonstrating the traditional flow:

import asyncio
import json
from urllib.parse import urljoin
from aiohttp import ClientSession, ClientTimeout, TCPConnector
from aiolimiter import AsyncLimiter

# Configuration
API_KEY = "your_api_key"
API_HOST = "https://api.search.brave.com"
API_RATE_LIMIT = AsyncLimiter(1, 1)

API_PATH = {
    "web": urljoin(API_HOST, "res/v1/web/search"),
    "summarizer_search": urljoin(API_HOST, "res/v1/summarizer/search"),
}

API_HEADERS = {
    "web": {"X-Subscription-Token": API_KEY},
    "summarizer": {"X-Subscription-Token": API_KEY},
}

async def get_summary(session: ClientSession) -> None:
    # Step 1: Get web search results with summary flag
    async with session.get(
        API_PATH["web"],
        params={"q": "what is the second highest mountain", "summary": 1},
        headers=API_HEADERS["web"],
    ) as response:
        data = await response.json()

        if response.status != 200:
            print("Error fetching web results")
            return

    # Step 2: Extract summary key
    summary_key = data.get("summarizer", {}).get("key")

    if not summary_key:
        print("No summary available for this query")
        return

    # Step 3: Fetch the summary
    async with session.get(
        url=API_PATH["summarizer_search"],
        params={"key": summary_key, "entity_info": 1},
        headers=API_HEADERS["summarizer"],
    ) as response:
        summary_data = await response.json()
        print(json.dumps(summary_data, indent=2))

async def main():
    async with API_RATE_LIMIT:
        async with ClientSession(
            connector=TCPConnector(limit=1),
            timeout=ClientTimeout(20),
        ) as session:
            await get_summary(session=session)

asyncio.run(main())

Response Structure

Summarizer responses include:

status: Current status (complete or failed)
title: A title for the summary
summary: The main summary content with text and entities
enrichments: Additional data including:
- Raw text summary
- Related images
- Q&A pairs
- Entity details
- Source references
followups: Suggested follow-up queries
entities_info: Detailed entity information (when requested)

Best Practices

Caching

Summary results are cached for a limited time
After cache expiration, restart the flow with a new web search
Implement client-side caching to minimize API calls

Error Handling

Check if summarizer.key exists in web search response
Handle failed status in summarizer response
Implement retry logic for transient failures

Rate Limiting

Only web search requests count toward rate limits
Summarizer endpoint calls are free
Implement rate limiting on your end to avoid throttling

Specialized Endpoints

The API provides additional endpoints for specific use cases:

/summarizer/summary: Get just the summary without full search results
/summarizer/summary_streaming: Stream the summary in real-time
/summarizer/title: Fetch only the summary title
/summarizer/enrichments: Get enrichment data separately
/summarizer/followups: Retrieve follow-up question suggestions
/summarizer/entity_info: Fetch entity information independently

These endpoints all use the same key parameter obtained from the initial web search.