Serper vs SerpApi (2026): Price, Engines, SLA, Legal Cover

Serper and SerpApi both turn a Google search into JSON, and both are default choices in agent frameworks and SEO tools. On paper, the biggest difference between them isn’t the data. It’s the contract: Serper sells prepaid credit packs that expire after six months, while SerpApi sells monthly plans with an SLA and, from its Production plan up, written legal cover.

I priced both at 1K, 100K and 1M searches a month from their own pages on 31 Oct 2026, then set their billing rules, engines and terms side by side. It’s one comparison in my wider guide to search APIs.

Short on time?

Short on time? Here's my take.

Pick Serper if…

Serper

You only need Google and price comes first. It's $0.75 per 1K at 100K searches a month against SerpApi's $7.25, as long as you use each pack within its 6-month expiry.

Pick SerpApi if…

SerpApi

You need engines beyond Google, documented AI Overview and AI Mode APIs, an SLA in writing, or legal cover (Production plan, $150 a month, and up).

Under 250 searches a month

SerpApi's free plan

250 searches every month at $0. Serper's 2,500 free queries are a one-time allowance.

If neither fits

SearchApi or apiserpent.com

SearchApi for legal cover at $2.50 per 1K at 100K. apiserpent.com (SerpentAPI) for $0.10 per 1K at 100K after $500 Scale, or $0.03 at 1M after $1,250 Enterprise Plus (rechecked 3 Nov 2026), with no public PAYG SLA/provider scraping indemnity verified.

Prices verified 31 Oct 2026. Prices and documented features checked 31 Oct 2026. Serper's figures count only the credits you can use before they expire.

Serper vs SerpApi at a glance #

Serper is the cheaper option at every volume I priced, and it covers Google only. SerpApi costs more and gives you more engines, documented AI Overviews, an SLA and legal cover.

What you're comparing	Serper	SerpApi
Free tier	2,500 queries, one time, no card	250 searches a month, renews
Billing model	Prepaid one-time credit packs, plus sales tax or VAT	Monthly subscription, cancel anytime
Per 1K at 1K a month	$8.33	$25.00
Per 1K at 100K a month	$0.75	$7.25
Per 1K at 1M a month	$0.50	$3.75
Credit expiry	6 months (on its site, not in its terms)	Plan allowance resets monthly
Engines	Google only	100+ APIs, including Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Baidu, YouTube and Amazon
Google verticals	10: Search, Images, News, Maps, Places, Videos, Shopping, Scholar, Patents, Autocomplete	Dozens, including Lens, Trends, Jobs, Flights and Hotels
AI Overview / AI Mode	Not confirmed	In results, plus separate AI Overview and AI Mode APIs
Results per call	Billing past 10 results unverified	About 10 per page; budget each additional paginated request separately
Failed searches billed?	Its FAQ says credits are deducted for successful responses	No: cached, errored and failed searches are free
Throughput	50 to 300 queries per second, by pack	50 to 100,000 searches per hour by plan; Cloud up to 640,000
SLA stated	None found	99.95% on all plans, paid as credits
Legal cover	Generic mutual indemnity only	Up to $2M, Production ($150/mo) and up
Refunds	Within 7 days, if under 20% used	Within 7 days, unless over 20% used
Governing law	United Kingdom	Texas
Who runs it	Only "Serper" is named; no company or address	SerpApi, LLC, Austin, Texas

Source: Serper's homepage and terms; SerpApi's pricing, legal and docs pages; all read 31 Oct 2026. Per-1K figures are my normalization: the covering Best Effort plan or amortized single-pack schedule at each volume, with Serper's packs counted only for the credits you can use before they expire. Scroll sideways for more columns.

Serper vs SerpApi pricing: which is cheaper at 1K, 100K and 1M searches? #

Serper, at all three volumes: $8.33, $0.75 and $0.50 per 1K against SerpApi’s $25.00, $7.25 and $3.75. The gap is widest at 100K a month, where SerpApi costs 9.7 times as much.

Serper’s sticker prices run from $1.00 down to $0.30 per 1K, but those assume you use every credit. Its homepage says “Credits valid for 6 months” on every pack (serper.dev, verified 31 Oct 2026), so I count only what you can use in that window: the smaller of the pack size and six months of your volume.

That’s my normalization, not Serper’s pricing. It’s the same rule I explain in my cheapest SERP API comparison, and the full method is on my methodology page.

A few of Serper’s other packs lose once expiry is counted:

• At 100K a month, two $50 packs cost $1.00 per 1K, and the $1,250 pack is $2.08, because you’d use only 600K of its 2.5M credits in time.
• At 1M a month, the $3,750 pack, Serper’s cheapest on the sticker at $0.30, becomes $0.625 per 1K, because you’d use only 6M of its 12.5M credits.
• At 1K a month, Serper’s $50 pack wastes 44K credits. It still beats SerpApi’s $25 Starter plan on cost per search.

Cash up front is where Serper asks more at low volume: $50, $375 or $1,250 at once, against a monthly SerpApi bill of $25, $725 or $3,750. SerpApi’s prices are from its pricing page, verified 31 Oct 2026.

If you want SerpApi’s legal cover at 1K a month, the cheapest covered plan is Production at $150 a month for 15,000 searches. At that volume you’re paying for the cover, not the searches.

One caveat moves both columns. If you need 100 results per keyword, you may need several separately billed requests; Serper’s cost for the same depth is unverified (more in the billing section).

Serper credit packs

Verified 31 Oct 2026

Plan	One-time pack	Credits	Sticker per 1K	Queries per second
Starter	$50	50,000	$1.00	50
Standard	$375	500,000	$0.75	100
Scale	$1,250	2,500,000	$0.50	200
Ultimate	$3,750	12,500,000	$0.30	300

Source: Serper homepage, prices exclude sales tax, VAT and GST; six-month expiry; public pricing data rechecked 31 October, not a purchased account

SerpApi plans

Verified 31 Oct 2026

Plan	Monthly	Searches a month	Per 1K	Searches per hour	Legal Shield
Free	$0	250	—Not listed	50	No
Starter	$25	1,000	$25.00	200	No
Developer	$75	5,000	$15.00	1,000	No
Production Cover starts here	$150	15,000	$10.00	3,000	Yes
Big Data	$275	30,000	$9.17	6,000	Yes
Searcher	$725	100,000	$7.25	20,000	Yes
Volume	$1,475	250,000	$5.90	50,000	Yes
Infrastructure	$2,750	500,000	$5.50	100,000	Yes
Cloud 1M	$3,750	1,000,000	$3.75	110,000	Yes

Source: SerpApi pricing page, Cloud plans continue up to 54M searches for $106,050 a month (about $1.96 per 1K); Legal Shield applies from Production up

Is there a free version of Serper? And of SerpApi? #

Yes, both have one, but they work differently. Serper gives 2,500 free queries once, with “No credit card required”, while SerpApi’s free plan gives 250 searches every month, at up to 50 an hour.

If you need 250 searches a month or fewer, SerpApi’s free plan currently covers that allowance without a subscription. At 1K a month, Serper’s free queries cover about two and a half months, and then you’re buying packs.

Serper doesn’t say whether its free queries expire the way paid credits do, or what rate limit applies to them. That makes Serper’s allowance closer to a free trial than a free tier.

Engines, verticals and AI Overviews: how far apart are they? #

A long way. Serper covers Google only, through 10 endpoints, while SerpApi lists more than 100 APIs across search engines, shopping sites and Google’s AI features.

Serper: 10 Google endpoints, AI Overviews unconfirmed #

Serper’s homepage lists Search, Images, News, Maps, Places, Videos, Shopping, Scholar, Patents and Autocomplete. I found no Lens endpoint and no mention of AI Overviews on its site.

Its sample Search response shows knowledgeGraph, organic, peopleAlsoAsk and relatedSearches, and LangChain’s Serper wrapper also reads an answerBox. That’s a sample, not a schema, so it doesn’t prove AI Overviews are missing.

The public Serper material I checked does not establish these fields. If AI Overviews are the point of your product, that uncertainty alone tips the choice away from Serper.

SerpApi: 100+ APIs #

SerpApi’s llms.txt lists Google verticals from Lens to Flights and Hotels, plus Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, Naver, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Apple, Yelp and Tripadvisor. I use the documented breadth here rather than implying every endpoint has been tested.

For AI features, an ai_overview block comes back inside regular Google results. When Google loads the overview separately, SerpApi returns a page_token for a follow-up request through its Google AI Overview API, and there’s a separate AI Mode API.

Both current AI Overview pages give a one-minute token lifetime. The pricing rule counts successful uncached searches, so budget an additional successful retrieval rather than assuming the token call is free; I have not verified an account invoice.

SerpApi also documents a separate Extract API, checked 31 October: scraping, mapping, crawling and Markdown output, without JavaScript execution and with robots.txt controls. Crawl mode bills one search credit per successfully extracted page; this is separate from its SERP-search response.

Which is easier to plug into an AI agent? #

Both plug into agent stacks, in different ways. Serper ships as a ready-made tool in LangChain and CrewAI, while SerpApi publishes official SDKs and its own MCP server.

Serper’s homepage lists LangChain, CrewAI, Haystack and Jan AI, and CrewAI ships a SerperDevTool. I found no official Serper SDK.

SerpApi publishes official SDKs for Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Ruby, Go and Java, plus an official MCP server, serpapi-mcp (GitHub). In n8n, the built-in SerpApi node is deprecated from version 2.35.0 in favor of a verified “SerpApi Official” community node (n8n docs).

How does each one bill? #

Serper sells credits up front that expire after six months. SerpApi sells a monthly search allowance. Both say they charge only for successful searches.

• What counts as a search. SerpApi’s pricing page says “Only successful searches are counted”, and cached, errored and failed searches are free. Serper’s FAQ says “Every time you receive successful responses to queries, we will deduct credits from your account balance.” Neither page is a measurement, so I can’t confirm how either handles edge cases such as timeouts.
• Result depth. SerpApi’s Google Search docs paginate with start. Its pricing counts a successful response as one search regardless of result count, including an empty result set. Ten separate successful uncached page requests therefore consume ten searches; that arithmetic does not promise 100 results for every query.
• Serper’s depth pricing is unverified. Its public homepage does not establish the credit multiplier for a deeper-results request. I do not use old community comments as a current tariff.
• Expiry. Serper’s 6-month validity is on its homepage but not in its terms, which say nothing about expiry. SerpApi’s allowance simply resets each month.
• Throughput. Serper’s packs allow 50 to 300 queries per second. SerpApi caps searches per hour: 20,000 on the $725 Searcher plan, about 5.6 a second, and 110,000 on Cloud 1M, about 30.6 a second.

Those throughput figures are each vendor’s stated limits, not measurements.

Which is more reliable, Serper or SerpApi? #

I found no independent uptime data I could verify for either, so I can’t rank them on reliability. What I can compare is the paperwork: only SerpApi puts an uptime promise in writing, while Serper states no SLA. Both run public status pages (Serper, SerpApi), which report incidents rather than promise uptime.

SerpApi’s legal page says: “We provide a 99.95% SLA guarantee with all plans.” It adds that the guarantee “comes with a 100% penalty”, paid as credits of up to 100% of the monthly price.

Serper’s terms disclaim service warranties. I found no specific uptime SLA in those public terms. That is a difference in written commitments, not evidence that Serper has worse observed uptime.

I do not reproduce vendor-authored speed or accuracy comparisons: I have no permitted, logged comparison runs for either service.

Legal cover and terms: what does each contract say? #

SerpApi offers written legal cover for scraping claims from its Production plan up. Serper’s terms have only a standard mutual indemnity, which isn’t cover for scraping.

Term	Serper	SerpApi
Terms last updated	29 May 2024	27 Aug 2026
Cover for scraping claims	None	Up to $2M, Production and up
Indemnity	Mutual: each side covers the other	Legal Shield, with exclusions
Uptime promise	None; service 'as is'	99.95% SLA, all plans
Refunds	Within 7 calendar days, if under 20% of credits used	Within 7 days, unless over 20% of searches used
Governing law	United Kingdom	Texas
Company named	Only "Serper"	SerpApi, LLC, Austin, Texas

Source: Serper terms (updated 29 May 2024) and privacy policy; SerpApi legal page (updated 27 Aug 2026) and U.S. Legal Shield page; read 31 Oct 2026. Scroll sideways for more columns.

SerpApi’s U.S. Legal Shield #

SerpApi’s legal page offers up to $2 million of conditional collection/parsing coverage on recurring plans except Free, Starter and Developer.

In practice that means Production ($150 a month) and up. The contract limits this to lawful collection, under US state or federal law in a US court; it excludes downstream data use.

Its examples of illegal use include copyright, DMCA and privacy violations. That does not mean every claim in those categories has already been adjudicated. See the scope comparison.

Serper’s terms #

Serper’s terms, updated 29 May 2024, fall under UK law. The indemnity reads “Both parties agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless each other”, and Serper’s liability is capped at no more than “the fees due and payable”.

My plain reading: that’s a standard two-way contract clause, not a promise to stand behind you if a search engine objects to scraping. The terms and the privacy policy name only “Serper”, with no company, address or country.

Where do the SerpApi lawsuits stand? #

The 5 October 2026 court order vacated the planned 13 October Google hearing, leaving a possible new date or decision on the papers. It did not decide the dismissal motion or establish a general legal status for SERP APIs.

When I checked on 3 November 2026, the public docket showed no ruling on that motion; its latest entry was still a 12 October Google statement of recent decision. Public mirrors can omit PACER records, so check the docket before relying on this. This is a summary of the cited order, not legal advice.

Which one should you pick: Serper or SerpApi? #

Pick Serper if price per Google search decides it, and SerpApi if the contract does. Here’s how that plays out by situation.

Pick Serper if:

• You only need Google web, news, images, maps, shopping or scholar results.
• You’re building an agent on LangChain or CrewAI, which both ship a Serper tool.
• You’ll use each pack within six months. At 100K a month, that’s $75 against SerpApi’s $725.
• You need high burst rates: on paper, even the $50 pack allows 50 queries per second.

Pick SerpApi if:

• You need Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Baidu, YouTube, Amazon or another non-Google source.
• AI Overviews or AI Mode are part of your product, and you want them documented.
• Your buyer or legal team wants an SLA and scraping cover in writing (Production plan and up).
• You’d rather pay monthly than buy credit packs up front.
• You need 250 searches a month or fewer, which its free plan covers every month.

If I were building a Google-only research agent at around 100K searches a month, I’d buy Serper’s $375 pack. Nothing in SerpApi’s extra terms is worth $650 a month to that project, and the pack lasts five months, inside the expiry window.

If I were selling a rank-tracking product to companies with procurement teams, I’d start on SerpApi’s Production plan or above, or on SearchApi below. The written SLA and legal cover answer questions Serper’s terms can’t.

If neither fits: SearchApi, apiserpent.com and Scrapingdog #

If SerpApi’s price is the problem but you still want legal cover, look at SearchApi. If price is all that matters, apiserpent.com has a low documented Web-unit rate. Scrapingdog belongs here because many searchers compare it with these two directly.

The table uses the same method as the Serper and SerpApi figures above, with the 12-month upfront-cash rule for apiserpent.com; the 1M figure for Scrapingdog comes from its Premium plan ($350 for 6M credits), verified 31 Oct 2026.

SearchApi: legal cover for less #

SearchApi’s listed monthly plans include Developer ($40 for 10,000 searches), Octo 1M ($1,500) and Octo 5M ($5,000), per its pricing page, verified 31 Oct 2026. It says “Only successful searches with a 200 status code incur charges”.

Its terms cap covered collection/parsing claims at $2 million aggregate per 12 months for active Production-and-up subscriptions. Customer use, storage, redistribution and commercialization are excluded; defense or settlement is discretionary. The same contract states a 99.9% SLA, not measured uptime.

apiserpent.com (SerpentAPI): low rates and non-expiring purchased credit #

apiserpent.com (not the unrelated serpentapi.com) charges $0.60 per 1K by default, $0.30 after one qualifying $100 deposit, $0.10 after $500, $0.05 after $1,000 and $0.03 after $1,250 (pricing, rechecked 3 November 2026). Purchased credits never expire, a real advantage over Serper’s six-month packs. Existing credit keeps its old schedule; each deposit is priced by its size, and your best deposit in a calendar month sets the price for that month’s deposits. Refunded or charged-back amounts do not qualify.

These are new-credit Web-unit rates across Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Brave. Quick bills one unit per call; Deep bills one per requested page, up to ten. Promotional bonuses expire after 30 days even though purchased credit does not expire.

Its docs list AI Overviews as a Deep search option on paid plans for Google, Yahoo and Brave, with no separate fee listed, and AI Mode adds $4.00 per 1K calls on top of all requested-page units. Those docs describe an answer add-on; they do not establish that it captures Google’s own AI Mode interface.

The catch is cash tied up. At 100K, my 12-month rule admits the $500 Scale deposit but excludes the $1,000 Enterprise and $1,250 Enterprise Plus deposits; at 1M it admits both. On 31 October its pricing page said “Prices to increase 10x after October 31”; on 3 November that notice was gone and only the top tiers had changed. Its terms allow pricing changes with 30 days’ notice, so recheck these rates before you deposit.

The same terms, dated 31 Oct 2026, provide the service “AS IS” under Indian law, have you indemnify the vendor, cap its liability at 12 months of fees, and make credits non-refundable. Its FAQ says “No public SLA is currently published for pay-as-you-go accounts”.

The current FAQ, rechecked 3 November 2026, gives a $10 minimum on Default and now lists Serper’s pack ladder. Those resolve the September conflicts. I still use Serper’s own pricing page for its prices.

SerpApi vs Serper vs Scrapingdog #

Scrapingdog sells monthly credit plans: Lite is $40 for 200,000 credits. Google Light costs five credits, giving 40,000 calls; Advanced/mobile costs ten, giving 20,000 (pricing). It says “Failed requests never charged”, and it has an AI Mode search at 10 credits.

At 1M Google Light calls a month, it’s $0.35 per 1K, cheaper than Serper’s $0.50 and far below SerpApi’s $3.75, with no deposit. Advanced/mobile consumes twice the Light credits, so those totals do not apply to it. Its terms rule out refunds, and I have not verified a contractual SLA or provider indemnity for this comparison.

If your searches can wait #

DataForSEO’s standard queue costs $0.60 per 1K at any volume, with results in about five minutes on average (pricing, verified 31 Oct 2026). That is a queued ten-result SERP price, not a live-search price; Priority is $1.20 and Live $2 per 1K. Additional pages, search operators, rectangles and asynchronous AI Overview retrieval can add charges.

For the full field, I compare 10 options to SerpApi by engines and legal cover, and I price 22 SERP APIs per 1,000 searches.

FAQ

Is there a free version of Serper?

Serper advertises 2,500 signup queries without a card. I found no recurring monthly grant or confirmed free-credit expiry. SerpApi separately offers 250 searches per month.

Is Serper cheaper than SerpApi?

For the three ordinary Google-search volumes modeled here, yes. Serper amortizes to $8.33, $75 and $500 per month at 1K, 100K and 1M; covering SerpApi Best Effort plans cost $25, $725 and $3,750. Packs need upfront cash and expire after six months.

Does SerpApi offer legal cover?

Its contract covers specified lawful collection claims up to $2 million from Production upward, under US law in a US court. Free, Starter and Developer are excluded, as is downstream data use. This is not universal legal permission.

Does Serper return AI Overviews?

I could not establish that from the public Serper documentation checked. SerpApi documents Google AI Overview and AI Mode separately; extra successful retrievals need a billing budget.

Is SerpApi illegal?

The cited October 5 order vacated a hearing; it did not decide the dismissal motion or the lawfulness of every SERP API use. The public CourtListener docket showed no ruling on that motion when I checked on 3 November 2026.

Which alternative has non-expiring purchased credit?

apiserpent.com documents non-expiring purchased credit and five search engines. New Web credit starts at $0.60 per 1K units; lower rates need a qualifying single deposit. Promotional bonuses expire after 30 days, and Deep bills requested pages. Rates rechecked on 3 November 2026.

Sources

28 sources, accessed 31 Oct 2026 to 3 Nov 2026.

Official pricing, docs, changelogs and status pages 24

1. SerpApi separate Extract API serpapi.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026
2. Serper status page (Serper-branded; serper.dev lists a "Status page" under Resources) serper.betteruptime.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026
3. SerpApi status page status.serpapi.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026
4. Serper homepage (free queries, endpoints, credit packs and 6-month validity) serper.dev · accessed 31 Oct 2026
5. Serper terms of service (updated 29 May 2024) serper.dev · accessed 31 Oct 2026
6. Serper privacy policy serper.dev · accessed 31 Oct 2026
7. SerpApi pricing serpapi.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026
8. SerpApi legal terms (SLA and U.S. Legal Shield) serpapi.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026
9. SerpApi homepage (SLA and certification claims) serpapi.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026
10. SerpApi llms.txt (list of APIs) serpapi.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026
11. SerpApi docs: Google AI Overview API serpapi.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026
12. SerpApi docs: Google AI Mode API serpapi.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026
13. SerpApi docs: Google Search API (pagination) serpapi.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026
14. n8n docs: SerpApi (Google Search) tool node docs.n8n.io · accessed 31 Oct 2026
15. CrewAI docs: SerperDevTool docs.crewai.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026
16. SearchApi pricing searchapi.io · accessed 31 Oct 2026
17. SearchApi terms (Legal Protection) searchapi.io · accessed 31 Oct 2026
18. apiserpent.com (SerpentAPI) pricing apiserpent.com · accessed 3 Nov 2026
19. apiserpent.com docs (Quick, Deep, AI Overview and AI Mode billing) apiserpent.com · accessed 3 Nov 2026
20. apiserpent.com terms of service (31 Oct 2026) apiserpent.com · accessed 3 Nov 2026
21. apiserpent.com FAQ (SLA and legal questions) apiserpent.com · accessed 3 Nov 2026
22. Scrapingdog pricing scrapingdog.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026
23. Scrapingdog terms scrapingdog.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026
24. DataForSEO Google Organic SERP API pricing dataforseo.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026

GitHub code, issues and releases 2

1. SerpApi on GitHub (SDKs and MCP server) github.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026
2. LangChain community GoogleSerperAPIWrapper source raw.githubusercontent.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026

Other sources 2

1. Google v. SerpApi ECF 60: hearing vacated on 5 Oct 2026 storage.courtlistener.com · accessed 31 Oct 2026
2. Google v. SerpApi public docket (CourtListener; latest entry ECF 61, 12 Oct 2026) courtlistener.com · accessed 3 Nov 2026