SerpApi vs Serply (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 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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Serply

No public discounts listed.