GroundRoute — web search MCP server

Give your AI agent web search across 6 engines (Serper, Brave, Exa, Tavily, Firecrawl, Perplexity) through one MCP search tool. GroundRoute routes each query to the cheapest engine that meets the quality bar, caches the repeats, and fails over automatically — so you get good results without overpaying or wiring up six APIs.

• Hosted (no local process to run): https://api.groundroute.ai/mcp (streamable-HTTP)
• Pricing: gain-share — you keep ~half the cache savings, so it never costs more than going direct. Bring your own engine keys (BYOK) supported.
• Get an API key: https://groundroute.ai/keys · Docs: https://groundroute.ai/docs/mcp-server · Live engine benchmark: https://groundroute.ai/state-of-ai-search

Install

Claude Desktop / Claude Code — add to your MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "groundroute": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://api.groundroute.ai/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer gr_YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Cursor — ~/.cursor/mcp.json:

{ "mcpServers": { "groundroute": { "url": "https://api.groundroute.ai/mcp",
  "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer gr_YOUR_KEY" } } } }

VS Code (native MCP / Continue) — .vscode/mcp.json:

{ "servers": { "groundroute": { "type": "http", "url": "https://api.groundroute.ai/mcp",
  "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer gr_YOUR_KEY" } } } }

Local / stdio-only clients — bridge stdio ↔ HTTP with mcp-remote:

{ "mcpServers": { "groundroute": {
  "command": "npx",
  "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://api.groundroute.ai/mcp", "--header", "Authorization:Bearer gr_YOUR_KEY"]
} } }

The search tool

Returns ranked results (and a synthesized answer for answer-class queries). Routed, cached, and reliable.

How it works

One endpoint in front of many search engines, with price-led routing, caching, failover, and usage governance. See the docs and the State of AI Search benchmark (170 real agent queries across all 6 engines).

Links

• Homepage: https://groundroute.ai
• Get a key: https://groundroute.ai/keys
• Playground (try without installing): https://groundroute.ai/playground
• Docs: https://groundroute.ai/docs/mcp-server

registry-manifest.json in this repo is the listing manifest for MCP registries.