Overview

Place Search is built for finding geographic places. Where Web Search finds web pages, Place Search finds locations in the physical world — coffee shops, museums, hotels, parks, and any other point of interest. You can anchor your search to a specific area using coordinates or a location name, or cast a broader net and let the index surface the most relevant matches globally.

With over 200 million indexed places worldwide, the API works well for everything from “find a specific restaurant nearby” to “what are the major landmarks associated with this city”.

In addition to individual POIs (results), the response can include richer geographic groupings — cities, addresses (specific street + number locations) and streets (entire streets) — together with a mixed ordering that tells you how to interleave them on a results page.

Key Features

API Reference

Use Cases

Place Search is a good fit when your goal is geographic discovery:

• Location-Based Apps: Build apps that help users discover nearby places
• Travel & Tourism: Find attractions, restaurants, and hotels in any destination
• Business Directories: Create local business listings and discovery features
• Mapping Applications: Populate maps with relevant places
• Geofenced Recommendations: Suggest places based on user location

Basic Usage

Search for places near a set of coordinates:

curl "https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/local/place_search?latitude=37.7749&longitude=-122.4194&q=coffee+shops&radius=1000" \
  -H "X-Subscription-Token: <YOUR_API_KEY>"

Or use a location name if you don’t have coordinates at hand:

curl "https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/local/place_search?location=san+francisco+ca+united+states&q=coffee+shops" \
  -H "X-Subscription-Token: <YOUR_API_KEY>"

The response includes a list of matching places with detailed information:

{
  "type": "locations",
  "query": {
    "original": "coffee shops",
    "altered": null,
    "spellcheck_off": false,
    "show_strict_warning": false
  },
  "results": [
    {
      "type": "location_result",
      "id": "loc4FNMQJNOOCVHEB7UBOLN354ZYIDIYJ3RPRETERRY=",
      "title": "Blue Bottle Coffee",
      "url": "https://bluebottlecoffee.com",
      "provider_url": "https://yelp.com/biz/blue-bottle-coffee-sf",
      "coordinates": [37.7825, -122.4095],
      "postal_address": {
        "type": "PostalAddress",
        "displayAddress": "66 Mint St, San Francisco, CA 94103",
        "streetAddress": "66 Mint St",
        "addressLocality": "San Francisco",
        "addressRegion": "CA",
        "postalCode": "94103",
        "country": "US"
      },
      "rating": {
        "ratingValue": 4.5,
        "bestRating": 5.0,
        "reviewCount": 1250
      },
      "opening_hours": {
        "current_day": [
          {
            "abbr_name": "Tue",
            "full_name": "Tuesday",
            "opens": "07:00",
            "closes": "18:00"
          }
        ]
      },
      "distance": {
        "value": 0.3,
        "units": "km"
      },
      "categories": ["Coffee & Tea", "Cafe"],
      "price_range": "$$",
      "thumbnail": {
        "src": "https://example.com/thumb.jpg",
        "original": "https://example.com/original.jpg"
      },
      "timezone": "America/Los_Angeles"
    }
  ],
  "cities": [],
  "addresses": [],
  "streets": [],
  "mixed": [
    { "type": "results", "index": 0, "all": false }
  ],
  "location": {
    "coordinates": [37.7749, -122.4194],
    "name": "San Francisco",
    "country": "US"
  }
}

Request Parameters

Location

Providing a geographic anchor is optional but strongly recommended for most queries. You can use either coordinates (latitude + longitude) or a location string. If neither is given, results are sourced more broadly and may be less precise.

Search

Locale and Preferences

Radius and Result Quality

The radius parameter controls how tightly the search is anchored to your coordinates. No upper limit is enforced, so you can search a neighborhood or an entire region.

In practice, a tighter radius tends to produce more focused results. When you search within a compact area, the index can confidently surface places that are unambiguously nearby. As the radius grows — or when no radius is given — results are drawn from a wider pool, which works well for well-known or distinctive places but may be less precise for common query types where many candidates exist across a large area.

A few rough guidelines:

• Under ~20 km: Results are typically well-matched to the search area. Good for “what’s near me” use cases.
• Larger areas or no radius: Works best for specific or distinctive queries (a particular museum, a named landmark, a regional specialty). Generic category searches (e.g., restaurants, hotels) may return a broader set of candidates.

Location String Format

When using the location parameter instead of coordinates, follow these conventions:

Explore Mode

Omit q to get a general snapshot of places in an area — useful for map views, destination previews, or any feature where you want to show what’s around a location rather than answer a specific query:

curl "https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/local/place_search?latitude=40.7128&longitude=-74.0060&radius=2000&count=10" \
  -H "X-Subscription-Token: <YOUR_API_KEY>"

Fetching Additional POI Details

Each result includes an id that works with the same detail endpoints used for Web Search location results — so the same integration serves both.

Detailed POI Information

Use /local/pois to fetch photos, web result mentions, profiles, and more:

curl "https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/local/pois?ids=loc4FNMQJNOOCVHEB7UBOLN354ZYIDIYJ3RPRETERRY=" \
  -H "X-Subscription-Token: <YOUR_API_KEY>"

AI-Generated Descriptions

Use /local/descriptions to get AI-generated descriptions for locations:

curl "https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/local/descriptions?ids=loc4FNMQJNOOCVHEB7UBOLN354ZYIDIYJ3RPRETERRY=" \
  -H "X-Subscription-Token: <YOUR_API_KEY>"

You can request details for up to 20 POIs in a single request by providing multiple ids parameters.

Response Fields

Top-Level Fields

The results, cities, addresses, and streets arrays are all optional: any of them may be null or omitted depending on what the query matched. For straightforward POI-style queries, only results is typically populated.

LocationResult Fields

EnhancedPlaceResult Fields (cities)

EnhancedPlaceResult represents a city, country, or region matched by the query. Use it to render an “about this place” panel alongside POI results.

AddressResult Fields (addresses and streets)

AddressResult represents either a specific street + number (type: "address") or an entire street (type: "street"). The addresses array contains entries with type: "address", while the streets array contains entries with type: "street".

Mixed Ordering (mixed)

mixed is an ordered list of ResultReference objects describing how to interleave entries from the various result buckets on a SERP. Each entry has:

Clients that only care about a single bucket (e.g., POIs) can ignore mixed and read results directly.

Example: Building a Nearby Places Feature

import requests

API_KEY = "<YOUR_API_KEY>"
BASE_URL = "https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1"

def find_nearby_places(lat, lng, query="", radius=5000):
    """Search for places near a location."""
    params = {
        "q": query,
        "latitude": lat,
        "longitude": lng,
        "radius": radius,
        "count": 20
    }

    response = requests.get(
        f"{BASE_URL}/local/place_search",
        params=params,
        headers={"X-Subscription-Token": API_KEY}
    )
    return response.json()

def find_places_by_name(location, query="", country="US"):
    """Search for places using a location name instead of coordinates."""
    params = {
        "q": query,
        "location": location,
        "country": country,
        "count": 20
    }

    response = requests.get(
        f"{BASE_URL}/local/place_search",
        params=params,
        headers={"X-Subscription-Token": API_KEY}
    )
    return response.json()

def get_poi_details(poi_ids):
    """Fetch detailed information for places."""
    response = requests.get(
        f"{BASE_URL}/local/pois",
        params=[("ids", pid) for pid in poi_ids],
        headers={"X-Subscription-Token": API_KEY}
    )
    return response.json()

def get_poi_descriptions(poi_ids):
    """Fetch AI-generated descriptions for places."""
    response = requests.get(
        f"{BASE_URL}/local/descriptions",
        params=[("ids", pid) for pid in poi_ids],
        headers={"X-Subscription-Token": API_KEY}
    )
    return response.json()

# Find coffee shops near San Francisco using coordinates
places = find_nearby_places(37.7749, -122.4194, query="coffee")

# Or find museums in Paris using a location name
places = find_places_by_name("paris france", query="museums", country="FR")

# Get IDs from results
poi_ids = [p["id"] for p in places.get("results", []) if p.get("id")]

# Fetch additional details and descriptions
if poi_ids:
    details = get_poi_details(poi_ids[:20])
    descriptions = get_poi_descriptions(poi_ids[:20])

Rate Limits and Billing

Place Search requests are billed separately from Web Search. Check your subscription dashboard for current limits and usage.

Changelog

• 2026-03-04 Lifted radius restrictions. Radius now defaults to none.
• 2026-01-15 Add Place Search endpoint for geographic POI discovery.