Bright Data SERP API vs Zyte (2026): which should you pick?
As of Oct 24, 2026, Bright Data SERP API grades higher than Zyte: 2.6 against 2.4 out of 4.0.
Checked Oct 23, 2026 · graded Oct 23, 2026 and Oct 24, 2026 by ToolGPA
Bright Data SERP API grades higher on the free plan. They get the same grade on value for money, features, ease of use and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Bright Data SERP API
Search results API on Bright Data's proxy network, with AI engines
Zyte
Web scraping API with ban handling, AI extraction and a SERP endpoint
Which one is for you
Pick Bright Data SERP API if
- Fits if you already buy Bright Data proxies or scrapers and want search data on the same account
- Works for rank checks across many countries and cities that can wait for async batches
Look elsewhere if
- Pricey if you want a plan, as the cheapest is $499 a month for 380,000 requests
- Skip it if you need SSO, volume discounts or a premium SLA without a sales call, as all three are Enterprise only
- Watch out: proxies, scrapers, datasets and the Unlocker API are separate products with their own prices
- Watch out: the Ultra Fast endpoint, with results in about a second, is sold only through sales
Pick Zyte if
- Fits if you already write spiders in Scrapy and want them hosted next to the API
- Works for pulling up to 100 search results per call by country, language or city
Look elsewhere if
- Pricey if you want the lower rates, which need a commitment of at least $100 a month
- Watch out: Zyte puts each site in one of five price tiers and reviews them every quarter, so a request's cost can change
- Watch out: screenshots ($1.34 per 1,000), AI extraction ($0.27 to $1.07 per 1,000 per data type), actions and residential IPs all cost extra
- Tight if you're only testing, as the $5 credit covers the first month and the account is suspended once it's spent
How we grade them
| 2.6GPABright Data SERP APIGood | 2.4GPAZyteFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CPlans start at $499 a month for 380,000 requests, in this category's dearest tenth, but you don't need one: pay as you go is $1.50 per 1,000 with a monthly spending limit, near the middle of what rivals here charge. | CPay as you go needs no commitment: $0.13 to $1.27 per 1,000 plain responses and $1.01 to $16.08 rendered, by the tier Zyte puts a site in. The lower rates start with a $100 monthly commitment, in this category's dearest tenth, where search first pages are $0.63 per 1,000. |
| Free plan and trial | BA free tier of 5,000 requests a month with no card, which a small project could run on. Its pricing page also matches a first deposit dollar for dollar, up to $500. | CNo free plan: $5 of credit for the first month with no commitment, and the account is suspended when it's spent until you set a spending limit. Scrapy Cloud keeps one free low-resource unit with 1-hour jobs. |
| Features | BGoogle on every country domain plus Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Baidu, Yahoo and Naver, with city targeting, desktop or mobile, async batches and answer engines in the playground. Nothing in the listing shows a gap in the core job. | BBan handling that picks the IP type and browser per site, CAPTCHA solving, scripted browser actions, AI extraction to JSON, a search endpoint with up to 100 results, AI Overview content and city targeting, and Scrapy Cloud hosting. Nothing in the listing shows a gap in the core job. |
| Ease of use | CJudged on how fast a developer gets a first result: a playground, and JSON, HTML or Markdown back. No rating on record, and the SERP API is one of many Bright Data products, each priced on its own. | CJudged on how fast a developer gets a first result: an MCP server for coding agents, and Scrapy if you already use it. No rating on record, and each site's cost depends on one of five tiers that Zyte assigns and reviews every quarter. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb, with an API and LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI, n8n, Dify, Postman and AWS Marketplace. No desktop or phone app, so B is the top. | BWeb, with an API, Scrapy, an MCP server for Claude Code, Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI and VS Code, plus Amazon S3, Google BigQuery and Google Sheets. No desktop or phone app, so B is the top. |
| Best for | search results across many countries and engines | scraping sites that block ordinary requests |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Bright Data SERP API and Zyte. How we grade
Price against what you get
Bright Data SERP API starts at $499 a month and scores 2.7 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. Zyte starts at $100 a month and scores 2.7.
They score the same, and Zyte starts $399 a month lower. Of the other SERP and SEO data APIs on the chart, none scores higher than Bright Data SERP API for less, and none scores higher than Zyte for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
At a glance
| Bright Data SERP API | Zyte | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free trial |
| Starts at | $499 per month for 380,000 requests | $100 per month minimum commitment |
| Free plan | 5,000 requests a month, no credit card required. | None |
| Free trial | None listed | $5 of free credit for the first billing month, with no commitment |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Bright Data Ltd. | Zyte Group Limited |
| Price read from | brightdata.com | zyte.com |
| Checked | Oct 23, 2026 | Oct 23, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Bright Data SERP API
- Pay as you go is $1.50 per 1,000 requests with monthly spend limits; Scale plans lower the rate to $1.30, $1.10 or $1 per 1,000.
- Every API call counts as a request; in async mode only sending the request is counted.
- Volume discounts, SSO and the premium SLA come only with the custom-priced Enterprise plan.
- Proxies, web scrapers, datasets and the Unlocker API are separate Bright Data products, each with its own prices.
Zyte
- Without a commitment, pay as you go costs $0.13 to $1.27 per 1,000 HTTP responses and $1.01 to $16.08 per 1,000 rendered ones, up to $100 a month.
- Each site sits in one of five price tiers that Zyte assigns and reviews quarterly, so the cost of a request depends on the site.
- Screenshots ($1.34 per 1,000), automatic extraction ($0.27 to $1.07 per 1,000 per data type), actions and residential IPs cost extra.
- When the $5 free credit runs out, the account is suspended until a spending limit is set.
Key features
Bright Data SERP API
- Seven search engines
- Google on all its country domains, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Baidu, Yahoo and Naver, with search, shopping, maps, hotels, images, trends, reviews, news, flights, ads, videos and jobs.
- Answer engines
- The playground queries ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok and Microsoft Copilot, and a parameter makes Google AI Overviews more likely to appear in results.
- Location and device targeting
- Results from any of 195 countries with city-level targeting, desktop or mobile user agents and a choice of browser.
- Async batch mode
- For large batches only sending the request is billed; responses are kept for 48 hours, usually ready in 5 minutes, and can be downloaded again at no charge.
- Output formats
- Parsed JSON for applications, Markdown for AI models and agents, or raw HTML for your own parsing.
- Fast SERP
- A Fast Parser returns only Google's top 10 results with lower latency, and an Ultra Fast endpoint, sold through sales, returns Google and Bing results in about a second.
Zyte
- Automatic ban handling
- Zyte API chooses between datacenter and residential IPs and browser rendering for each site, solves CAPTCHAs and rotates IPs, and charges only for successful responses.
- Browser rendering and actions
- Render JavaScript in a headless browser, script clicks, form fills and navigation, keep sessions, take screenshots and download files of up to 100MB.
- AI extraction
- Automatic extraction returns product, article, job and other page types as JSON; custom attributes let you describe extra fields, billed by AI tokens.
- Search results endpoint
- Returns up to 100 organic results in one call, with AI Overview content and country, language or city targeting. Pages 2 to 10 cost about 29% less than page 1.
- Scrapy Cloud
- Hosting for Scrapy spiders: a free low-resource unit with 1-hour jobs and 7 days of data, or $9 a month per unit for unlimited run time and 120 days.
- Zyte MCP
- A remote MCP server lets agents such as Claude Code, Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI and VS Code fetch pages, extract data and run crawls.
Plans
Bright Data SERP API
Free Tier$0
5,000 requests a month with expert support.
Scale 380K$499
per month for 380,000 requests
Extra requests at $1.30 per 1,000, unlimited concurrency, cancel anytime.
Scale 900K$999
per month for 900,000 requests
Extra requests at $1.10 per 1,000, unlimited concurrency.
Scale 2M$1,999
per month for 2 million requests
Extra requests at $1 per 1,000, unlimited concurrency.
EnterpriseCustom
Volume discounts, an account manager, a premium SLA, priority support and SSO. Sold through sales.
Zyte
Standard, $100 commitment$100
per month minimum commitment
$0.10 to $0.95 per 1,000 HTTP responses and $0.75 to $12.00 per 1,000 browser-rendered ones, by site tier. Search first pages $0.63 per 1,000.
Standard, $200 commitment$200
per month minimum commitment
$0.08 to $0.76 per 1,000 HTTP responses and $0.60 to $9.60 per 1,000 browser-rendered ones. Search first pages $0.51 per 1,000.
Standard, $500 commitment$500
per month minimum commitment
$0.06 to $0.61 per 1,000 HTTP responses and $0.48 to $7.68 per 1,000 browser-rendered ones. Search first pages $0.40 per 1,000.
EnterpriseCustom
Larger volume discounts, $200 of free credit, 10,000 requests a minute, onboarding engineers and 24/7 support with SLAs. Through sales.
Ways to pay less
Bright Data SERP API
- Other savings
First deposit matched up to $500
Bright Data's SERP API pricing says it matches a new account's first deposit dollar for dollar, up to $500.
- Startups
Up to $20,000 in credits for AI startups
The AI Startup Program offers up to $20,000 in platform credits to AI startups from pre-seed to Series A, after an application and a call.
Zyte
- Education
Free Scrapy Cloud unit for students
Zyte's Scrapy Cloud pricing page says students get the benefits of one purchased unit, normally $9 a month, for free.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Bright Data SERP API or Zyte?
As of Oct 23, 2026, Zyte is cheaper to start with: $100 a month, against $499 a month for Bright Data SERP API. Bright Data SERP API starts at $499 per month for 380,000 requests, and Zyte starts at $100 per month minimum commitment.
Which has a free plan, Bright Data SERP API or Zyte?
As of Oct 23, 2026, only Bright Data SERP API has a free plan. Zyte does not, though it has a free trial.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.