--- title: "Google Search API review: closed, and what replaces it" description: "Google's Custom Search JSON API is closed to new customers and ends for the rest on January 1, 2027. What it cost, what Google offers instead, and what to buy." url: https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/source-apis/google-search-api-review updated: 2026-11-12 --- # Google Search API review Closed to new customers, with a deadline for the rest Reviewed by **Frontal** *ยท*Updated October 2026 ## On this page 1. What Google sells 2. Pricing and plans 3. Rate limits 4. Docs and reference 5. Video walkthrough 6. Strengths and limits 7. Verdict 8. Before you build [Visit Google Search](https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview) **From** Closed to new customers **Unit cost** Not sold by the unit **Billing** Pay as you go **Best for** Closed to new customers, with a deadline for the rest custom-search.sh closed to new customers ``` GET https://www.googleapis.com/customsearch/v1?key=$KEY&cx=$CX&q=lectures # existing customers only, until January 1, 2027 # 100 queries a day free, then $5 per 1,000 # ceiling: 10,000 queries a day ``` Closed Open to new customers No The Google Search API that most people mean is the Custom Search JSON API, and the first fact about it is on Google's own overview page: it is closed to new customers. Existing customers have until January 1, 2027 to transition to an alternative. A search for "Google Search API" today is a search for something you can no longer sign up for. It was never a general web search API in the way a SERP API is. The Custom Search JSON API returns results from a Programmable Search Engine that you configure, in JSON, following the OpenSearch 1.1 specification. Its sibling, the Site Restricted JSON API, has already gone: Google says those endpoints ceased to serve traffic on January 8, 2025. Google names two routes forward. For searching up to 50 domains it points at Vertex AI Search, which Google Cloud's pricing page now bills as Agent Search. For full web search it offers a contact form to express interest, with no price and no product page. Everything else on this page is about what those two routes cost, and what a GTM team actually uses instead. The rest of the category is in the [Sourcing APIs](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/source-apis) listing. Nothing here is paired against Google Search yet, so the [compare hub](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/compare) is the place to start. ## What Google sells for search today Four things carry the Google name and the word search, and only one of them is open to a new buyer on a published price. | Product | Status | Price | What it searches | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Custom Search JSON API | Closed to new customers | 100 a day free, then $5 per 1,000 | A Programmable Search Engine you configure. Ends January 1, 2027. | | Site Restricted JSON API | Gone | n/a | Stopped serving traffic on January 8, 2025. | | Agent Search, Standard | Open | $1.50 per 1,000 | Your own unstructured and structured data. No website search. | | Agent Search, Enterprise | Open | $4.00 per 1,000 | Adds website search, the route Google names for up to 50 domains. | | Full web search | By request | not published | A contact form to express interest. No product page. | Agent Search is the open door, and it is not a replacement for a web search API. Its website search indexes sites you name and verify, and Google bills the index too: a website data store is counted at 500 KiB a page, which Google works out at $2.38 a month for a 1,000-page site. It is a way to search your own properties, not the web. The replacement for the open web is not a Google product If what you wanted from the Google Search API was Google's results for arbitrary queries, Google does not sell that to new customers at a published price. The APIs that return Google results today are third-party SERP APIs: [Serper](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/source-apis/serper-api-review), [SerpApi](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/source-apis/serpapi-api-review) and [DataForSEO](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/signal-apis/dataforseo-api-review) are reviewed in this directory, each with its own pricing and limits. ## Google Search API pricing, plan by plan Google Search API pricing has two halves: the Custom Search rate that existing customers keep until the deadline, and the Agent Search rates that a new buyer can actually pay. ### Custom Search, free $0 100 queries a day - Existing customers only - Ends January 1, 2027 - Results from your Programmable Search Engine ### Custom Search, billed $5 per 1,000 queries - Existing customers only - Up to 10,000 queries a day - Billing set up in the API Console ### Agent Search Standard $1.50 per 1,000 queries - Open to new customers - Semantic retrieval on your own data - 10,000 free queries a month on the free trial ### Agent Search Enterprise $4.00 per 1,000 queries - Adds website search - Core generative answers included - Advanced answers +$4.00 per 1,000 At the old ceiling of 10,000 queries a day, the billed Custom Search API came to $49.50 a day after the 100 free, about $1,485 over 30 days. That is the budget an existing customer is replacing, and it is a useful number to hold a SERP API quote against. Agent Search has a second pricing model Google offers Agent Search on General pricing, which is pay per query plus per GB indexed, or Configurable pricing, a monthly subscription for query capacity aimed at workloads above 15 million queries a month. Google adds that a data store created on Configurable pricing can only be used by a search app that also uses Configurable pricing, so it is worth choosing before you index anything. Built in Clay ### Building this yourself? *Start in Clay.* Clay runs a waterfall across 150+ data providers from one table, without a separate contract with each. A lookup that finds nothing costs no data credit. **150+** data providers **500** free actions a month **$0** for a miss [Try Clay](https://go.frontal.so/clay) Frontal is a Clay Elite Studio Partner. A Clay waterfall **Clay** ## A daily ceiling, and a deadline Google Search API rate limits for the Custom Search JSON API are a daily allowance rather than a per-second rate: 100 free queries a day, and up to 10,000 a day once billing is on. A single request may be no longer than 2,048 characters. ### Custom Search JSON API Existing customers, until January 1, 2027. - 100 queries a day at no cost. - Up to 10,000 a day with billing enabled. - Usage visible in the Cloud Console API Dashboard. ### Agent Search The open route, for your own data and sites. - General pricing: pay per query, no capacity commitment. - Configurable pricing: buy query capacity per minute. - Overage on Configurable billed at the Standard rate, $1.50 per 1,000. The limit that matters on the Google Search API now is the date rather than the daily cap. Anything still calling the Custom Search JSON API needs a replacement in production before January 1, 2027, and the work is usually rewriting the parser for a different response shape rather than changing a URL. ## Where the Google Search API documentation lives The Custom Search documentation still lives at developers.google.com/custom-search, and the overview page is where the closure notice and the deadline are posted. | Surface | Where | What it answers | | --- | --- | --- | | Overview | developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview | The closure, the deadline and the price. | | Using REST | developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/using\_rest | The request format, for existing customers. | | Site Restricted API | developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/site\_restricted\_api | The January 8, 2025 shutdown notice. | | Agent Search pricing | cloud.google.com/generative-ai-app-builder/pricing | Standard, Enterprise and Configurable pricing. | Google's Custom Search documentation names no MCP server. For an agent that needs web results, SerpApi and DataForSEO publish hosted ones. ## Google Search on video The section is here either way, because the absence is worth knowing: a vendor with no walkthrough of its own API is a vendor whose docs are the only way in. Not published yet We read [Google Search's own channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw) on 23 October 2026 and found nothing on it that walks through the API. Google for Developers is the channel the Custom Search documentation links, and none of the 193 videos harvested from it is about the Custom Search JSON API or Programmable Search. Its API videos are about Gemini. When Google Search publishes one, or sends us one, it goes here. A vendor video is the vendor's claim about itself, which is why it sits in its own section. ## Strengths and limits What is left of the Google Search API is a deadline and a set of alternatives, and the honest list reads accordingly. ### What it does well - Existing customers keep 100 free queries a day until the deadline. - Agent Search is open, published and has a 10,000-query monthly free trial. - Agent Search Standard is $1.50 per 1,000 queries on your own data. - The closure and the date are stated plainly on Google's own page. ### Where it falls short - Closed to new customers. - Ends for everybody else on January 1, 2027. - The Site Restricted JSON API already stopped on January 8, 2025. - Full web search is a contact form with no price. - Agent Search searches your data and named sites, not the open web. The two columns add up to one instruction: there is no Google API to build a new web search integration on. If you hold one already, plan the move now; if you are starting, start with a SERP API. ## Who should actually buy this Nobody new can. The Custom Search JSON API is closed to new customers, and the existing ones have until January 1, 2027. If you are one of them, the work is to pick a replacement and rewrite the parser before the date, and the budget to beat is what you spend today at $5 per 1,000. If you need search across your own sites or documents, Agent Search is Google's answer and it is a real product, from $1.50 per 1,000 queries with a free trial. If you need Google's results for arbitrary queries, buy a SERP API: Serper is the cheapest in real time, SerpApi the broadest, and DataForSEO's queue the cheapest if you can wait. ## Before you build against it Three things to settle first, each one read off Google Search's own pages. The ticks are remembered in this browser, so you can come back to a half-finished integration. Provenance ## Where the data comes from, and what you may do with it The question that arrives late and expensively is who is allowed to hold the data. These are the fields it returns, the coverage it claims and the compliance it publishes. | Provider | Fields returned | Coverage | Compliance | Redistribution | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [Google Search](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/source-apis/google-search-api-review) | Search results | Global | None published | Not stated | Google Search states no redistribution position on its pricing or docs pages. Internally that never matters. Put the rows in something your customers can see and it becomes the question your legal team asks first. Two practical notes. A compliance badge describes the vendor rather than your use of it, so a GDPR DPA does not give you a lawful basis for the outreach you send. And the vendor runs its own opt-out, which means a person who asks you to delete their record has to be removed from your copy as well as from theirs. ## Calling these APIs one by one? *Run them from one Clay table.* Clay runs a waterfall across 150+ data providers from one table, without a separate contract with each. A lookup that finds nothing costs no data credit, and the free plan includes 500 actions a month. [Try Clay](https://go.frontal.so/clay) [See the agent research stack](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis/stacks/agent-research) Frontal is a Clay Elite Studio Partner. What practitioners say ## Nothing worth quoting yet We searched Reddit for threads about the Google Search API and have found none worth quoting yet. When one turns up, it goes here, and nothing on this page leans on an unquoted paraphrase. FAQ ## Google Search API, answered **Is the Google Search API free?** No. Closed to new customers. Existing customers keep 100 free queries a day until January 1, 2027. **How much does the Google Search API cost?** Google Search's API is closed to new customers. It bills pay as you go. Read from Google Search's own pricing page on 24 October 2026. **What are the Google Search API rate limits?** Up to 10,000 queries a day on billing, existing customers only. **How do I get a Google Search API key?** API key plus a Programmable Search Engine ID (cx), existing customers only. The current steps are in Google Search's own documentation, which is authoritative on anything that has changed since 24 October 2026. **Does Google Search have an MCP server?** Not one its own documentation describes, at the time of writing. Google Search ships a REST API instead. Published by ## [Frontal](https://frontal.so/) Frontal is the go-to-market partner for B2B tech companies past product-market fit. It publishes this directory. Every price, tier requirement and rate limit on this page was read from the vendor's own pricing page, developer documentation or knowledge base on the date below. Nothing on it is restated from a press release or a third-party listing. Where a vendor publishes no public figure, this page says so rather than estimating. [How we checked](https://frontal.so/gtm-apis#method). Reviewed by [Kenny Damian](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenny-damian-90aba221a/) Co-founder & Head of GTM, Frontal **Verified** 24 Oct 2026 **Sources** 4 vendor documents Read from - [developers.google.com/custom-search](https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview) - [developers.google.com/custom-search/v1](https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/using_rest) - [developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/site\_restricted\_api](https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/site_restricted_api) - [cloud.google.com/generative-ai-app-builder](https://cloud.google.com/generative-ai-app-builder/pricing)