SerpApi API review
Best for breadth: 100 plus search engines behind one key
GET https://serpapi.com/search.json?engine=google&q=coffee&api_key=$KEY # counts only if it succeeds: cached, errored and failed are free # 100 results or none: still 1 search # Starter: 1,000 a month, at most 200 in any hour
The SerpApi API is the broad one in this category. Where Serper sells Google and DataForSEO sells SEO data, SerpApi sells more than 100 separate search APIs behind one key. On Google that means search, AI Mode and AI Overviews, Maps, Jobs, News, Shopping, Scholar and Trends; beyond it, Bing, Baidu, DuckDuckGo, Naver, Amazon, Walmart, eBay, the Apple and Google Play stores, Airbnb and more. One plan covers all of them.
It is sold as a monthly subscription rather than as credits, from $25 a month for 1,000 searches up to fifty-million-search cloud plans, with a free plan of 250 searches a month. The counting rule is generous and worth knowing: only successful searches count. Cached, errored and failed searches do not, and a response with 100 results costs the same single search as an empty one.
Two things move the bill that the plan name does not show. Every plan up to Infrastructure caps throughput per hour at a fifth of its monthly volume, the Cloud plans lower still, and SerpApi sells speed as a multiplier: Ludicrous Speed is twice the Best Effort price and Ludicrous Speed Max is four times.
The rest of the category is in the Sourcing APIs listing.
What a search costs, plan by plan
Plans are monthly allowances, so the price per search falls as the plan grows. These are the Best Effort prices, the default view on SerpApi's pricing page.
| Plan | Searches a month | Per month | Per 1,000 searches |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 1,000 | $25 | $25.00 |
| Developer | 5,000 | $75 | $15.00 |
| Production | 15,000 | $150 | $10.00 |
| Big Data | 30,000 | $275 | $9.17 |
| Searcher | 100,000 | $725 | $7.25 |
| Volume | 250,000 | $1,475 | $5.90 |
| Infrastructure | 500,000 | $2,750 | $5.50 |
| Cloud 1M | 1,000,000 | $3,750 | $3.75 |
The cloud plans keep going in million-search steps, to $98,325 a month for 50 million, which is about $1.97 per 1,000. At the bottom of the ladder SerpApi is the dearest Google results API in this directory per search, $0.025 against Serper's $0.001; what the price buys is the breadth, and a counting rule that charges nothing for a failure.
SerpApi's pricing page has a speed switch: Best Effort, Ludicrous Speed and Ludicrous Speed Max. Ludicrous Speed is priced at twice Best Effort and Ludicrous Speed Max at four times, so a Starter search at $0.025 becomes $0.05 or $0.10. Ludicrous Speed uses twice the server resources and SerpApi reports it 2.2 times faster on average and 4.2 times faster at p99. It can be switched on or off on every paid plan.
SerpApi API pricing, plan by plan
SerpApi API pricing is month to month with no annual commitment, and every self-serve plan is a fixed number of successful searches at a fixed price.
Free
- 50 searches an hour
- The same APIs as the paid plans
Starter
- 1,000 searches a month
- 200 an hour
- U.S. Legal Shield
Developer
- 5,000 searches a month
- 1,000 an hour
- U.S. Legal Shield
Production
- 15,000 searches a month
- 3,000 an hour
- U.S. Legal Shield
Big Data
- 30,000 searches a month
- 6,000 an hour
- U.S. Legal Shield
Searcher
- 100,000 searches a month
- 20,000 an hour
Volume
- 250,000 searches a month
- 50,000 an hour
Infrastructure
- 500,000 searches a month
- 100,000 an hour
Cloud 1M
- 1,000,000 searches a month
- 110,000 an hour
- Larger cloud plans to 50 million
Run out early and you can switch on Automatic Early Renewal, which renews the plan the moment the searches are used up, or renew by hand. Upgrading charges only the difference and keeps the renewal date; downgrading moves leftover searches into an Extra Credits balance. SerpApi refunds within 7 days of subscribing unless more than 20% of the searches have been used.
SerpApi publishes no overage rate. When a month's searches run out, the answer it gives is to renew early, automatically or by hand, which replenishes the searches and moves the renewal date. A workload that runs 1,100 searches on a 1,000-search Starter plan does not pay for 100 extra; it renews the plan. Size the plan on your peak month, not your average.
SerpApi rate limits are an hourly share of the plan
SerpApi API rate limits are written as throughput per hour, and on every self-serve plan up to Infrastructure that throughput is exactly 20% of the monthly volume: 50 an hour on Free, 200 on Starter, 1,000 on Developer, 6,000 on Big Data. Cloud 1M allows 110,000 an hour on a million searches.
| Plan | Searches a month | Searches an hour | Fastest month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 250 | 50 | 5 hours |
| Starter | 1,000 | 200 | 5 hours |
| Developer | 5,000 | 1,000 | 5 hours |
| Big Data | 30,000 | 6,000 | 5 hours |
| Cloud 1M | 1,000,000 | 110,000 | About 9 hours |
The hourly cap is the SerpApi rate limit that bites a backfill: a Starter plan cannot run its 1,000 searches faster than five hours, whatever your code does. If a job has to run in one sitting, size the plan on the hourly figure rather than the monthly one.
How to create a SerpApi API key
Register at serpapi.com, and the key is in the dashboard. Every request carries it as the api_key parameter, and the same key opens the hosted MCP server.
The REST API
One key for every engine.
- Send api_key with each request.
- Choose the engine with the engine parameter.
- The free plan is 250 searches a month, no payment needed.
The MCP server
Hosted by SerpApi.
- Hosted at mcp.serpapi.com.
- Authenticate with a Bearer header, or with the key in the URL path.
- The key is the one from the dashboard, the same as for REST.
Putting the key in a URL, as both the REST examples and one of the MCP options do, means it lands in logs and browser history. Prefer the Bearer header for the MCP server, and keep request URLs out of anything you share.
A first SerpApi call
SerpApi's own Google Search API page builds every example on one endpoint with the engine and query as parameters. This is its coffee search for Austin, Texas, with the key added.
GET https://serpapi.com/search.json?engine=google&q=coffee&location=Austin%2C+Texas%2C+United+States&google_domain=google.com&device=desktop&api_key=$KEY # page two: add start=10, which is another search
Where the SerpApi API documentation lives
The SerpApi documentation is one page per API, from the Google Search API page down, each with its parameters and example JSON, and a playground at serpapi.com/playground runs any engine live.
| Surface | Where | What it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search API | serpapi.com/search-api | Parameters and example responses. |
| All APIs | serpapi.com/search-engine-apis | The full list of engines. |
| Pricing | serpapi.com/pricing | Every plan and the counting rules. |
| Speed modes | serpapi.com/ludicrous-speed | What the 2x and 4x buy. |
| MCP server | serpapi.com/integrations/mcp | Setup for Claude, Cursor and VS Code. |
The playground runs a query and shows the JSON, which is the fastest way to see what a parser has to handle before writing it.
The MCP page lists SerpApi's MCP access alongside the others in this directory.
SerpApi's own walkthrough of the API
SerpApi publishes this on its own channel, so it is SerpApi's account of SerpApi, not ours. It is here because a rate card cannot show you the thing moving, and a minute or two of the product is faster than any paragraph on this page at telling you whether the shape of it fits yours.
YouTube · SerpApi Web Search API: A Quick Tour of SerpApi 1:31 · Published January 2026Ninety seconds from SerpApi's own channel on what the product is: real-time results scraped from Google, Bing, Amazon and the rest, behind more than 100 APIs, with SEO tracking, AI search and price comparison as the use cases it names. It is a tour of the catalog rather than of a request, and it says nothing about the hourly cap or the speed modes, which are what this page is about.
Published 29 January 2026 on SerpApi, the channel SerpApi's own pages link to, and read on 23 October 2026. Nothing in it is a source for a price or a limit on this page: every figure in the tables above comes from a SerpApi page.
Strengths and limits
SerpApi trades a higher price per search for breadth and a counting rule that does not punish failure.
What it does well
- More than 100 search APIs, from Google and Bing to Amazon and Jobs, on one key.
- Only successful searches count; cached, errored and failed ones are free.
- 100 results or none costs the same single search.
- A 250-search free plan, and month to month with no annual contract.
- A hosted MCP server on the same key.
- Public documentation per API, and a live playground.
Where it falls short
- $0.025 a search on Starter, the dearest entry rate here.
- Throughput capped at 20% of the monthly plan per hour, up to Infrastructure.
- Speed costs 2x or 4x the Best Effort price.
- No published overage: running out means renewing the plan early.
- No published compliance certifications.
Read together, the columns say SerpApi is the right buy when you need more than Google or when failed searches are common, and an expensive one when you just need Google results at volume. The breadth is the strength nobody else here matches; the success-only counting it shares with Serper, Bright Data and Perplexity.
Who should actually buy this
Buy SerpApi when the job needs more than Google: jobs listings, Maps, Amazon, Bing or a mix of engines behind one integration. The breadth is the product, and paying only for successful searches makes it safe to point at messy inputs.
Size the plan on two numbers, not one: the month and the hour. A backfill of 30,000 searches needs Big Data for the 6,000-an-hour cap as much as for the volume, and if it all has to happen this afternoon, no self-serve plan below Searcher will do it.
If you only need Google results, Serper is far cheaper per query and DataForSEO is cheaper still if you can wait for a queue. Test SerpApi on the free plan with your real queries, because the 250 searches cost nothing when they fail.
Before you build against it
Five things to settle first, each one read off SerpApi's own pages. The ticks are remembered in this browser, so you can come back to a half-finished integration.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SerpApi | Intent and news, Job postings, Search results | Global | None published | Not stated |
SerpApi 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.
SerpApi against the obvious rival
Same rate cards, read side by side, with the arithmetic done on a worked volume rather than left to you: DataForSEO vs SerpApi and Tavily vs SerpApi. Every pairing in the directory is on the compare hub.
DataForSEO vs SerpApi
CompareGoogle results for $0.60 per 1,000 if you can wait five minutes, against one key for more than 100 search engines on a monthly plan.
Tavily vs SerpApi
CompareSearch results written for a model, at $0.008 a query, against Google's own results page parsed into JSON on a monthly plan.
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.
Frontal is a Clay Elite Studio Partner.
Nothing worth quoting yet
We searched Reddit for threads about the SerpApi 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.
SerpApi API, answered
Is the SerpApi API free?
Free plan, 250 searches a month and 50 an hour. Paid use starts at $25/mo.
How much does the SerpApi API cost?
SerpApi starts at $25/mo. Its unit rate is $0.025 per search on Starter. It bills by subscription, with a free tier. Read from SerpApi's own pricing page on 24 October 2026.
What are the SerpApi API rate limits?
An hourly cap of 20% of the monthly plan up to Infrastructure, from 50 an hour on Free to 100,000; Cloud plans from 110,000.
How do I get a SerpApi API key?
Register at serpapi.com, and the key is in the dashboard. Requests authenticate with api_key parameter on each request, from the dashboard. The current steps are in SerpApi's own documentation, which is authoritative on anything that has changed since 24 October 2026.
Does SerpApi have an MCP server?
Yes, at https://mcp.serpapi.com/mcp. It is listed with the others on the MCP page.