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

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

Pick Serper if

• Fits if you only need Google and would rather pay per query than per month
• Works for AI agents on LangChain or CrewAI that need current Google results

Look elsewhere if

• Skip it if you need Bing, Yahoo or any engine other than Google
• Watch out: credits expire 6 months after purchase, so a big pack you don't use up is money lost
• Tight if you're testing, as the 2,500 free queries come once and there's no monthly free plan
• Watch out: refunds run 7 days from the first payment, and only with under 20% of the credits used

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.

Serper

• Its site lists Google endpoints only, with no Bing, Yahoo or other search engines.
• Credits expire 6 months after purchase, so a large pack bought for a lower rate can go unused.
• Refunds are given within 7 days of the first payment only if less than 20% of the credits are used.
• The 2,500 free queries are a one-time allowance, not a monthly free plan.

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.

Serper

Ten Google result types

Endpoints for Google web search, images, news, maps, places, videos, shopping, Scholar, patents and autocomplete.

Live results

Each call queries Google directly and nothing is cached; most results return in 1 to 2 seconds, sometimes 2 to 4 when a request is retried.

Location and language

Every pack lets you set the country and language a search is run from.

Rate limits by pack

From 50 queries a second on Starter to 300 on Ultimate, which Serper says is roughly 15,000 to 18,000 searches a minute.

Charged on success

Credits are deducted only for successful responses, and the API stops taking queries when the balance reaches zero.

AI framework integrations

Listed integrations with LangChain, CrewAI, Haystack and Jan AI for feeding search results to AI agents and chatbots.

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.

Serper

• Starter$50

  one-time for 50,000 credits, valid for 6 months

  50,000 queries at $1.00 per 1,000, up to 50 queries a second. Prices exclude sales tax or VAT.

• Standard$375

  one-time for 500,000 credits, valid for 6 months

  500,000 queries at $0.75 per 1,000, up to 100 queries a second.

• Scale$1,250

  one-time for 2.5 million credits, valid for 6 months

  2.5 million queries at $0.50 per 1,000, up to 200 queries a second.

• Ultimate$3,750

  one-time for 12.5 million credits, valid for 6 months

  12.5 million queries at $0.30 per 1,000, up to 300 queries a second; a higher limit can be arranged.

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.

Serper

No public discounts listed.