---
title: "What is a SERP API? How it works, pricing and the best options (2026)"
category: "guides"
url: https://keirolabs.cloud/blog/what-is-a-serp-api
---

## The 60-second version

**A SERP API is a service that runs a search on Google (or Bing, Baidu, YouTube and others) for you and returns the search engine results page, the SERP, as structured JSON: every organic result with its position, title, URL and snippet, plus ads, maps, news, "People also ask" and the other blocks on the page.** You get what a person would see, without running browsers, proxies or parsers yourself.

- **What it is for:** rank tracking, SEO tools, price and ad monitoring, lead lists, and giving AI agents fresh Google results.
- **What it costs:** from about **$0.10 to $25 per 1,000 searches**. SerpAPI runs $3.75 to $25, Serper $0.30 to $1.00, DataForSEO from $0.60, Keirolabs SERP $0.10.
- **The catch:** SERP APIs fetch results from search engines that do not sell them. Google sued SerpAPI in December 2025; a judge dismissed its copyright claim in July 2026, but the legal and technical risk has not gone away.

**If you need Google's exact rankings, use a SERP API. If you need fresh web content for an AI model, a search API with its own index is usually cheaper and safer.** The difference is explained below.

## What is a SERP API?

**SERP stands for search engine results page: the page you see after typing a query into Google.** A SERP API returns that page as data.

You send a query and options, such as the country, language, device and page number. The provider runs the search through its own infrastructure, parses the page and sends back JSON like this:

```json
{
  "searchParameters": { "q": "best running shoes", "gl": "us", "hl": "en" },
  "organic": [
    { "position": 1, "title": "The 10 Best Running Shoes of 2026", "link": "https://example.com/best-running-shoes",
      "snippet": "We tested 60 pairs over 1,000 miles..." },
    { "position": 2, "title": "Best Running Shoes for Every Runner", "link": "https://example.org/shoes", "snippet": "..." }
  ],
  "peopleAlsoAsk": [ { "question": "Which running shoe brand is best?" } ],
  "relatedSearches": [ { "query": "best running shoes for flat feet" } ]
}
```

The exact field names differ by provider, but every SERP API gives you the same core: **position, title, URL and snippet for each organic result**, plus whatever other blocks Google showed for that query.

## How does a SERP API work?

1. **Your app sends a request** with the query and settings: `q=best running shoes`, `country=us`, `language=en`, `device=mobile`.
2. **The provider fetches the results page** from the search engine using a pool of proxies in the right country, with real browsers where JavaScript is required. Google has required JavaScript for search since January 2025, which made this step harder and more expensive.
3. **It parses the page** into fields: organic results, ads, the local map pack, shopping results, news, images, featured snippets, "People also ask", knowledge panels and related searches.
4. **It returns JSON**, usually in one to a few seconds.

**The hard part is everything you no longer maintain:** proxies that do not get blocked, browsers that pass bot checks, CAPTCHA handling, and parsers that break every time Google changes its layout. That maintenance is what you pay for.

## What can you use a SERP API for?

| Use case | What you read from the SERP |
|---|---|
| Rank tracking and SEO tools | Your position for each keyword, by country and device |
| Competitor and content research | Who ranks, their titles and snippets, "People also ask" questions |
| Ad intelligence | Which advertisers bid on a keyword and their ad copy |
| Local SEO | Map pack positions, ratings and reviews |
| Price monitoring | Shopping results and prices |
| AI agents and chatbots | Fresh links and snippets to ground an answer |
| Lead generation | Companies that rank for a niche term |

**For the first five, only a SERP API works,** because the product is Google's page itself. For AI agents, a SERP API is one option among several, and often not the best one.

## SERP API vs search API: what is the difference?

**A SERP API copies a search engine's results page; a search API returns results from its own index.** They answer the same question differently:

| | SERP API | Search API with its own index |
|---|---|---|
| Where results come from | Google, Bing, etc., fetched for you | The provider's own crawl and ranking |
| Results match Google? | Yes, exactly | No, similar but not identical |
| SERP features (ads, maps, shopping) | Yes | Mostly no |
| Page content for AI | Snippets only; you fetch pages yourself | Often included, as clean text |
| Supply risk | Depends on the search engine tolerating it | None from other engines |
| Typical price per 1,000 | $0.10 to $25 | $0.25 to $8 |
| Examples | SerpAPI, Serper, DataForSEO | Brave, Exa, Tavily, Keirolabs, Parallel |

**For an AI agent, a SERP API is usually half the job:** you get ten links and two-line snippets, then still have to fetch and clean the pages before a model can use them. A search API that returns page content does both in one call. We compare both approaches in [search API vs scraping API for LLMs](/blog/search-api-vs-scraping-api-for-llms) and test eleven providers in [best web search API for AI agents](/blog/web-search-apis-for-agents-2026).

## What are the best SERP APIs in 2026?

Prices from each vendor's pricing page, checked October 15, 2026:

| SERP API | Price per 1,000 searches | Free allowance | Engines | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| **Keirolabs SERP** | $0.10 | 1,250 credits/month, no card | Google | Cheapest organic results, plus search and extraction on the same key |
| **Serper** | $1.00 down to $0.30 by package | 2,500 queries, no card | Google | Fast, cheap Google results; simple API |
| **DataForSEO** | from $0.60 | trial credit | Google, Bing, YouTube, Yahoo, Baidu, Naver, Seznam | SEO tools at scale, many engines |
| **SerpAPI** | $25 down to $3.75 by plan | 250 searches/month | Google and many other engines | Full SERP feature coverage, legal guarantee on paid plans |

How the SerpAPI plans work out per 1,000 searches ([SerpAPI pricing](https://serpapi.com/pricing)):

| SerpAPI plan | Monthly price | Searches | Per 1,000 | Throughput |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 250 | free | 50 an hour |
| Starter | $25 | 1,000 | $25.00 | 200 an hour |
| Developer | $75 | 5,000 | $15.00 | 1,000 an hour |
| Production | $150 | 15,000 | $10.00 | 3,000 an hour |
| Big Data | $275 | 30,000 | $9.17 | 6,000 an hour |
| Searcher | $725 | 100,000 | $7.25 | 20,000 an hour |
| Volume | $1,475 | 250,000 | $5.90 | 50,000 an hour |
| Cloud 1M | $3,750 | 1,000,000 | $3.75 | 110,000 an hour |

SerpAPI does not count cached, errored or failed searches against your plan. Serper sells prepaid credits valid for six months, with 50 to 300 queries per second by package ([our Serper guide](/blog/serper-api-guide-2026)). Disclosure: Keirolabs is ours. More options in [SerpAPI alternatives](/blog/serpapi-alternatives).

## Is using a SERP API legal?

**Reading public search results through a SERP API is widely done, and in July 2026 a US court rejected Google's main copyright claim against SerpAPI, but the question is not settled.**

- **December 2025:** Google sued SerpAPI under the DMCA, arguing that getting around its anti-bot protections to collect results was illegal.
- **July 20, 2026:** Chief Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers dismissed the DMCA claim, holding that ordinary search results (URLs, snippets, factual index data) are not works protected by copyright ([PPC Land](https://ppc.land/google-loses-dmca-bid-to-treat-search-scraping-like-dvd-piracy/)). Reports say Google could amend parts of its complaint.
- **July 31, 2026:** in a separate case brought by Reddit, a New York judge largely denied SerpAPI's and Perplexity's motions to dismiss ([Parallel summary](https://parallel.ai/articles/is-scraping-google-legal.md)).

The practical risk is less a lawsuit against you than a change at Google. When Google removed the `num=100` parameter in September 2025, every tool that fetched 100 results in one request broke the same day. **Treat a SERP API as a dependency on Google's tolerance, and keep an independent-index provider as a fallback.** We cover the history in [the 2026 search API crackdown](/blog/search-api-crackdown-2026-serpapi-lawsuit-bing-shutdown). This is not legal advice.

## How do you choose a SERP API?

1. **Do you need Google's exact page?** Rank tracking, ads, shopping and local packs: yes, use a SERP API. Grounding an AI model: probably not; compare a search API first.
2. **Which SERP features do you read?** If only organic results, the cheapest options (Keirolabs, Serper, DataForSEO) cover you. If you need ads, shopping, maps and knowledge panels in detail, check each provider's parsers; SerpAPI covers the most.
3. **Which engines?** Google only, or also Bing, YouTube, Baidu? DataForSEO and SerpAPI cover many; Serper is Google only.
4. **What volume?** At 100,000 searches a month: about $10 on Keirolabs, $30 to $100 on Serper, about $60 on DataForSEO, $725 on SerpAPI.
5. **How fresh, and how fast?** Live results cost more than queued ones on some providers. If you need answers in under a second for an agent, test latency on your own queries.
6. **Test on your own keywords.** Run 50 of your real queries through two providers and compare the top 10. Free tiers cover this.

## The short answer

A SERP API returns a search engine's results page as JSON, so you can track rankings, monitor ads and prices, or feed fresh results to an agent without running scrapers. Prices run from $0.10 to $25 per 1,000 searches, and organic results are cheap almost everywhere; full SERP features and many engines cost more. If what you really need is web content for an AI model, a search API with its own index often does the job in one call, at lower cost and without depending on Google.