# SearchApi review (2026): is it worth $40 a month? > Real-time SERP API for Google, AI answers and dozens of other sites Checked Oct 23, 2026 ยท graded Oct 23, 2026 by ToolGPA. SearchApi is a real-time scraping API that returns search results as JSON. It covers Google Search and its AI Overview, AI Mode, Maps, Shopping, Flights and other verticals, AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Bing Copilot, and sites from Bing and YouTube to Amazon, TikTok and ad libraries. Monthly plans include a set number of searches, and only successful ones are charged. - **Category:** SERP & SEO Data APIs - **Made by:** SearchApi, LLC - **Website:** https://www.searchapi.io - **Runs on:** Web - **Who should skip it:** Tight if your jobs come in bursts, since any one hour can use only 20% of the month's searches. - **Facts last checked:** Oct 23, 2026 ## Pricing As of Oct 23, 2026, SearchApi is a paid product with a free trial, starting at $40 per month for 10,000 searches, billed monthly. - **Pricing model:** Free trial - **Free plan:** None. - **Free trial:** 100 free requests on sign-up, no credit card required. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | 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. | Read from https://www.searchapi.io/pricing on Oct 23, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with SearchApi before buying. ## Key features - **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. ## Good for - Developers who need Google results and AI engine answers from one API - Teams tracking ads across Google, Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit and TikTok libraries - Monthly workloads from 10,000 to millions of searches ## Worth knowing - 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. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 2.4 out of 4**, graded Oct 23, 2026. SearchApi covers Google and its AI features, answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity, and sites from Bing to the TikTok ad library, charging only for successful searches. The cheapest plan is $40 a month, any one hour can use only 20% of it, and the legal guarantee and team tools wait for the $100 plan. - **Value for money: C.** Developer is $40 a month for 10,000 searches, $4 per 1,000, right at this category's middle. Enhanced speed doubles any plan, and the Legal Protection Guarantee needs Production at $100. - **Free plan and trial: C.** No free plan: 100 free requests on sign-up with no card, and then you're paying. - **Features: B.** Google with AI Overview, AI Mode, Maps, Shopping, Lens and Scholar, answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, plus Bing, Baidu, YouTube, Amazon and ad libraries, targeted down to coordinates. Nothing in the listing shows a gap in the core job. - **Ease of use: C.** Judged on how fast a developer gets a first result: plain GET requests, with examples in Python, Node, Ruby, Java, Go, PHP and C#. No rating on record. - **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web, with an API, code samples in many languages and an MCP server for AI assistants. No desktop or phone app, so B is the top. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from SearchApi's own pages on 23 October 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among SERP and SEO data APIs - SearchApi's GPA of 2.4 is higher than 16 of the 38 other SERP and SEO data APIs we grade, and level with 14. - It stands best on features (B, above 26 of 38) and worst on ease of use (C, above 0). - Its paid plans start at $40 a month, against a middle price of $29.49 for the category: 16 of the 25 others that charge start lower. - On features, ease of use and platforms it scores 2.7 out of 4. Nothing scores higher for less, though at least one tool matches that score at a lower price. The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/seo-data-apis ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** To replace SearchApi you would be making search results fetched at scale from many countries without being blocked. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one. It costs $480 a year. - You could not: Search results fetched at scale from many countries without being blocked. - You could not: It plugs into other products, MCP among them, and has an API. - You could not: The depth: we grade its features B, which means it covers the whole job. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## Works with MCP **Tags:** SERP API, Public API ## Alternatives - [SerpApi](https://toolgpa.com/tools/serpapi): Real-time search results API for Google and dozens of other engines. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/searchapi-vs-serpapi) - [Serper](https://toolgpa.com/tools/serper): Google search results API sold in prepaid credit packs. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/searchapi-vs-serper) - [DataForSEO](https://toolgpa.com/tools/dataforseo): Pay-as-you-go APIs for SERP, keyword, backlink and AI mention data. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/dataforseo-vs-searchapi) - [Scrapingdog](https://toolgpa.com/tools/scrapingdog): Web scraping and Google SERP APIs on one shared credit plan. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/scrapingdog-vs-searchapi) - [Brave Search API](https://toolgpa.com/tools/brave-search-api): Web search API from Brave's own index, built for AI agents and apps. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/brave-search-api-vs-searchapi) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Oct 23, 2026: - https://www.searchapi.io/pricing - https://www.searchapi.io/ - https://www.searchapi.io/docs/google Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/searchapi Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).