"Your request has been refused by the server" on search.brave.com and all searches

Brave Search
1

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Description of the issue: Any curl or browser visit or query with search.brave.com results in the following response:

Your request has been refused by the server.

  • If you are accessing this page from Tor, try changing the exit node.
  • If you are accessing this page from a popular VPN service, try to switch to a different server or region.

This occurs with multiple browsers on multiple systems. It may be related to the Hurricane Electric IPv6 tunnel configured on the main router.

There is no VPN/TOR configured on the systems or main network, but using a VPN does NOT result in the refusal.

Brave Version (check About Brave):
Brave is up to date
Brave 1.95.104 (Official Build) (arm64)
Chromium: 153.0.8010.53

**Operating System:
MacOS 26.7.4.1
Ubuntu
Xubuntu

The same refusal was found in the community and online, but none of the identified (Reddit) fixes worked.**

2

@Mattches

“Your request has been refused by the server.”

OP above, and another:

‘Is AS5939 blocked by Brave Search’

3

Different ASN: AS6939

4

Actually same ASN. I missed the typo in the title when I posted it.

5

Is anyone on the Brave side available to look into this? If not, are there other ways to reach support to see if this can be resolved?

6

Do you see the issue on another network?

7

Thank you for responding, Evan123. As soon as I disable the Hurricane Electric IPv6, I am able to use Brave search again. It is only over the IPv6 tunnel that search is blocked.

8

Same behavior for me. I’m using the Hurricane Electric Tunnelbroker service connected through tserv1.den1.he.net. I have a /48 as well as the /64 provided. These are configured at my router and if my clients use IPv6 they cannot access search.brave.com. Multiple browsers, devices.

9

I am seeing this same issue with my home internet connection, which is a smaller rural WISP that has Hurricane Electric as an upstream provider. I am connecting using IPv4. The issue repeats on any device using my connection, including an Android phone, Linux Laptop (Debian 13.6) and Linux Desktop (Debian 13.6). Switching to a mobile data connection or another network does not reproduce the issue. Perhaps there’s a network block at HE that’s been flagged and blocked? I’m in 104.36.123.128/25 .

10

Additional information for troubleshooting from the Brave browser session:

Request URL: https://search.brave.com/
Request method: GET
Status code: 429 Too Many Requests
Remote address: []:443
Referrer policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin

Response headers:
alt-svc: h3=“:443”; ma=86400
content-length: 2404
content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
date: Thu, 01 Oct 2026 19:45:10 GMT
etag: “6a743bab-964”
via: 1.1 acba1a2a0a2c9b49f1a1ff71ff416644.cloudfront.net (CloudFront)
x-amz-cf-id: N_w5_0KaaAqPaVvI_2bW2dpZHEbS7kYUQG7fye1V0fAbX0xlsh5nfA==
x-amz-cf-pop: BOS50-P3
x-cache: Error from cloudfront

For anyone else experiencing the same issue, these workarounds got search.brave.com working, but don’t work permanently for me personally:

  • Use TOR (I.e. Brave private window with TOR - SLOW)
  • Use a VPN
  • Disable IPv6 on the client to avoid Hurricane Electric tunnel
  • Use a proxy like trickybird
11

I am also seeing this issue on my Hurricane Electric tunnel, then tried to move to Route64, and also had connectivity issues there.

403 - Request blocked. We can’t connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.

12

15:00 ET October 6th - Brave search is working again with HE Tunnelbroker IPv6.

13

This issue resolved for me a couple of days ago.