SerpApi vs WebScrapingAPI (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 WebScrapingAPI if

• Fits if you only need Google and want a fixed number of searches each month
• Works for teams that also buy proxies or a general scraping API from the same vendor

Look elsewhere if

• Skip it if you need Bing, DuckDuckGo or Yandex without a sales review, as only Google is priced
• Watch out: each keyword counts once per market, device and refresh, so tracking adds up fast
• Pricey if you need general scraping too, as the Scraper API is a separate plan from $19 a month
• Watch out: residential proxies from $8.50 per GB and managed data from $299 a month sit outside these plans
• Tight if you're testing, with 100 trial searches and no free plan

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.

WebScrapingAPI

• Only the Google plans have published prices; Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yandex are quoted after a review.
• Usage is counted per request, so each keyword is multiplied by every market, device and refresh you track.
• The Scraper API is a separate subscription: 5,000 free requests, then $19 a month for 7,000 requests up to $599 for 450,000.
• Residential proxies start at $8.50 per GB and the managed data service at $299 a month, both outside these plans.

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.

WebScrapingAPI

Google Search API

Query Google web, image, video, news, shopping or job results and set the Google domain, location, language, device and result window.

Parsed results

Responses come back as JSON collections of organic results and other result modules with request metadata, or as CSV or raw HTML.

Other search engines

Separate endpoints return Bing results as JSON, localized Yandex result pages by region and device, and DuckDuckGo results.

Scraper API

A general scraping API with JavaScript rendering, proxy rotation, anti-bot handling, country targeting and automatic parsing, from $19 a month.

Proxies and ready data

Residential, datacenter and ISP proxies, an Amazon data API, a dataset marketplace, a web archive and a managed data service.

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.

WebScrapingAPI

• Starter$28

  per month for 10,000 Google searches

  Every plan includes global locations, parsed results, bulk processing, all devices, image search and JSON, CSV or HTML output.

• Grow$130

  per month for 50,000 Google searches

  The same Google features as Starter with a larger monthly allowance.

• Business$550

  per month for 250,000 Google searches

  The same Google features as Starter with a larger monthly allowance.

• Pro$1,600

  per month for 1,000,000 Google searches

  The same Google features as Starter with the largest published allowance.

• CustomCustom

  Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yandex searches, larger volumes and production support, priced after a review with the sales team.

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.

WebScrapingAPI

No public discounts listed.