MCP Search Gateway

The team deploys an MCP search gateway as a Docker container. It exposes a single 'web_search' tool to their Claude agent. Internally, it routes to Scavio (primary, $0.005/query) with Brave fallback ($0.005/query). Over 30 days, Scavio handles 97% of queries. The 3% fallback queries during Scavio maintenance windows are served by Brave. The agent never sees a search failure.

MCP Search Gateway is relevant to Google, Amazon, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok. Scavio provides a unified API to access data from all of these platforms.

As AI agents become production systems, search reliability becomes critical. A single search provider going down or rate-limiting means your agent cannot ground its responses. An MCP search gateway solves this by sitting between your agent and multiple search providers, presenting a single search tool via MCP while handling provider selection, failover, and cost optimization internally. Gateway pattern: the MCP server exposes a 'search' tool with parameters for query, platform, and optional provider preference. Internally, it maintains a priority list of providers. For each query, it tries the primary provider first, falls back to secondary on failure, and logs provider performance metrics. Example configuration: Primary provider Scavio ($0.005/query, 6 platforms). Secondary provider Brave ($4-5/1K queries, web only). Tertiary provider SearXNG (free, self-hosted, 10-20% empty rate). The gateway tries Scavio first. If Scavio returns an error, it falls back to Brave. If Brave fails, it tries SearXNG. The agent sees a single tool call regardless of which provider fulfills it. Cost implications: at 5,000 queries/month with 98% primary success rate, you pay Scavio for 4,900 queries ($24.50) plus Brave for 100 fallback queries (~$0.50) = $25/month total with near-100% availability. Without a gateway, a single provider outage leaves your agent unable to search. The Scavio MCP server at mcp.scavio.dev/mcp already provides a production-ready MCP search endpoint. A gateway adds fallback logic on top of this base layer.