OpenSerp vs SerpApi (2026): which should you pick?

Pick OpenSerp if

• Fits if you want to pay only for the rank checks you run, with no subscription
• Works for people who need Bing, Yahoo or Brave positions next to Google

Look elsewhere if

• Not for you if you want to try it first, as there's no free plan, trial or starting credit
• Skip it if local packs or AI Overviews matter to you, as it doesn't track them yet
• Watch out: top-up amounts only show after signing in, and unused balance expires after 12 months without paid usage
• Tight if you might want money back, as refunds cover card top-ups only within 24 hours and with under 10% used
• Watch out: traffic estimates need search volumes you import from Keyword Planner, Ahrefs or Semrush

Pick SerpApi if

• Fits if you need Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and other engines in one response format
• Works for low volumes that fit in 250 free searches or 1,000 paid ones a month

Look elsewhere if

• Pricey if you search in volume, at $25 per 1,000 on Starter where Serper charges $1
• Tight if you're on Free, with 250 searches a month and at most 50 an hour
• Skip it if you want the U.S. Legal Shield on a small plan, as it starts on Production at $150 a month
• Watch out: plans are month to month, and yearly billing is only set up by request
• Watch out: Ludicrous Speed costs twice the price, and refunds stop after 7 days or 20% of a plan's searches

OpenSerp

• There are no plans: rank checks cost $0.0005 per results page from a prepaid balance; OpenSerp puts 250 keywords checked daily on Google at about $3.75 a month.
• Bulk scraping costs $0.0001 per successful query and the SERP API $0.0005 per call; top-up amounts are only shown after signing in.
• Unused balance expires after 12 months without paid usage, and refunds cover card top-ups only within 24 hours, with under 10% used.
• It does not yet track local packs or AI Overviews, and traffic estimates need search volumes imported from Keyword Planner, Ahrefs or Semrush.

SerpApi

• Plans are month to month; the FAQ says yearly billing can only be set up by request while an official yearly plan is in the works.
• The U.S. Legal Shield is not included on the Free, Starter or Developer plans.
• Bigger self-serve plans run from Searcher at $725 for 100,000 searches a month to Cloud plans of 1 million searches and up from $3,750.
• Refunds are offered within 7 days of subscribing, unless more than 20% of the plan's searches have been used.

OpenSerp

Rank tracking on four engines

Checks keywords every 3 hours, daily or weekly on Google, Bing, Yahoo and Brave, and stops paging once your domains are found.

Competitor tracking

Follows up to 4 competitors per keyword, with head-to-head results, keyword gaps and rivals you had not named.

Plain-language reports

Each report opens with what rose, what fell and who overtook you, then lists keywords close to the top 3 and pages stuck on page 2.

Cloud Scraping

Upload a TXT or CSV keyword file of up to 50 MB and get deduplicated, filtered URLs, titles and snippets back as TXT, CSV or JSON.

SERP API

One request returns one page of results as JSON from any of the four engines, with idempotent retries and no OpenSerp branding.

SerpApi

Google and many other engines

Endpoints for Google Search, AI Mode, AI Overview, Maps, Shopping, Scholar, Trends, Flights and Hotels, plus Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, Naver, YouTube, Amazon, eBay and Walmart.

Full browser and CAPTCHA solving

Each request runs immediately in a full browser through a proxy near the chosen location, and results come back as JSON or Markdown.

Only successful searches counted

Cached, errored and failed searches do not count against the monthly allowance, and a response with 100 results counts as one search.

Ludicrous Speed

An option on every paid plan that sends parallel requests for faster responses, at twice the price; Ludicrous Speed Max is four times the price.

U.S. Legal Shield

From the Production plan up, SerpApi says it takes on liability for the lawful collection of public search data, with up to $2 million in coverage.

Teams and client libraries

Unlimited team members with admin, developer, billing and viewer roles, and libraries for Python, JavaScript, Ruby, Go, PHP, Java, Rust and .NET, plus an MCP server.

OpenSerp

Pricing could not be confirmed. See openserp.dev.

SerpApi

• Free$0

  250 searches a month with a throughput of 50 an hour.

• Starter$25

  per month for 1,000 searches, billed monthly

  Throughput of 200 successful searches an hour. No U.S. Legal Shield.

• Developer$75

  per month for 5,000 searches, billed monthly

  Throughput of 1,000 successful searches an hour. No U.S. Legal Shield.

• Production$150

  per month for 15,000 searches, billed monthly

  Throughput of 3,000 an hour, and the U.S. Legal Shield with up to $2 million in coverage.

• Big Data$275

  per month for 30,000 searches, billed monthly

  Throughput of 6,000 an hour, with the U.S. Legal Shield.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Custom volume and throughput, ZeroTrace mode, which stores no search data, and priority support. Sold through sales.

OpenSerp

No public discounts listed.

SerpApi

• Education

  Special pricing for students and educators

  SerpApi's FAQ says universities, students and educators can email about their project and budget to arrange special pricing.