SerpApi alternatives: pay less without losing what matters

Why switch. It looks the most like SerpApi: a monthly plan, several engines, and the same style of request. You send a GET to https://www.searchapi.io/api/v1/search with engine=google, q, location, gl, hl, device, and results land in organic_results with position, link, title. For many integrations, migrating means swapping the base URL and the key.

What you save. Developer is $40 for 10,000 searches, $4 per 1,000: twice SerpApi Developer's volume for just over half the price. At 30,000 searches a month, Production ($100 for 35,000) replaces SerpApi Big Data at $275. That's $175 a month, $2,100 a year. Only searches that return a 200 status are billed.

Best for. Teams with SerpApi code in production who want a smaller bill without a rewrite.

Not for. A side project using a few thousand Google searches a month: Serper or Bright Data cost even less.

Its limit. The free allowance is token (100 requests), and it's still a monthly subscription, so quiet months still cost. Secondary fields (related questions, AI Overview, local packs) don't always share SerpApi's names. Check them one by one before you flip.

How to migrate. Put both endpoints behind one function, run 100 keywords through each, and diff organic_results field by field. If you only read position, link and title, it's often a one-day job.

Why switch. Price. Starter is $50 for 50,000 queries ($1 per 1,000), and it drops with pack size: $0.75 on Standard ($375 for 500,000), $0.50 on Scale, $0.30 on Ultimate ($3,750 for 12.5 million). No subscription, you top up when you need to. You also get 2,500 free queries to start, no credit card.

Best for. Rank trackers, SEO scripts and AI agents that only read Google and want fast answers. Advertised throughput runs from 50 to 300 requests per second depending on the pack.

Not for. Anyone who needs Bing, YouTube, Scholar or another engine. Serper is Google only.

Its limit. Credits are valid for six months. One user reports losing about $1,000 worth of unused credits with no help from support. At low volume, buy the smallest pack even if the per-1,000 price looks worse. Example: at 5,000 searches a month, a $50 pack lasts six months and you use 30,000; the other 20,000 expire. That's about $8.30 a month, still nine times cheaper than SerpApi Developer's $75.

How to migrate. More changes than with SearchApi: Serper uses POST, with the key in a header and the query in a JSON body, and names its fields differently. Build your first request in its playground, copy it, and write a small mapper that renames fields to what your code expects.

Why switch. Nothing is cheaper at scale. A page of 10 Google results costs $0.0006 in the standard queue (about five minutes on average, up to 45), $0.0012 on priority and $0.002 live. That's $0.60 per 1,000 pages queued, $2 live. It's pay-as-you-go with a $50 minimum deposit, and the balance never expires, so a quiet month costs nothing. A $1 trial credit covers your first calls.

Best for. SEO platforms, rank trackers pulling thousands of keywords every night, data teams that can wait a few minutes.

Not for. A chatbot or agent that has to answer in a second. Live mode exists but costs more, and the API takes longer to learn.

Its limit. It's async by default: you post a task, then fetch the result. Auth is HTTP Basic, parameters are renamed and the response is deeper. Watch the unit too: DataForSEO bills per page of 10 results, not per search. Ask for 100 results and the price multiplies.

How to migrate. Swap q for keyword, location for location_code, hl for language_code, pagination for depth, and read results from tasks[].result[].items[]. Our leaving DataForSEO guide has the mapping in the other direction, handy for checking each field.

Why switch. Its SERP API is free up to 5,000 requests a month, no credit card. That's SerpApi's $75 Developer plan, at no cost. Beyond that, you pay $1.50 per 1,000 successful requests. The Scale plan, $499 a month, includes 380,000 requests ($1.31 per 1,000 by our math), then $1.30 per 1,000.

Best for. Spiky usage, and teams that also scrape websites with proxies: it's all one account. We rate it 4.2 out of 5 in our full Bright Data review.

Not for. A solo developer who wants one simple API. The platform has many products and its own vocabulary (proxies, Web Unlocker, datasets).

Its limit. The dashboard is busier than SerpApi's, and you have to set up the right zone. Enterprise pricing is by quote.

How to migrate. Keep your call behind a function, create a SERP zone, then compare 100 keywords against your SerpApi baseline. For the rest of the platform, our Bright Data pricing breakdown covers every product.

Why switch. Low per-1,000 rates at volume, from a vendor built for large accounts. Its Web Scraper API covers Google: $1.00 down to $0.50 per 1,000 results without JavaScript rendering, $1.35 down to $0.90 with it. Plans start at $30 a month (Starter), then $100 (Basic), $500 (Flexible) and $2,500 and up (Enterprise). A $5 welcome credit gets you started.

Best for. Companies already scraping websites at scale that want one vendor for Google and the rest.

Not for. Teams that need a quick switch. Oxylabs doesn't mirror SerpApi's parameters, and its response format differs.

Its limit. Self-service purchases are non-refundable, and the pricing page doesn't make it clear which rate applies to which plan. Get the price for your volume confirmed before paying. Oxylabs is also named in the Reddit lawsuit, so it's not the safe harbor if legal risk is why you're leaving.

How to migrate. Plan a real rewrite of the request and the parser, then a week of dual calls. Our leaving Oxylabs guide explains its model, useful to know what you're getting into.

Why switch. You don't just read Google, you then open the result pages to pull their content. ScrapingBee does both on the same credits. Plans: Hobby $19 (75,000 credits), Freelance $49 (250,000), Startup $99 (1 million), Business $249 (3 million), Business+ $599 (8 million). 1,000 free credits, no card.

Best for. Teams that want one subscription for SERP data and page extraction, say to fill a content base or a RAG index.

Not for. Pure rank tracking. Google searches alone cost more here than on Serper or DataForSEO.

Its limit. The unit. A Google search costs 10 credits in light mode, 15 otherwise. Hobby gives you 5,000 searches, $3.80 per 1,000; Freelance gives you about 16,700 searches, $2.94 per 1,000 by our math; Startup works out to $1.49 per 1,000 ($0.99 in light mode). Always read ScrapingBee prices in searches, never in credits.

How to migrate. Different format from SerpApi: write a field mapper, and turn on light mode if organic results are all you need.

Why switch. Your real need isn't "Google's results" but "reliable web results for an agent". Brave queries its own index, not Google, so the Google scraping question doesn't apply. Pricing is simple: $5 per 1,000 requests, with $5 in free credits every month (about 1,000 free requests), and up to 50 requests per second. An Answers tier, $4 per 1,000 plus $5 per million tokens, returns written answers.

Best for. AI agents, research assistants and RAG pipelines that need fresh web sources.

Not for. Google rank tracking. Brave will never tell you where you rank on Google.

Its limit. A credit card is required up front, and $5 per 1,000 isn't the lowest price next to Serper. You pick it for the independent index, not the price.

How to migrate. It isn't a field-by-field migration, you're changing sources. Keep a Google API for rank tracking and plug Brave into the agent side.

Why switch. If you use SerpApi to give a language model web context, you're doing two jobs: fetching the SERP, then opening and cleaning pages. Tavily returns cleaned snippets ready for a prompt. Researcher is free with 1,000 credits a month; after that, $0.008 per credit pay-as-you-go, or Project at $30 a month for 4,000 credits.

Best for. Teams building an agent or RAG pipeline who want to drop the extraction step.

Not for. Anyone who needs Google SERP JSON: positions, rich snippets, ads. Tavily doesn't provide it.

Its limit. A basic search costs 1 credit, an advanced one 2. Pay-as-you-go, that's $8 per 1,000 basic searches and $16 advanced, more than SerpApi Developer's $15 if you stay on advanced. Price it on your real query mix.

How to migrate. Replace the SerpApi call and your extraction step with one Tavily call, then check your agent's answers on about fifty real questions.

Why stay. SerpApi is expensive because it covers a lot: Google with AI Overview and AI Mode, Bing, YouTube, Maps, Shopping, Scholar. It only bills successful, non-cached searches: errors and results served from its one-hour cache don't count. There's a free plan with 250 searches a month, no commitment, and a full refund within 7 days if you've used under 20% of your searches. From the Production plan ($150 a month), Legal Shield adds legal cover up to $2 million; ZeroTrace mode is reserved for Cloud plans, from 1 million searches ($3,750 a month).

Best for. Products that use several engines or rich blocks (AI Mode, Maps, Shopping), and teams with no time to maintain a compatibility layer.

How to pay less without leaving. Measure your real volume over three months and pick the tier just above it, not last year's. Drop no_cache=true when you don't need a fresh result: cached searches aren't counted. And keep SerpApi for the engines others don't have, sending plain Google searches to a cheaper API.