Serper vs SerpApi comes down to how you buy and what you search. Serper sells prepaid credit packs for Google search, from $50 for 50,000 credits that last six months. SerpApi sells monthly subscriptions, from $25 for 1,000 searches, and covers Google plus dozens of other engines.
Both are good at returning search results as JSON. Both also ask you to commit money before your first real month: a pack or a plan. For most teams, the better buy is a third option, Scrape.ly's Google Search Scraper, which charges per results page and starts free with $5 of usage every month; more usage comes with the $19 Starter plan, all of it usage credit. This guide compares all three. Every Serper and SerpApi fact below was checked on 27 October 2026 on serper.dev and serpapi.com/pricing.
Serper vs SerpApi at a glance
| Serper | SerpApi | Scrape.ly | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How you pay | Prepaid credit packs | Monthly subscription | Per results page, from your balance |
| Smallest purchase | $50 pack (50,000 credits) | $25 a month (1,000 searches) | Nothing: start on the free credit; Starter is $19 when you need more |
| Free allowance | 2,500 free queries, no card | 250 searches a month | $5 of credit every month, no card |
| Allowance clock | Credits valid for 6 months | Searches reset each billing cycle | The free $5 comes back every month |
| Search engines | Google (search, images, news, maps, places, videos, shopping, scholar, patents, autocomplete) | Google plus Bing, Baidu, Amazon, Apple App Store and more | Google and Bing, plus 560+ scrapers for other sites |
| Spending cap | Stops when credits run out | Plan allowance, with optional early renewal | A maximum charge you set on every run |
Pricing: credit packs vs subscriptions
Serper
Serper's pricing is a top-up model: "No monthly subscriptions; simply pay for the credits you need." The packs on its site:
| Pack | Price | Credits | Queries per second |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $50 | 50,000 | 50 |
| Standard | $375 | 500,000 | 100 |
| Scale | $1,250 | 2,500,000 | 200 |
| Ultimate | $3,750 | 12,500,000 | 300 |
Prices exclude sales tax and VAT, and "Credits valid for 6 months". Credits are deducted only for successful responses, and "when your credit balance reaches zero, we will stop accepting new queries." New accounts get 2,500 free queries without a card. Serper offers a full refund within 7 days of your first purchase "unless you have used more than 20% of your credits."
SerpApi
SerpApi sells monthly plans with a number of searches and an hourly throughput:
| Plan | Price a month | Searches a month | Throughput an hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 250 | 50 |
| Starter | $25 | 1,000 | 200 |
| Developer | $75 | 5,000 | 1,000 |
| Production | $150 | 15,000 | 3,000 |
| Big Data | $275 | 30,000 | 6,000 |
| Searcher | $725 | 100,000 | 20,000 |
| Volume | $1,475 | 250,000 | 50,000 |
Larger Cloud plans run from 1 million searches ($3,750) to 54 million a month. "Only successful searches are counted", and "cached, errored, and failed searches are not." An empty response counts the same as one with 100 results. If you run out mid-month, you can renew early, which replenishes your searches and moves your renewal date. SerpApi also refunds within 7 days unless you've used more than 20% of your searches. Our SerpApi pricing breakdown works through every plan.
Which one is cheaper?
Per search at volume, Serper's packs cost less than SerpApi's plans, while SerpApi's plans cover engines and features Serper doesn't. The real question for most teams is how much they have to buy up front. At a few hundred or a few thousand searches a month, the smallest purchase dominates the bill:
| 1,000 Google searches a month | Serper | SerpApi | Scrape.ly |
|---|---|---|---|
| First month | Covered by the 2,500 free queries | $25 (Starter) | $3.30, covered by the free $5 credit |
| After that | A $50 pack, used within 6 months | $25 every month | $3.30, still covered by the free credit |
The arithmetic for Scrape.ly: 1,000 pages × $0.0033 = $3.30, under the $5 the Free plan adds every month. Over a year of 1,000 searches a month, that's $0 on Scrape.ly's free credit, $300 on SerpApi's Starter plan, and at least one $50 pack on Serper.
Coverage and features
Serper is a Google search API. Its site lists endpoints for search, images, news, maps, places, videos, shopping, scholar, patents and autocomplete, with location set by country and language. It says queries "are returned in 1 to 2 seconds" and that "we do not cache anything", and it lists integrations with LangChain, CrewAI, Haystack and Jan AI.
SerpApi covers many engines and Google result types. Its site lists APIs for Google Search, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Flights, Hotels, Jobs, Lens and more, plus Bing, Baidu, Amazon and the Apple App Store. It lists U.S. Legal Shield on its plans, which "provides up to $2 million in coverage for the scraping and parsing of search engine data", a ZeroTrace Mode that stores no search data, and SOC 2 Type II certification.
Scrape.ly gives you Google results through the Google Search Scraper, one JSON item per results page with organicResults (position, title, URL, displayed URL, snippet, date), peopleAlsoAsk, relatedQueries and hasNextPage. Query operators like site:, intitle:, file types and date ranges are input fields. Turn on live AI Overviews or ads and the run switches to browser mode for those pages. And because it's one Actor in a Store of 560+, the same account crawls the ranking pages with the Website Content Crawler, searches Bing with the Bing Search Scraper and tracks AI answers with the Google AI Overviews Scraper.
The third option in practice: a real run
We ran the Google Search Scraper on 27 October 2026 with five US queries, one page each, in fast search mode: "serper vs serpapi" and four others we were researching. The run returned 5 pages with 50 organic results in 5 seconds, at a list price of 5 × $0.0033 = $0.0165 (our account was charged $0.0132 because its plan has a Store discount). Here's who held the top five spots for "serper vs serpapi":
| Position | Domain | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | serpapi.com | SerpApi VS Serper VS ValueSERP VS SearchApi (2026) |
| 2 | medium.com | SerpAPI vs Serper vs Scrapingdog: We Tested All Three … |
| 3 | serper.dev | Serper - The World's Fastest and Cheapest Google Search API |
| 4 | scrapingdog.com | 10 Best SERP APIs in 2026 to Scale Data Extraction from … |
| 5 | reddit.com | We should look for another option besides SerpAPI, right? |
The same page also returned Google's related searches, including "Serper vs Tavily", "Serper API key" and "Serper alternative". The log line that matters:
2026-10-27T16:02:13.329Z [scrapely.actor] INFO Pushed 5 dataset items, 50 organic results, 0 failed pages in 0.8s. Pages handled in fast search mode: 5, in browser mode: 0.A run this short fits the synchronous endpoint, which returns the items directly:
curl -X POST "https://api.scrape.ly/v2/actors/querystone~google-search-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $SCRAPELY_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"queries": "serper vs serpapi", "maxPagesPerQuery": 1, "countryCode": "us", "languageCode": "en"}'In Python (pip install scrapely-client-python):
import os
from scrapely_client import ScrapelyClient
client = ScrapelyClient(os.environ["SCRAPELY_TOKEN"], api_url="https://api.scrape.ly")
run = client.actor("querystone/google-search-scraper").call(
run_input={"queries": "serper vs serpapi", "maxPagesPerQuery": 1, "countryCode": "us", "languageCode": "en"}
)
for page in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
for result in page.get("organicResults", []):
print(page["searchQuery"]["term"], result["position"], result["url"])If you're coming from either API, the fields map directly: position, title, link or url, and snippet become organicResults[].position, .title, .url and .description. The Google Search API page has the full field list.
For AI agents, add the hosted MCP server limited to this Actor, https://mcp.scrape.ly?actors=querystone/google-search-scraper, for example in Claude Code with claude mcp add --transport http scrapely https://mcp.scrape.ly. Then ask: "Search Google in the US for 'serp api' and give me the top 10 with position, title and URL." Our list of web search MCP servers covers every client.
Which should you choose?
- Choose Scrape.ly if your volume is small, uneven or still growing, if you want People Also Ask, related searches and AI Overviews in the same JSON, or if search is one step in a bigger job: crawl the pages that rank, track AI answers, pull Google Maps data or let an AI agent run it all. You start on the free $5 monthly credit, pay $3.30 per 1,000 pages with platform usage included, and set a maximum charge on every run. It's our pick for most teams.
- Choose Serper if you run a high, steady Google-only volume and will use a $50-or-larger pack within six months.
- Choose SerpApi if you need many engines beyond Google on one subscription and your monthly volume reliably fills a plan.
For the wider field, our guide to the best SERP APIs compares seven options, and the Scrape.ly vs SerpApi comparison goes feature by feature.
What to watch out for with any SERP API
- Results differ by country and language. Always send both. Scrape.ly records the query, country and language on every item, so a daily schedule gives you a clean ranking history.
- Results per page. Google pages hold 10 results. Asking for more means more pages, and every API bills for those somehow: check how before you set a high number.
- Allowances you don't use. Packs expire and plans reset, so size the purchase to your real volume. On Scrape.ly, small volumes fit inside the free credit that comes back every month.
- Runaway loops. A bug that repeats a query thousands of times costs real money. Scrape.ly checks the run's budget before each page and stops cleanly at the maximum charge you set.
FAQ
Is Serper cheaper than SerpApi?
Per search, yes: Serper's smallest pack is $50 for 50,000 credits, while SerpApi's Starter plan is $25 for 1,000 searches a month. But Serper requires a $50 purchase after its free queries, and SerpApi a monthly fee. Up to about 1,500 searches a month, Scrape.ly's free $5 monthly credit means you pay nothing at all.
What is the Serper API?
Serper is a Google Search API from serper.dev. You send a query and get Google results as JSON, paying from prepaid credit packs that are valid for six months. It covers Google search, images, news, maps, places, videos, shopping, scholar, patents and autocomplete.
Is SerpApi free?
SerpApi has a free plan with 250 searches a month and 50 searches an hour. Paid plans start at $25 a month for 1,000 searches.
What is the best Serper alternative?
Scrape.ly's Google Search Scraper, for most teams: per-page pricing, a free $5 credit every month, People Also Ask and related searches in every result, and 560+ other scrapers plus an MCP server on the same account. If you're tracking rankings, our guide to SEO rank tracking with scraping shows the full setup.
Which is better for AI agents, Serper or SerpApi?
Both return JSON an agent can read through their APIs. Scrape.ly adds a hosted MCP server that exposes the Google Search Scraper and 560+ other scrapers, so Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT can search Google and then read the pages behind the results through one connection. See how to scrape Google search results for every field.
