SearchApi vs Serply (2026): which should you pick?

Pick SearchApi if

• Fits if you need Google results and ChatGPT or Perplexity answers in the same format
• Works for teams watching ads in the Google, Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit and TikTok libraries

Look elsewhere if

• Tight if your jobs come in bursts, since any one hour can use only 20% of the month's searches
• Pricey if you need answers faster, as enhanced speed doubles the price of every plan
• Skip it if you need team management or the legal guarantee for $40, as both start at $100
• Not for you if you want a free plan that renews, since the 100 requests come once

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

SearchApi

• Each plan can use only 20% of its monthly searches in any one hour.
• The Legal Protection Guarantee and team management are not on the Developer plan.
• Enhanced speed doubles the price of any plan; larger plans run to Octo 2M at $2,800 and Octo 5M at $5,000 a month, with custom plans on request.
• The 100 free requests are a sign-up allowance; the pages do not describe an ongoing free plan.

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.

SearchApi

Google and its verticals

Google Search, Light, AI Overview, AI Mode, Maps and reviews, Shopping, Flights, Hotels, News, Images, Lens, Jobs, Scholar, Trends and a rank tracking endpoint.

AI answer engines

Endpoints for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Bing Copilot answers alongside the Google AI features.

Other engines and sites

Bing, Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Naver, YouTube, Amazon, Walmart, eBay, TikTok, app stores, and Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit and TikTok ad libraries.

Pay per success

Only searches that return a 200 status code are charged, and requests run through premium proxies with location targeting down to coordinates.

Legal Protection Guarantee

From the Production plan up, SearchApi says it takes legal responsibility for how it collects and parses public results, with up to $2 million in coverage.

Code samples and MCP

Plain GET requests with examples in Python, Node, Ruby, Java, Go, PHP, C# and other languages, and an MCP server for AI assistants.

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.

SearchApi

• Developer Plan$40

  per month for 10,000 searches, billed monthly

  $4 per 1,000 searches and a 99.9% SLA. Enhanced speed, with parallel threads, doubles the price to $80.

• Production Plan$100

  per month for 35,000 searches, billed monthly

  $3 per 1,000 searches, team management and the Legal Protection Guarantee. $200 with enhanced speed.

• BigData Plan$250

  per month for 100,000 searches, billed monthly

  $2.50 per 1,000 searches, with medium throughput. $500 with enhanced speed.

• Scale Plan$500

  per month for 250,000 searches, billed monthly

  $2 per 1,000 searches, high throughput and search analytics. $1,000 with enhanced speed.

• Octo 500K$900

  per month for 500,000 searches, billed monthly

  $1.80 per 1,000 searches, dedicated throughput and priority support. $1,800 with enhanced speed.

• Octo 1M$1,500

  per month for 1 million searches, billed monthly

  $1.50 per 1,000 searches, dedicated throughput and priority support. $3,000 with enhanced speed.

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.