SERP API Pricing Compared — Find the Best Deal

SERP API pricing is all over the map. One provider charges $0.025 per search, another charges $0.001. Same Google results, 25x price difference. The catch? Pricing structures, feature sets, and volume discounts make direct comparison harder than it should be.

This guide breaks down the actual cost of every major SERP API at common volume tiers — 1K, 10K, 50K, and 100K searches per month. No marketing fluff, just the numbers you need to make a decision.

Key Takeaways

• SearchHive SwiftSearch costs $0.0002/search at volume — 125x cheaper than SerpApi at equivalent tiers
• DataForSEO is the cheapest pure SERP API at scale (~$1/1K searches at volume)
• Google Custom Search API is effectively free up to 3,000 queries/month
• SerpApi is the most expensive option at every volume tier — you're paying for brand and reliability, not features
• ValueSERP and SearchAPI.io sit in the middle — easier migration from SerpApi, moderate pricing

How to Read This Comparison

We calculated the effective per-search cost at four volume tiers. Some providers charge per search, some per credit, some per "row." Where pricing is credit-based, we converted to per-search using the provider's own credit-to-search ratio.

Hidden costs we factored in:

• Throughput limits (if you need faster than the free tier allows)
• Engine surcharges (some charge more for Google vs Bing vs YouTube)
• Extra features (real-time vs cached, location targeting, etc.)

Pricing Breakdown by Provider

SearchHive SwiftSearch

SearchHive prices everything in credits: 1 credit = $0.0001. A SwiftSearch query costs 2 credits = $0.0002.

Credits work across all three products (SwiftSearch, ScrapeForge, DeepDive), so the effective search cost drops further if you're also using the scraping and extraction endpoints.

from searchhive import SwiftSearch

client = SwiftSearch(api_key="sh_live_...")

# 2 credits per search call
results = client.search(
    query="machine learning frameworks comparison",
    engine="google",
    num_results=10
)

# Cost: $0.0002 per call
# At 10K calls/month: $2.00 total

Key advantage: Credits are universal. 100K credits/month means you can use them for search, scraping, and extraction however you see fit.

SerpApi

SerpApi's pricing is straightforward but expensive. You pay for a monthly search allotment at each tier.

Per-search cost decreases at higher tiers but plateaus around $7-10/1K — still 14-50x more expensive than SearchHive.

import requests

params = {
    "engine": "google",
    "q": "machine learning frameworks",
    "api_key": "YOUR_SERPAPI_KEY",
    "num": 10
}
resp = requests.get("https://serpapi.com/search", params=params)
data = resp.json()

# Cost: $0.025-0.01 per call depending on plan

Google Custom Search JSON API

Google's own search API. Free tier is generous; paid tier is simple.

import requests

resp = requests.get(
    "https://www.googleapis.com/customsearch/v1",
    params={
        "key": "YOUR_API_KEY",
        "cx": "YOUR_CSE_ID",
        "q": "machine learning frameworks 2026"
    }
)

Limitation: Google web search only. No images, news, shopping, or video results in the free JSON formatter API.

DataForSEO

Pay-as-you-go with no monthly commitment. The more you buy upfront, the cheaper per unit.

import requests

resp = requests.post(
    "https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/serp/google/organic/live/advanced",
    auth=("login", "password"),
    json=[{
        "keyword": "machine learning frameworks",
        "location_code": 2840,
        "language_code": "en"
    }]
)

ValueSERP

Similar pricing model to SerpApi but slightly cheaper per search.

Bing Web Search API

Microsoft's pricing is competitive, especially at the S3 tier.

Brave Search API

Brave's independent search engine API, positioned for AI applications.

SearchAPI.io

Moderate pricing, good engine coverage.

Full Comparison at Common Volumes

At 10K searches/month:

At 100K searches/month:

Hidden Costs to Watch

1. Cached vs live results. Some providers serve cached results to cut costs. DataForSEO and SearchHive default to live results. Check the docs before assuming.

2. Engine surcharges. SerpApi charges different rates per engine. YouTube searches cost more than Google searches. Google Images costs more than Google Web. Check per-engine pricing, not just the headline rate.

3. Location targeting. Many providers charge extra for non-US locations or specific cities. SearchHive and SerpApi include basic geo-targeting; others charge per-request premiums.

4. Overages. What happens when you exceed your monthly limit? Some providers throttle (SearchHive), some charge per-request overages (SerpApi), some just block requests. Know before you go.

Verdict

The price spread in SERP APIs is absurd. For the same Google search results:

• Cheapest option: SearchHive SwiftSearch at ~$0.0002/search ($2 for 10K searches)
• Most expensive option: SerpApi at ~$0.01-0.025/search ($100-250 for 10K searches)

The gap is 50-125x for the same data. SerpApi has brand recognition and a long track record, but at this price difference, the question isn't whether to switch — it's whether to evaluate alternatives at all.

SearchHive wins on price at every volume tier and adds scraping and extraction that SerpApi doesn't offer. DataForSEO wins on per-unit price for pure SERP at very high volume. Google CSE wins for free tier generosity if you only need Google web results.

→ Get 500 free credits on SearchHive — test SwiftSearch with real queries. No credit card required.