7 Best SERP APIs in 2026: Price per 1,000 Searches Compared

Google just closed its own search API.

The Custom Search JSON API is "closed to new customers," and existing users have until January 1, 2027 to move to something else. If your rank tracker, AI agent or lead-gen script still calls it, the clock is running.

The replacement is a SERP API: a service that runs the Google search for you, deals with proxies and CAPTCHAs, and returns the results page as clean JSON.

If you're:

migrating off Google's Custom Search JSON API,
giving an AI agent live Google results,
or tracking rankings for thousands of keywords,

this comparison is for you.

Short answer: pick Serper for the cheapest real-time Google results ($0.30–$1.00 per 1,000). Pick SerpApi if you need the widest set of engines and a legal shield. Pick DataForSEO for bulk SEO data that can wait a few minutes ($0.60 per 1,000). Pick SearchApi if your agent needs Google's AI Overview and AI Mode answers as structured data.

How this comparison was made: prices come from each vendor's official pricing page, checked on November 4, 2026. I didn't run a new benchmark for this edition. For SerpApi and DataForSEO, I link to the in-depth reviews where I tested each one on the same 10 queries. Anything a vendor doesn't publish is marked "not stated."

What a SERP API actually does

You send a query ("best crm for startups", country us, language en). The SERP API sends it to Google from a rotating pool of residential IPs, solves whatever blocks it hits, parses the results page, and returns JSON:

Organic results: position, title, link, snippet.
SERP features: People Also Ask, knowledge graph, local pack, shopping, news.
AI answers: on some providers, Google's AI Overview and AI Mode text.

Doing this yourself means maintaining proxies, headless browsers and parsers that break every time Google changes its HTML. (If you want to try anyway, my guide to the best proxies for web scraping covers that side.)

Every vendor here sells the same promise.

The price per 1,000 searches is where they split.

SERP APIs compared

SERP API	Best for	Free tier	Entry price	$/1k at entry	$/1k at top volume	Failed requests billed?
Serper	Cheapest real-time Google	2,500 queries, no card	$50 pack (50k)	$1.00	$0.30	Credits deducted on successful responses
SerpApi	Most engines, legal shield	250 searches/month	$25/month (1k)	$25.00	$1.96	No
DataForSEO	Bulk SEO data	Not stated on pricing page	Pay as you go	$0.60 (Standard) / $2.00 (Live)	$0.60	Failed tasks were billed in my test
Scrapingdog	Low cost at scale	100 credits, no card	$40/month (40k searches)	$1.00	$0.14	No
SearchApi	AI Overview + AI Mode	100 requests	$40/month (10k)	$4.00	$1.00	No
Bright Data	Enterprise, pay as you go	5,000 requests/month, no card	$1.50/1k, no monthly fee	$1.50	~$1.31	No
cloro	Google + ChatGPT/Perplexity answers	500 credits/month	$30/month (~12.5k searches)	$2.40	~$0.92	No

Pricing checked on 2026-11-04. Scrapingdog counts one Google search as 5 credits (Light API); cloro counts 3 credits per Google search. The per-1,000 figures above already include that.

What 100,000 searches a month really costs

Per-1,000 prices hide plan minimums, credit multipliers and expiry dates. So here's one workload priced on all seven: 100,000 Google searches a month, using the cheapest published plan that covers it.

SERP API	Monthly cost	How
DataForSEO (Standard queue)	$60	$0.0006 per SERP; results in minutes, not seconds
Serper	$75	$375 pack for 500k credits, valid 6 months
Scrapingdog	$90	Standard plan, 1M credits (200k Light searches)
Bright Data	$150	Pay as you go at $1.50/1k
DataForSEO (Live)	$200	$0.002 per SERP, real time
SearchApi	$250	BigData plan, 100k searches
cloro	$250	Starter plan, 650k credits
SerpApi	$725	Searcher plan, 100k searches

The spread is almost 12x for the same 100,000 searches.

That's the number to check before you sign up for anything.

The 7 best SERP APIs in 2026

1. Serper

Serper does one thing: Google results, fast and cheap. It sells prepaid credit packs instead of subscriptions, from $1.00 per 1,000 queries down to $0.30 at the largest pack, and says it returns results "in 1-2 seconds."

It covers Google Search, Images, News, Maps, Places, Videos, Shopping, Scholar, Patents and Autocomplete.

import requests

resp = requests.post(
    "https://google.serper.dev/search",
    headers={"X-API-KEY": "YOUR_SERPER_KEY", "Content-Type": "application/json"},
    json={"q": "best serp api", "gl": "us", "hl": "en"},
)
for r in resp.json()["organic"][:5]:
    print(r["position"], r["title"], r["link"])

From here you can build:

a rank tracker that runs every morning,
a search tool for an AI agent,
a lead list from Google Maps results.

Pros

2,500 free queries with no credit card
No subscription: packs from $50, credits valid for 6 months
50 to 300 queries per second depending on the pack

Cons

Google only: no Bing, Baidu or other engines
Credits expire after 6 months, so big packs only pay off if you use them

Best for: developers and AI agents that need real-time Google results at the lowest price.

2. SerpApi

SerpApi is the most established SERP API, and the one most "alternatives" articles measure against. It parses Google into detailed JSON and covers many other engines, including Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Baidu.

In my full SerpApi review, the Google API returned fresh results in 1.07s at the median across 10 queries, and SerpApi runs an official hosted MCP server for AI agents.

Pros

Widest engine coverage and the most detailed parsing
U.S. Legal Shield on every plan; failed and cached searches aren't counted
Official MCP server at mcp.serpapi.com

Cons

The most expensive here: $25 per 1,000 on Starter, $725/month for 100k searches
Free plan is 250 searches a month with 50 per hour of throughput
Subscription only, with no per-search overage

Best for: teams that need many engines, rich parsing and legal cover, and can pay for it.

3. DataForSEO

DataForSEO is the wholesale option. You pay per SERP with no subscription, and the price depends on how long you can wait: $0.60 per 1,000 in the Standard queue, $1.20 in Priority and $2.00 in Live mode.

It covers Google (including AI Mode, Maps, News and Ads), Bing, YouTube, Yahoo, Baidu, Naver and Seznam. In my full DataForSEO review, Live mode answered in 4.9s at the median, and the JSON was the most compact of any API I tested.

Pros

$0.60 per 1,000 SERPs in the Standard queue, the lowest list price here
Huge engine and SEO-data coverage, plus an MCP server
Prepaid balance with no monthly plan

Cons

Live mode costs $2.00 per 1,000 and was slower than Serper or SerpApi in my test
Failed tasks were billed in my test (6 of 22 Live calls)
Per my review, a $50 minimum top-up after the $1 trial credit

Best for: SEO tools and rank trackers that process keywords in bulk and don't need answers in real time.

4. Scrapingdog

Scrapingdog is a web scraping API with dedicated Google endpoints. Its plans sell credits that work across all its APIs: a Google search costs 5 credits on the Light API and 10 on the Advance API or AI Mode.

That makes it cheap at volume: $1.00 per 1,000 searches on the $40 Lite plan, falling to about $0.14 on the largest plans.

Pros

About $0.14 per 1,000 searches at top volume, the lowest per-search price here
Failed requests are never charged
The same credits cover its other scraping APIs

Cons

Credit multipliers make the real price harder to read
Free tier is 100 credits, only 20 Google searches
Monthly subscription, no pay as you go

Best for: teams already scraping other sites that want Google results on the same bill.

5. SearchApi

SearchApi is built for the AI era. Besides Google Search, Maps, News and Shopping, it has dedicated Google AI Overview and Google AI Mode APIs, plus Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Baidu, Yandex and YouTube.

Pros

AI Overview and AI Mode as structured endpoints
Pay per success: only HTTP 200 responses are billed
Legal Protection Guarantee with up to $2M in coverage on paid plans above Developer

Cons

$4 per 1,000 on the entry plan
Monthly subscription; the free tier is 100 requests

Best for: AI agents and GEO tools that need to read what Google's AI answers say.

6. Bright Data

Bright Data runs one of the largest proxy networks, and its SERP API sits on top of it. It's the only option here with a recurring free tier of 5,000 requests a month and true pay as you go at $1.50 per 1,000, with no monthly fee.

Pros

5,000 free requests every month, no credit card
Pay as you go with spend limits and unlimited concurrency
"Only pay for successful requests"

Cons

Volume discounts start at the $499/month Scale plan
Built for enterprises: more setup than Serper or SerpApi for a quick test

Best for: companies that want to start free and scale on one enterprise-grade vendor.

7. cloro

cloro covers Google Search, News, AI Mode and AI Overview, and also returns answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. That makes it a SERP API and an AI-visibility tool in one.

Pricing is credit-based: a Google search costs 3 credits ($2.40 per 1,000 searches on the Lite plan, about $0.92 at the top tier).

Pros

Google results and AI chatbot answers from one API
500 free credits every month
Failed extractions don't consume credits

Cons

Subscription only: no pay as you go, and unused credits expire each month
Synchronous requests cost 2 extra credits

Best for: SEO and GEO teams tracking brand visibility in Google and in AI chatbots.

Also worth a look

Serpent API: low-cost Google SERP API with a free start and no subscription.
Oxylabs: enterprise SERP scraper from a large proxy provider.
ScrapingBee: web scraping API with a Google search endpoint.
Brave Search API: results from Brave's own independent index, not Google. Useful when you don't need Google specifically.

Replacing Google's Custom Search JSON API

Google's own API isn't a long-term option anymore. Its documentation says the Custom Search JSON API is closed to new customers and that existing customers have until January 1, 2027 to move. Until then it gives 100 free queries a day and charges $5 per 1,000, capped at 10,000 queries a day.

Google points to Vertex AI Search, which searches up to 50 domains you choose. That's fine for a site search box, not for searching the whole web.

For full-web Google results:

Lowest price, real time: Serper ($1.00 down to $0.30 per 1,000).
Closest drop-in for a small project: Bright Data's 5,000 free requests a month.
Same JSON shape across many engines: SerpApi or SearchApi.

How to choose a SERP API

Real time or batch? If results can wait minutes, DataForSEO's Standard queue is the cheapest. If an agent or user is waiting, look at Serper, SerpApi or SearchApi.
Google only or many engines? Serper is Google only. SerpApi, SearchApi, DataForSEO and Bright Data cover more.
Do you need AI answers? SearchApi and cloro return Google's AI Overview and AI Mode; cloro adds ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot.
Subscription or credits? Serper, DataForSEO and Bright Data let you pay as you go. SerpApi, SearchApi, Scrapingdog and cloro are monthly plans.
Are failures billed? Most vendors here don't charge for failed requests. In my test, DataForSEO did.

FAQ

❓ What is a SERP API? ✅ A SERP API runs a search on Google (or another engine) on your behalf and returns the results page as structured JSON: organic results, ads, People Also Ask, local results and, on some providers, AI Overview text. It handles the proxies, CAPTCHAs and HTML parsing for you.

❓ What is the cheapest SERP API? ✅ For real-time Google results, Serper is the cheapest of the big names at $0.30 to $1.00 per 1,000 queries. DataForSEO's Standard queue is $0.60 per 1,000 if you can wait a few minutes, and Scrapingdog drops to about $0.14 per 1,000 searches on its largest plans.

❓ How much does SerpApi cost? ✅ SerpApi starts at $25 a month for 1,000 searches, $725 a month for 100,000 and $1.96 per 1,000 on its largest Cloud plan. The free plan includes 250 searches a month.

❓ What is the best SerpApi alternative? ✅ Serper if you want the same Google results for less (25x cheaper per search at entry level: $1.00 vs $25 per 1,000). SearchApi if you need many engines plus AI Overview. DataForSEO if you process keywords in bulk.

❓ Is there a free SERP API? ✅ Every vendor here has a free tier. The most generous are Bright Data (5,000 requests a month, recurring), Serper (2,500 queries once, no card) and SerpApi (250 searches a month).

❓ Is Google's Custom Search JSON API being discontinued? ✅ Yes. Google's documentation says it is closed to new customers, and existing customers have until January 1, 2027 to move to an alternative.

Final thoughts

Every SERP API on this list returns the same Google results page.

What you're really choosing is a billing model: pay as you go or subscription, real time or queue, and whether failures count. Price your real monthly volume first, then pick.

Are you a vendor in this space? This list is updated every quarter with new pricing and new providers. If your SERP API should be here, or something above is out of date, get in touch.

7 Best SERP APIs in 2026: Price per 1,000 Searches Compared

What a SERP API actually does

SERP APIs compared

What 100,000 searches a month really costs

The 7 best SERP APIs in 2026

1. Serper

2. SerpApi

3. DataForSEO

4. Scrapingdog

5. SearchApi

6. Bright Data

7. cloro

Also worth a look

Replacing Google's Custom Search JSON API

How to choose a SERP API

FAQ

Final thoughts

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