Brave Search API vs Serply (2026): which should you pick?

Pick Brave Search API if

• Fits if you're grounding an AI chatbot in current web results without scraping Google
• Works for apps moving off Google's Custom Search JSON API

Look elsewhere if

• Skip it if you need Google or Bing rankings, as results come only from Brave's index
• Watch out: a credit card is needed to sign up, even for the free monthly credit
• Watch out: storing results or training models on them needs a plan with storage rights
• Tight if you need volume, at 50 requests a second on Search and 2 on Answers before Enterprise
• Pricey if you use Answers, at $4 per 1,000 queries plus $5 per million tokens each way

Pick Serply if

• Fits if you're grounding an AI agent in live Google results through MCP
• Works for low or uneven volumes where a monthly plan would go unused

Look elsewhere if

• Skip it if you need rankings by city, since location is a proxy country and 14 are listed
• Watch out: the 2,500 free sign-up credits lapse after 30 days
• Pricey if you stay on small packs, at $2 per 1,000 on Micro against $0.75 from Pro up

Brave Search API

• Usage is billed from prepaid credits: Search is $5 per 1,000 requests, and Answers $4 per 1,000 queries plus $5 per million input and output tokens.
• Spellcheck and Autosuggest cost $5 per 10,000 requests, and storing results or training models on them needs a plan with storage rights.
• Results come only from Brave's index, so it does not report what ranks on Google or Bing.
• Capacity is 50 requests per second on Search and 2 on Answers; more needs an Enterprise agreement.

Serply

• Every endpoint, MCP tool calls included, costs one credit per request; the rate falls from $2.00 per 1,000 on Micro to $0.75 from Pro up.
• Cached responses and failed requests cost nothing, and purchased credits never expire.
• The 2,500 free sign-up credits lapse after 30 days.
• Unused purchased credits are refunded in proportion if asked within 30 days of the charge.

Brave Search API

Brave's own index

Every result comes from Brave's crawler and ranking, informed by opt-in signals from Brave users, with no fallback to Google or Bing for any query.

LLM Context endpoint

Returns ranked, extracted page content for a model to answer from, sized from 1k to about 33k tokens, with a relevance threshold and a URL and timestamp per source.

Web, news, image, video and places

The Search plan covers human-readable web results plus news, images, videos and location-aware places with map data, under one API key.

Goggles and richer results

Goggles rerank results and limit them to chosen sites; up to five extra snippets per result and schema-enriched results with added metadata.

Answers endpoint

Writes answers grounded on one or several searches, with citations and streaming, through an interface compatible with the OpenAI SDK.

Privacy and security

Brave says queries are never shared or used for training, retention is zero by design, and the service is SOC 2 Type II attested.

Serply

Google search endpoints

Organic results with the answer box, plus News, Maps, Images, Jobs, Scholar, Video and Product search, under one key and one set of headers.

Bing, Reddit and eBay

Bing results with ads and shopping ads, Reddit subreddits, posts, users and comment trees, and eBay search.

Pages as markdown

A scraping endpoint fetches any public page and returns it as markdown or JSON, with proxies, retries and CAPTCHAs handled by Serply.

Hosted MCP server

Point Claude, Cursor or another MCP client at Serply's server with an API key to get fourteen search and Reddit tools, billed like REST calls.

Location and device headers

Set the proxy country and a desktop or mobile user agent per request; the homepage lists 14 countries.

Brave Search API

• Free monthly credits$0

  $5 of credit a month on each of Search, Answers, Spellcheck and Autosuggest; usage beyond it is drawn from prepaid credits.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Custom terms, capacity and endpoints, full-funnel zero data retention, NDAs, invoicing and enterprise support. Sold through sales.

Serply

• Micro Pack$5

  one-time pack of 2,500 credits, used as you go

  $2.00 per 1,000 requests; the smallest top-up once the free credits run out.

• Starter Pack$15

  one-time pack of 10,000 credits, used as you go

  $1.50 per 1,000 requests.

• Growth Pack$49

  one-time pack of 50,000 credits, used as you go

  $0.98 per 1,000 requests, the pack Serply recommends for production use.

• Pro Pack$375

  one-time pack of 500,000 credits, used as you go

  $0.75 per 1,000 requests, the lowest self-serve rate.

• Scale Pack$1,875

  one-time pack of 2,500,000 credits, used as you go

  Keeps the $0.75 per 1,000 rate in a larger balance.

• Max Pack$7,500

  one-time pack of 10,000,000 credits, used as you go

  $0.75 per 1,000 requests; higher volumes and invoicing through enterprise pricing by email.