A SERP API sends a query to a search engine on your behalf and returns the results page as clean, structured data, usually JSON, so you can track rankings, watch competitors, feed an AI agent fresh search context, or monitor how a brand shows up in Google without maintaining your own scraping stack. The hard parts (proxies, location targeting, parsing dozens of result features, keeping up with layout changes) become the vendor’s problem, and you pay per search instead.
The market has changed quickly. Microsoft retired the public Bing Search APIs in August 2025, Google added AI Overviews and AI Mode to the page every tool now has to parse, and Google’s December 2025 lawsuit against SerpApi pushed legal posture onto buyers’ checklists. Prices have also spread out: a Google SERP API can cost anywhere from well under a dollar to several dollars per 1,000 searches, depending on speed, parsing depth and support.
This guide to the top SERP APIs in 2026 compares the providers we would shortlist for SEO platforms, data teams and AI builders. We checked each vendor’s own site for pricing models, supported engines and features in October 2026. If you are new to the wider topic, our beginner’s guide to web scraping covers the fundamentals first.
SERP APIs At A Glance
Company
Headquarters
Best For
Standout Trait or Pricing Model
SerpApi
Austin, Texas, USA
Teams that want the deepest Google parsing
Monthly plans from a free tier; U.S. Legal Shield on qualifying plans
DataForSEO
Tallinn, Estonia
SEO platforms buying SERPs in bulk
Pay as you go from $0.60 per 1,000 SERPs in the standard queue
Bright Data
Netanya, Israel
Enterprises that want SERPs alongside proxies and datasets
Pay only for successful requests; pay as you go or monthly plans
Oxylabs
Vilnius, Lithuania
High-volume Google scraping with scheduling
Per-result pricing that falls with volume; plans from $30 a month
SearchApi
New York, USA
Developers who need many engines and verticals
Monthly plans from $40; legal protection guarantee from the Production plan
Serper
Not disclosed
Fast, low-cost Google results for AI agents
Credit packs from $0.30 per 1,000 queries
Decodo
Vilnius, Lithuania
Teams that want SERP and general scraping in one API
Billed per successful request; plans from $19 a month
Traject Data
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA (ScraperAPI)
Scheduled batch rank tracking
Pay as you go or credit plans; batch delivery to cloud storage
Apify
Prague, Czech Republic
No-code and workflow-based SERP extraction
Pay per scraped results page from $1.80 per 1,000
Zenserp
EU (APILayer)
Small projects that want a simple monthly plan
Free tier plus monthly plans from $49.99
Best SERP APIs In 2026
1. SerpApi — The Reference Google SERP API, With A Legal Shield
SerpApi is the product most developers mean when they say “SERP API.” The Austin company exposes well over a hundred endpoints covering Google Search and its verticals (Maps, Shopping, News, Images, Scholar, Jobs and more), plus Bing, Baidu, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, YouTube, Amazon, eBay and others. Its strength is parsing depth: local packs, knowledge panels, shopping results, People Also Ask and AI features come back as named JSON fields rather than raw HTML you have to interpret yourself.
Pricing is simple monthly tiers. A free plan includes 250 searches a month, Starter is $25 for 1,000 searches, and plans scale through Developer, Production and Big Data to custom enterprise contracts. Every request runs in real time, and the company states a 99.95% SLA. A ZeroTrace mode lets enterprise buyers stop SerpApi from storing search parameters and results, which matters for privacy-sensitive workloads.
SerpApi’s U.S. Legal Shield is the other differentiator. Under its published terms, SerpApi assumes liability for the lawful collection and parsing of public search results, with coverage up to $2 million, for claims brought under U.S. law in U.S. courts. It covers collection, not what you do with the data afterward, and applies to qualifying recurring plans. SerpApi is also the defendant in Google’s scraping lawsuit, covered neutrally in the buying section below.
Very broad engine and vertical coverage with consistent JSON schemas
Free plan with 250 searches a month for prototyping
ZeroTrace mode for no-retention requests
Best for: product teams that want the most complete Google parsing and a vendor that takes on collection liability in writing.
2. DataForSEO — Bulk SERP Data Priced For SEO Platforms
DataForSEO sells raw material to the SEO industry. Many rank trackers and keyword tools run on its data, and its SERP API is built for that kind of volume. It covers Google (organic, maps, news, images, autocomplete, datasets, ads transparency, finance and AI Mode), Bing, YouTube, Yahoo, Baidu, Naver and Seznam, returning parsed JSON or raw HTML.
The pricing model is what sets it apart. You choose speed per task: the Standard Queue costs $0.60 per 1,000 SERPs and returns results in about five minutes on average, the Priority Queue costs $1.20 and averages under a minute, and Live mode costs $2 per 1,000 with results in a few seconds. There is no subscription; you top up a balance, and new accounts start with a small trial credit. For a rank tracker that checks millions of keywords overnight, the queue model can cut costs dramatically compared with real-time-only APIs.
DataForSEO also sells keyword, backlink, on-page and business data through the same account, so an SEO tool builder can source most of its data from one vendor. The trade-off is a more technical, task-based API design and documentation aimed at engineers rather than casual users.
Best for: SEO software companies and agencies tracking large keyword sets where a few minutes of delay is acceptable.
3. Bright Data — SERP API Inside A Full Web Data Platform
Bright Data’s SERP API sits inside one of the largest web data platforms on the market, next to its proxy networks, scraper APIs and ready-made datasets. The SERP product covers Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Baidu, Yahoo and Naver, with Google-specific endpoints for Shopping, Maps, Hotels, Flights, Trends and Jobs, and output in JSON, HTML or Markdown.
You pay only for successful requests. Bright Data lists a free tier, pay-as-you-go pricing at $1.50 per 1,000 requests, and a monthly Scale plan with a lower per-request rate, plus custom enterprise terms. City-level geotargeting across 195 countries is included, and an asynchronous mode handles large batches. Bright Data also advertises a faster SERP option for latency-sensitive uses such as AI agents.
Compliance is a selling point for procurement teams. The company publishes a Trust Center with ISO certificates, SOC 2 and SOC 3 reports and an independent assurance report on its ethics controls, and it vets customers before granting access to its networks.
Best for: enterprises that want search data from the same vendor as their proxies and datasets, with documentation that satisfies security review.
4. Oxylabs — Volume-Priced Google Scraping With Built-In Scheduling
Oxylabs, based in Vilnius, offers SERP scraping through its Web Scraper API, with dedicated sources for Google Search, Ads, Images, News, Scholar and Local results, plus Bing, Baidu and Yandex. Results come back as parsed JSON or raw HTML, with geotargeting down to country, state, city or coordinates.
Pricing is per successful result and drops as volume rises. Oxylabs lists entry plans from $30 a month, with Google results ranging from roughly $0.50 to $1.35 per 1,000 depending on volume and whether JavaScript rendering is needed. A small welcome credit lets you test before buying. Large customers move to custom enterprise contracts.
The operational extras are useful for recurring jobs: a scheduler that runs queries on a timetable and delivers results straight to Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage or other S3-compatible storage, custom parsers using XPath or CSS selectors, and OxyCopilot, an AI assistant that generates request and parsing code from a prompt.
Best for: data teams running large, recurring Google collection jobs that should land in cloud storage without extra plumbing.
5. SearchApi — Wide Engine Coverage With A Legal Protection Guarantee
SearchApi, based in New York, has grown into one of the broadest search results APIs available. Alongside Google Search and its verticals it lists Bing, Baidu, Yandex, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Naver, plus marketplaces, travel sites, ad libraries and AI answer engines, around 70 API products in total. A dedicated Google AI Overview endpoint is included.
Plans are monthly and transparent: Developer is $40 for 10,000 searches, Production is $100 for 35,000, and higher tiers bring the rate down to about $1 per 1,000 searches at five million a month. New accounts get 100 free requests without a card. SearchApi advertises a 99.9% success rate and charges only for successful searches.
Like SerpApi, it offers a written Legal Protection Guarantee, available from the Production plan upward, under which it accepts responsibility for how it collects and parses public search results, with coverage up to $2 million. As with any such guarantee, it does not cover how you use the data.
Best for: developers who need many engines and verticals through one schema at predictable monthly prices.
6. Serper — Fast, Low-Cost Google Results For AI Agents
Serper is a lean Google SERP API that has become a default search tool in many AI agent frameworks because it is quick to set up, fast, and cheap. It focuses on Google only, with endpoints for Search, Images, News, Maps, Places, Videos, Shopping, Scholar, Patents and Autocomplete.
Pricing is credit-based, starting at $0.30 per 1,000 queries at higher volumes, and new accounts receive 2,500 free queries with no card required. Serper says results typically arrive in one to two seconds, which suits agents that search mid-conversation.
The trade-offs are scope and transparency. There are no other search engines, fewer parsed SERP features than the larger vendors, and less published information about the company itself, so procurement-heavy buyers may prefer a vendor with a fuller trust and legal footprint.
Best for: AI builders and prototypes that need cheap, fast Google results and nothing else.
7. Decodo — SERP Endpoints Inside A General Web Data API
Decodo, the Vilnius company formerly known as Smartproxy, now folds SERP scraping into its Web Data API, which also covers general page scraping, site mapping and crawling. Google templates include Search, Ads, AI Mode, Lens, News, Hotels, Jobs, Trends and Autocomplete, and Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Baidu are supported too.
Targeting runs across 195+ locations by country, language and device, with optional JavaScript rendering and parsed features such as ads, featured snippets and People Also Ask. Results can be synchronous or delivered as asynchronous tasks. Decodo bills only successful requests, lists entry pricing for the Web Data API from $0.15 per 1,000 requests, and offers paid plans from $19 a month, plus a free starter allowance. Check which request types the entry rate applies to before modeling costs.
Integrations with an MCP server, n8n and LangChain make it easy to plug into automation and agent workflows.
Best for: teams that want SERP data and general web scraping from one affordable API.
8. Traject Data — Batch Scheduling Built For Rank Tracking
Traject Data runs three long-standing SERP APIs, SerpWow, Scale SERP and Value SERP, and was acquired by ScraperAPI in 2026. The existing products continue while the two companies integrate, and ScraperAPI has said the platforms will come together under a single access point.
Value SERP shows the family’s approach. It returns Google results as JSON, HTML or CSV, and its standout feature is batch scheduling: you can queue up to 15,000 requests per batch, run them hourly, daily, weekly or monthly, and push results automatically to Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage or other S3-compatible storage. A Locations API helps you find the exact Google locations to target.
Value SERP pricing starts at $2.50 per 1,000 searches pay as you go, with monthly credit plans from $50 for 25,000 credits and lower per-credit rates at higher tiers. A free trial needs no card.
Best for: agencies and in-house SEO teams that run the same keyword sets on a fixed schedule and want results delivered to storage.
9. Apify — Pay-Per-Result Google Scraping With Workflow Tools
Apify, founded in 2015 and built in Prague, is a scraping and automation platform with a store of tens of thousands of ready-made “Actors.” Its own Google Search Results Scraper is a practical alternative to a pure SERP API when you want scheduling, storage, integrations and a no-code interface around the data.
The Actor extracts organic and paid results, product ads, AI Overviews and AI Mode, related queries, People Also Ask and review data. It is billed per scraped results page from $1.80 per 1,000 pages, with optional add-ons billed separately. Apify’s free plan includes $5 of monthly credit, which covers a first round of testing.
Because runs live on Apify’s platform, you can schedule them, chain them to other Actors, and send results to Google Sheets, webhooks or your warehouse. Response times are slower than a dedicated real-time SERP API, so it suits batch jobs better than live lookups.
Best for: marketing and research teams that want SERP extraction inside a broader, mostly no-code workflow.
10. Zenserp — A Simple Monthly Plan For Smaller Projects
Zenserp is an APILayer product built and hosted in the EU. It covers Google organic, image, maps, news, shopping, trends, reverse image and YouTube results, with Bing, Yandex and DuckDuckGo plus hotels, flights and jobs available on paid plans. It also parses AI Overviews.
A free plan includes 50 searches a month, and paid plans start at $49.99 for 25,000 searches, rising to 1,000,000 searches on the Enterprise tier, with a discount for annual billing. Only successful requests count toward usage. Medium and higher plans add keyword volume and CPC data, personal support and an SLA.
Zenserp lacks the parsing breadth and scale of the leaders, but for a small SaaS feature, an internal dashboard or a student project, the plan structure is easy to budget.
Best for: small teams that want an EU-hosted Google SERP API on a straightforward monthly plan.
How To Choose SERP APIs
The best SERP API is the one whose speed, parsing depth and pricing model match your workload. These questions narrow the field quickly.
Do You Need Results In Real Time Or In Batches?
An AI agent answering a user needs a Google SERP API that returns in a second or two. A rank tracker refreshing a million keywords overnight does not, and queue-based pricing such as DataForSEO’s Standard Queue or scheduled batches from Traject Data or Oxylabs can cost a fraction of real-time requests. Many teams use both: a cheap queue for bulk tracking and a live endpoint for on-demand checks. Our guide to web scraping for SEO covers how these feeds fit into an SEO workflow.
Which SERP Features Must Be Parsed?
Organic blue links are easy. Local packs, shopping carousels, People Also Ask, knowledge panels, AI Overviews and AI Mode are where vendors differ. List the features your product depends on, then run the same 100 test queries through two or three shortlisted APIs and compare the JSON. A search results API that returns raw HTML for a feature you need just moves the parsing work back to your team.
How Is Usage Billed, And What Counts As Success?
Compare the effective cost per 1,000 successful results at your real volume, not the headline rate. Check whether failed or blocked requests are free, whether JavaScript rendering or AI Overview parsing costs extra credits, whether unused credits roll over, and whether pages beyond the first ten results count as separate requests. Several vendors bill only successful requests; confirm how each defines success.
What Is The Vendor’s Legal Posture?
Legal risk is now a normal buying criterion. In December 2025 Google sued SerpApi in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that it circumvented Google’s anti-scraping system in violation of the DMCA. In July 2026 the court dismissed Google’s original claims, some without leave to amend and some with leave to amend. Google filed an amended complaint in August 2026 and SerpApi moved to dismiss it again; at the time of writing we had not seen a ruling on that motion. Separately, Reddit has sued several data providers over search-result scraping in New York. Read vendor indemnities closely: SerpApi’s U.S. Legal Shield and SearchApi’s Legal Protection Guarantee both cover data collection up to stated limits, not your downstream use, and only on qualifying plans. Ask every vendor in writing what it covers and where.
Will You Need More Than Search Results?
If you also scrape product pages, competitor sites or marketplaces, a platform such as Bright Data, Oxylabs or Decodo can cover SERPs and general scraping under one contract. If search is your only need, a specialist is often cheaper and simpler. For general scraping options, see our comparison of the best web scraping APIs in 2026 and our list of proxy-backed data extraction services.
Conclusion
There is no single best SERP API for every team. SerpApi remains the reference for parsing depth and offers a written legal shield, DataForSEO is hard to beat on cost for bulk SEO data, and Bright Data and Oxylabs suit enterprises that want search inside a broader web data platform. SearchApi and Serper cover the developer and AI agent end of the market, while Decodo, Traject Data, Apify and Zenserp fill specific niches from all-in-one scraping to scheduled batches and simple monthly plans.
Shortlist two or three, run the same test queries through each, and compare parsed output, latency and effective cost at your real volume. Read the legal terms as carefully as the pricing page, and use the data in line with search engines’ terms and the rights of the content owners whose pages appear in the results.
