Top 10 SerpApi Alternatives for Search API Developers

SerpApi has been the go-to Google search API for years, but its pricing escalates fast. At $25/1K searches on the starter plan and scaling up to $3,750/month for 1M searches, developers building search-heavy applications often outgrow SerpApi quickly. Whether you need cheaper rates, broader search coverage, or a unified search plus scraping solution, there are strong alternatives worth evaluating.

This guide breaks down 10 SerpApi alternatives with real pricing, feature comparisons, and code examples so you can pick the right fit for your stack.

Key Takeaways

• SerpApi starts at $25/1K searches and hits $3,750/1M — among the most expensive options
• SearchHive offers search, scraping, and deep research from one API starting at $9/5K credits
• Serper.dev and Brave Search API are the cheapest dedicated search alternatives
• Tavily is purpose-built for AI agents with structured output
• Exa provides the fastest search for agent loops (sub-200ms)

1. SearchHive

SearchHive combines search, scraping, and deep research into a single API — something no other service on this list does at this price point. Instead of paying for a search API and a separate scraping API, SearchHive credits work across SwiftSearch, ScrapeForge, and DeepDive endpoints.

Pricing: Free 500 credits, Starter $9/5K, Builder $49/100K, Unicorn $199/500K. At the Builder tier, that's roughly $0.0005/credit — orders of magnitude cheaper than SerpApi.

import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.searchhive.dev/v1/swiftsearch",
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"},
    json={"query": "best python web scraping libraries 2026", "limit": 10}
)

for result in response.json()["results"]:
    print(f"{result['title']}: {result['url']}")
    print(result["snippet"][:150])
    print("---")

Why it beats SerpApi: SearchHive gives you web search and web scraping in the same API. One integration, one billing cycle. The Builder plan at $49/100K credits compares to SerpApi's Production tier at $150/15K — that's roughly 15x more queries for one-third the cost.

Best for: Developers who want search plus scraping from a single vendor without juggling multiple API keys.

/compare/serpapi

2. Serper.dev

Serper.dev focuses on Google search results with a clean, fast API. No bloated features — just search results in free JSON formatter.

Pricing: 2,500 free searches on signup, then pay-as-you-go: $50/50K ($1/1K), $375/500K ($0.75/1K), $1,250/2.5M ($0.50/1K). Credits valid for 6 months.

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://google.serper.dev/search",
    headers={"X-API-KEY": "YOUR_KEY"},
    params={"q": "machine learning frameworks comparison"}
)

for organic in response.json().get("organic", []):
    print(f"{organic['title']} - {organic['link']}")

Why it beats SerpApi: Serper's per-search cost drops to $0.50/1K at scale versus SerpApi's $3.75/1K. If you only need Google search and nothing else, Serper is the clear price leader.

Best for: Teams doing high-volume Google search only.

3. Tavily

Tavily is built specifically for AI agents. Instead of raw search results, it returns optimized, token-efficient content ready for LLM context windows.

Pricing: Free 1,000 credits/month, pay-as-you-go $0.008/credit, Project plans start at 4,000 credits/month.

import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.tavily.com/search",
    json={
        "api_key": "YOUR_KEY",
        "query": "latest developments in transformer architectures",
        "include_answer": True,
        "max_results": 5
    }
)

data = response.json()
print(f"Answer: {data.get('answer', 'N/A')}")
for r in data.get("results", []):
    print(f"  {r['title']}: {r['url']}")

Why it beats SerpApi: Tavily's output is pre-processed for AI consumption — no need to parse raw HTML or handle search result formatting. If you're building an agent, this saves significant token-wrangling code.

Best for: AI agent developers who need search results optimized for LLM context.

4. Brave Search API

Brave's search API uses their independent search index — no Google dependency, no proxy scraping of Google results.

Pricing: $5/1K web searches, $4/1K AI answers, $5 free credits/month.

import requests

headers = {"X-Subscription-Token": "YOUR_KEY"}
response = requests.get(
    "https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search",
    headers=headers,
    params={"q": "react server components tutorial", "count": 10}
)

for web in response.json().get("web", {}).get("results", []):
    print(f"{web['title']} - {web['url']}")

Why it beats SerpApi: Brave uses its own index, which means no legal exposure from scraping Google. The $5/1K rate is competitive with Serper and much cheaper than SerpApi. Plus, the $5/month free credits are genuinely useful.

Best for: Projects that need a legally clean, independent search index.

5. Exa (formerly Metaphor)

Exa specializes in high-quality semantic search optimized for AI use cases, with latency as low as 180ms per query.

Pricing: Search $7/1K, Deep Search $12/1K, Answer $5/1K, Contents $1/1K pages.

import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.exa.ai/search",
    headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_KEY"},
    json={
        "query": "academic papers on retrieval augmented generation",
        "numResults": 10,
        "type": "auto"
    }
)

for result in response.json().get("results", []):
    print(f"{result['title']} (score: {result.get('score', 'N/A')})")
    print(f"  {result['url']}")

Why it beats SerpApi: Exa's semantic search returns conceptually relevant results, not just keyword matches. For research agents and RAG pipelines, this matters. The 180ms latency option is also significantly faster than SerpApi's typical response times.

Best for: RAG pipelines, research agents, and applications needing semantic relevance.

6. Firecrawl

Firecrawl focuses on turning websites into clean, LLM-ready data. While not a search API per se, it's what many developers use alongside (or instead of) SerpApi for content extraction.

Pricing: Free 500 credits (one-time), Hobby $16/3K/mo, Standard $83/100K/mo, Growth $333/500K/mo, Scale $599/1M/mo.

from firecrawl import FirecrawlApp

app = FirecrawlApp(api_key="YOUR_KEY")
result = app.scrape_url("https://example.com/blog/post")
print(result["markdown"][:500])

Best for: Projects that need structured content extraction more than raw search results.

/compare/firecrawl

7. ScrapingBee

ScrapingBee provides a headless browser API that handles JavaScript rendering, proxy rotation, and CAPTCHA solving.

Pricing: Freelance $49/250K credits, Startup $99/1M, Business $249/3M. JavaScript rendering costs 5 credits per request.

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/",
    params={
        "api_key": "YOUR_KEY",
        "url": "https://example.com",
        "render_js": "true",
        "extract_rules": '{"title": "h1", "description": "p"}'
    }
)
print(response.json())

Best for: Scraping JavaScript-heavy single-page applications.

8. ScrapeGraphAI

ScrapeGraphAI uses AI to extract structured data from websites using natural language prompts.

Pricing: Free 50 credits, Starter $17/60K credits per year, Growth $85/480K/yr, Pro $425/3M/yr. SmartScraper costs 10 credits per page.

from scrapegraphai.graphs import SmartScraperGraph

graph = SmartScraperGraph(
    prompt="Extract product name, price, and rating",
    source="https://example.com/products",
    config={"llm": {"model": "gpt-4o-mini"}}
)
result = graph.run()
print(result)

Best for: Teams that want natural language-driven data extraction without writing CSS selectors.

9. Bing Custom Search API

Microsoft's search API provides access to Bing's index. Now available through Azure Cognitive Services.

Pricing: S1 tier $3/1K transactions, S2 $6/1K, S3 $12/1K. Free tier: 1,000 transactions/month.

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search",
    headers={"Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key": "YOUR_KEY"},
    params={"q": "python async web scraping", "count": 10}
)

for page in response.json().get("webPages", {}).get("value", []):
    print(f"{page['name']}: {page['url']}")

Best for: Enterprise applications already in the Microsoft/Azure ecosystem.

10. You.com Search API

You.com provides a search API with AI-summarized results, built for integration with language models.

Pricing: Free tier available, paid plans based on usage. Contact for volume pricing.

Best for: Quick prototyping and teams wanting AI-summarized search results out of the box.

Comparison Table

Verdict

If you need pure Google search at scale, Serper.dev is the cheapest option with costs dropping to $0.50/1K. If you're building AI agents, Tavily or Exa are purpose-built for that use case.

But if you need search and scraping from one API — which is increasingly common when building data pipelines and agents — SearchHive offers the best value. At $49/100K credits covering both search and scraping, it replaces the need for SerpApi plus a separate scraping API. The unified approach cuts integration complexity and cost significantly.

Get started with 500 free credits — no credit card required.

/blog/best-search-apis-for-ai-agents-real-time-data-access-compared