SerpAPI Alternatives in 2026: Cheaper Options That Actually Work

SerpAPI's Developer plan runs $75 per month for 5,000 searches — that's $15 per thousand. For a tool that returns JSON SERP data, that math stings once you're pulling more than a few thousand SERPs a day.

Most teams who've been on SerpAPI for a while don't notice the cost creeping up. They started on a starter plan, scaled up as their product grew, and somewhere along the way accepted that SERP data costs what it costs. Then someone does the annual budget review, looks at the number, and starts asking questions.

In 2026, with alternatives offering equivalent data quality starting at $0.50 per thousand searches, SerpAPI's pricing reflects brand premium rather than technical superiority.

This article is the honest version of that budget review. What SerpAPI actually costs, what you're really paying for, the vendor risk that emerged in December 2025, and the seven alternatives that work — including when each one is the right call and when SerpAPI is still worth paying for.

What SerpAPI Actually Costs in 2026

The headline pricing is straightforward. SerpAPI plans start at $25 per month for 1,000 searches on the Starter tier, scale to $75 per month for 5,000 on the Developer plan, and reach $275 per month for 30,000 on the Big Data tier. At 1 million searches per month, the effective cost is still $3.75 per thousand.

The headline number is only part of the story. The structure of the pricing creates hidden costs that don't show up in the plan comparison table.

The Subscription Expiry Problem

SerpAPI uses monthly subscriptions that expire unused credits, inflating effective costs by 30–50% for variable workloads.

Most products that use SERP data don't use it at constant volume. A rank tracking tool sees higher usage when a customer onboards, lower usage mid-month when nothing changes, and a spike at the end of the month for reporting. An AI agent's SERP usage depends on what tasks users are running. A competitive intelligence tool runs heavily during campaign planning and lightly otherwise.

A subscription model forces you to buy for your peak rather than your average. An average month at 15,000 searches with a 30,000-search peak means you're on the Big Data plan ($275) for 12 months, effectively paying $275 even in months you use half the allotment. Pay-as-you-go pricing at the alternatives' rates would cost significantly less for that exact workload.

The "80+ engines" Value Proposition — Who Actually Needs It

SerpAPI supports 80+ search engine APIs, and the structured JSON covers organic results, knowledge graphs, shopping carousels, ads, local packs, plus a lot of the weird edge-case SERP blocks that cheaper APIs skip entirely. Most teams don't need SerpAPI's 80+ engine coverage. If you're honest about which SERP elements you actually use, you can cut your bill by 80%+ with DataForSEO or Serper and never notice the difference. The honest question to ask before evaluating alternatives: which engines do you actually query? If the answer is Google only, or Google plus occasionally Bing, SerpAPI's multi-engine breadth is a feature you're paying for and not using.

The Vendor Risk Factor: Google vs. SerpAPI

This is the conversation that wasn't happening a year ago. As covered in the ScrapeBadger Google Maps comparison article, Google filed a DMCA lawsuit against SerpAPI in December 2025, alleging it circumvented SearchGuard — Google's anti-scraping infrastructure — to access and resell search results at massive scale.

SerpAPI filed a motion to dismiss in February 2026, making substantive legal arguments. The hearing is scheduled for May 2026. The motion to dismiss arguments are credible — the legal question is genuinely contested.

What this means for your infrastructure decision: SerpAPI is operational today, and the lawsuit outcome is uncertain. But if your product depends on SerpAPI for a core data feed, you need a tested fallback regardless of how the legal situation resolves. No team should be in a position where a court order or operational disruption causes their product to fail because they have no migration path.

Evaluating alternatives now — and having one integration-ready — takes a few days of engineering. Being forced to migrate under pressure because SerpAPI has an unexpected service disruption is a far worse situation. The time to test alternatives is while you don't urgently need them.

The 7 Best SerpAPI Alternatives in 2026

1. ScrapeBadger — Best for Google-Specific Intelligence at Scale

ScrapeBadger's Google Scraper covers 18 Google products across 19 endpoints — Search, Maps, News, Shopping, Trends, Flights, Hotels, Finance, Jobs, Patents, Scholar, and more — under one API key with flat per-request credit pricing and no subscription.

Why It's the Right Alternative for Most Teams

The multi-product platform is the primary differentiator. Most teams using SerpAPI for SERP data also need news monitoring, Trends signals for content timing, Maps data for local intelligence, or Shopping prices for competitive research. Under SerpAPI's model, each of these requires either a separate integration or SerpAPI's own cross-product pricing. Under ScrapeBadger, every Google surface is one integration with one billing relationship.

The AI Overview capture is worth specific mention. AI Overview support matters more in 2026 than it did a year ago. Google's AI Overviews now appear in approximately 48% of all searches and directly affect CTR for organic results. As detailed in the ScrapeBadger SERP data article, ScrapeBadger captures the full AI Overview text and citation references — not just a detection flag. For teams building SEO tools or rank trackers in 2026, AI Overview data is a first-class field, not a nice-to-have.

Credit pricing with no expiry means variable-volume workloads don't waste money. Credits purchased in January remain valid in September. For AI agent workflows specifically, where SERP query volume is inherently unpredictable, this pricing model is structurally correct. The MCP integration exposes all Google endpoints as native tool calls to Claude, Cursor, and Windsurf — agents pay per query without any pre-purchased credits sitting idle.

Best for

Teams needing Google SERP alongside other Google data sources; AI agent developers; any workflow where subscription expiry wastes budget; teams wanting a clean migration path away from SerpAPI.

2. Serper — Best for Speed and Pure Cost Efficiency

Serper sells credit packs with volume discounts: Starter at $50 for 50,000 credits ($1.00 per thousand), Standard at $375 for 500,000 ($0.75 per thousand), Scale at $1,250 for 2.5 million ($0.50 per thousand), and Ultimate at $3,750 for 12.5 million ($0.30 per thousand). Credits last 6 months.

On pure cost-per-query, Serper is compelling. At scale, $0.30 per thousand versus SerpAPI's $3.75 per thousand is a 12.5x cost reduction on the same data. The 6-month credit validity eliminates the subscription waste problem.

Serper typically responds in under 1 second. SerpAPI response times vary by engine but are generally 1–3 seconds. For latency-sensitive agent workflows where search is in the critical path, Serper's speed is an advantage.

The data model covers organic results, People Also Ask, featured snippets, knowledge graphs, news, images, and local results. It doesn't fetch page content — it returns SERP data only. For teams building rank trackers, SEO dashboards, and AI research agents, that's the right scope.

Limitation

Google coverage only. No Bing, Yahoo, or other engines. No multi-product Google data beyond SERP. If your use case needs Maps, Trends, or Flights data in addition to SERP, Serper requires a second integration.

Best for

Teams running pure Google SERP at high volume where cost is the primary constraint; AI agents doing web research where response latency matters.

3. DataForSEO — Best for Bulk Volume at Lowest Cost

At 10,000 searches per month, DataForSEO costs $6. At 1 million searches per month, DataForSEO at $600 is significantly cheaper than SerpAPI at $7,000.

DataForSEO uses an asynchronous task-based architecture — you submit search tasks, and results are available to fetch within a window. This is different from the synchronous request-response model of SerpAPI and Serper. For real-time applications where you need a result in under a second, DataForSEO's architecture doesn't work. For bulk data collection, rank tracking, and any workflow that can tolerate processing delays, it's the cheapest option by a significant margin at scale.

DataForSEO is the pick for cheapest at scale, delivering SERP data at $0.60 per thousand on the Standard Queue.

DataForSEO's data coverage is comprehensive — organic results, featured snippets, knowledge graphs, PAA, local results, news, shopping, and Maps. The API surface is extensive and somewhat complex compared to simpler alternatives, but the documentation is thorough.

Limitation

The async architecture makes it unsuitable for latency-sensitive applications. Real-time AI agent queries or user-facing search features that need sub-second response times need a different provider.

Best for

SEO agencies running bulk rank tracking jobs; data teams building large SERP datasets; any workflow where asynchronous processing is acceptable and cost at volume is the dominant factor.

4. Scrapingdog — Budget Option With Solid AI Overview Coverage

Scrapingdog offers a budget-friendly SERP API with 48% AI Overview detection at $2.00 per 1,000 requests — 12.5x cheaper than SerpAPI. Credits don't expire.

Scrapingdog: $10 buys 25,000 credits, no expiry. A strong pay-as-you-go option for teams with sporadic or unpredictable usage patterns.

For small teams or solo developers who need SERP data occasionally without paying monthly minimums, Scrapingdog's no-expiry credit model is genuinely user-friendly. The $10 entry point with 25,000 credits is the lowest-commitment option on this list.

Data coverage includes organic results, PAA, featured snippets, ads, and knowledge graphs. The 48% AI Overview detection rate is meaningful — not the highest on this list, but at this price point it's a reasonable trade-off.

Best for

Individual developers, small agencies, and side projects that need SERP data without monthly commitment; teams validating a product idea before committing to production infrastructure.

5. Scrape.do — Strongest AI Overview Coverage Among Alternatives

Scrape.do comes out as the strongest overall replacement among the alternatives tested: faster response times, 60% AI Overview detection, and the richest output among alternatives at $1.16 per thousand.

For teams running monitoring across multiple Google surfaces, switching from per-engine SerpAPI pricing to one Scrape.do bucket means fewer line items and lower per-request cost across the board. Free tier: 1,000 free credits monthly, translating to 100 Google SERP requests at 10 credits each — enough for testing and low-volume projects.

The 60% AI Overview detection rate — the highest among the alternatives in published benchmarks — is the headline differentiator. For SEO tools where AI Overview monitoring is a core feature, this matters significantly.

Best for

Teams where AI Overview coverage is a primary requirement; developers who want a focused SERP API with a meaningful free tier.

6. ScrapingBee — Best for Teams Already in the Ecosystem

ScrapingBee matches SerpAPI's organic detail depth for Google searches.

For teams already using ScrapingBee for general web scraping — where SERP data is an extension of an existing workflow rather than a primary product — ScrapingBee's Google Search endpoint adds coverage without adding a vendor relationship. The data quality is comparable to SerpAPI on organic results and SERP features.

The credit multiplier consideration applies: ScrapingBee's stealth proxy tier consumes 75 credits per request. Calculate your effective per-query cost at your actual configuration before comparing the headline price to alternatives.

Best for

Teams already using ScrapingBee's general scraping infrastructure who want to add SERP data without a second vendor.

7. ValueSERP / SearchAPI.io — Clean APIs, Competitive Pricing

Both ValueSERP and SearchAPI.io offer straightforward Google SERP APIs at price points significantly below SerpAPI, with clean documentation and simple JSON response structures. Neither has the ecosystem depth of the larger players, but both deliver accurate organic result data reliably.

Pricing for both is in the $1–$3 per thousand range depending on volume and tier. Free tiers are available for evaluation.

Best for

Developers who want a simple, well-documented SERP API without the complexity of larger platforms.

The Honest Comparison Table

When SerpAPI Is Still Worth Paying For

This article exists because most teams are overpaying for SerpAPI. But there are genuine cases where SerpAPI's premium is justified:

You need multi-engine coverage beyond Google. If your product queries Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, YouTube, Amazon, and Google in a single workflow, SerpAPI's 80+ engine support is a real differentiator. No alternative covers that breadth without multiple integrations.

You need very specific niche SERP blocks. Google Flights widget, Google Events, Google Certifications, Google Scholar snippets — some of these highly specific SERP features that only SerpAPI documents comprehensively. If your use case depends on one of these edge-case blocks, check that your chosen alternative covers it before migrating.

Your team has heavy SerpAPI integration that would cost more to migrate than to keep. A scraping API migration typically takes one to two days of engineering. If your codebase has deep SerpAPI dependency built over years, the calculation changes. Be honest about the actual migration cost before assuming it's worth it.

Outside these three cases, the pricing gap is hard to justify. In 2026, the pricing reflects brand premium rather than technical superiority.

How to Migrate Away from SerpAPI

The migration path is straightforward for any alternative on this list. Every provider returns structured JSON that covers the same core SERP fields. The main differences are parameter naming and response schema structure — both of which take an afternoon to map.

The practical migration checklist:

Audit your actual SerpAPI usage. Which endpoints do you call? Which response fields do you actually consume in your application? Most teams discover they use fewer fields than they thought. This shapes which alternative is the right fit.

Test on your real queries. Run 100 representative queries through your candidate alternative and compare output field-by-field against SerpAPI responses. Check AI Overview detection on the queries where you know AI Overviews appear. Check local result coverage if you use local SERP data.

Run parallel for one week. Keep SerpAPI running on your current integration while testing the alternative on the same queries. Compare outputs. This gives you confidence before cutting over.

Cut over and monitor. Flip the integration, monitor for data quality issues for 48 hours, and cancel the SerpAPI subscription before the next billing cycle.

ScrapeBadger's Google SERP API follows the same JSON structure as SerpAPI's core response for organic results, PAA, and SERP features — most migrations complete in under a day. The documentation at docs.scrapebadger.com covers every parameter and response field. Free trial includes 1,000 credits with no credit card required — enough to validate against your specific queries before committing.