SerpAPI returns structured search-engine results (Google, Bing, Maps, Shopping, News and more) as clean JSON, handling proxies and CAPTCHAs for you. Here's what it costs and how to start.
| Plan | Price | Searches |
|---|---|---|
| Free free tier | $0 | ~100 / month |
| Developer | from ~$75/mo | ~5,000 / month |
| Production / Big Data | higher | 30,000+ / month, faster |
SerpAPI's free plan gives ~100 searches/month — enough to build and test an integration. Because each search is relatively expensive compared to a normal REST call, the smart pattern is to cache results and only re-query when data is stale. Production volume moves to the paid tiers, priced by monthly searches.
1. Sign up at serpapi.com.
2. Open your dashboard — your private API key is shown there.
3. Pass it as the api_key query parameter on each request.
4. Watch your monthly search count in the dashboard; cache to stay within plan.
Run a Google search:
ScraperAPI and ScrapingBee are general-purpose scraping APIs (cheaper per request if you parse HTML yourself). SearchAPI.io and Serper.dev are direct SerpAPI competitors, often cheaper for plain Google results — Serper in particular is popular for low-cost SERP data. Choose SerpAPI for breadth of engines and structured output; choose the others to cut cost on high volume.
Yes — around 100 searches/month free for testing. Paid plans scale by monthly search volume.
Sign up at serpapi.com; your API key is on the dashboard. Pass it as the api_key parameter on each request.
Often yes for plain Google results — Serper.dev and SearchAPI.io are popular lower-cost alternatives. SerpAPI wins on breadth of supported engines and structured parsing.
Not affiliated with SerpAPI. Prices are reference estimates — always verify on the official pricing page.