DOCS

Call CrustAPI in 60 seconds

One endpoint for Google data. Get a key, send a request, get clean JSON back. Point an AI assistant at it over MCP, or let an agent pay for itself with x402. It's all on this page.

Quickstart

Grab a free key from your dashboard. You get 3,000 credits a month, no card. Send the key as an x-api-key header and hit one endpoint.

curl "https://crustapi.com/v1/search?type=web&q=best serp api 2026" \ -H "x-api-key: key_live_xxxx"

You pay one credit per successful search, however many results come back. Maps is the one exception, it bills one credit per business returned. Empty searches are free, and the credits you buy never expire. Every response is the same stable JSON shape, and it matches serper's, so you can point existing code at us without rewriting your parser.

The API

One endpoint, one parameter that picks the Google surface. Change type, keep everything else the same.

GET https://crustapi.com/v1/search?type=<surface>&q=<query>

The surfaces you can ask for:

typewhat you get
webGoogle web search: organic results, people-also-ask, related searches
mapsLocal businesses: name, address, phone, website, rating, review count
placesA single place in a lean, serper-exact shape
newsGoogle News: title, source, date, and a real hero image
shoppingGoogle Shopping products with prices and sellers
imagesGoogle Images results
videosGoogle Videos with direct thumbnails
scholarGoogle Scholar papers and citations
patentsGoogle Patents results
autocompleteGoogle autocomplete suggestions for a query
webpageAny URL as clean text, metadata, and JSON-LD, ready to feed an AI (RAG)
reviewsGoogle reviews for a business, with sorting and pagination

Common parameters

paramwhat it does
qYour search query. Required for most surfaces.
glCountry code, like us or gb.
hlLanguage code, like en.
locationWhere to search from, for maps and places, like Miami, FL.
limitFor type=maps: how many businesses to return. Default 20, max 100.
numFor type=reviews: how many reviews per page. Max 50.
pageWhich page of results to return.

The full machine-readable spec lives at /v1/openapi.json. Point your tooling or your agent at it.

CLI

Prefer the terminal? Install the CLI and get the same data from your shell, as JSON or CSV.

npm install -g crustapi-cli export CRUSTAPI_API_KEY=key_live_xxxx
crust "dentists in miami" crust search coffee --type maps --location "Austin, TX" --limit 20 crust search openai --type news | jq '.news[0]' crust search plumbers --type maps --csv > leads.csv crust scrape https://example.com/pricing --markdown

Output is JSON by default and pipes cleanly, the status line goes to stderr so your pipes stay clean. Pass --csv for CSV. It's on npm as crustapi-cli.

MCP for AI assistants

Give Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline, or any MCP client live Google data. There's nothing to install, npx runs it. Add this to your client config and restart it.

{ "mcpServers": { "crustapi": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "crustapi-mcp"], "env": { "CRUSTAPI_API_KEY": "key_live_xxxx" } } } }

Three tools appear. search is the whole menu behind one call, scrape_webpage turns any URL into clean text you can feed straight to an AI (RAG), and get_reviews pulls Google reviews for a business. The package is on npm as crustapi-mcp.

Agent payments (x402)

Your agent doesn't need a signup, a card, or a key to start. It can buy its own credits with x402, the open HTTP payment standard. If your agent framework already speaks x402, this works with no extra code from you.

Here's the whole handshake.

  1. Your agent calls POST /v1/x402/topup?pack=agent with no key.
  2. We answer 402 Payment Required with the amount, where to pay, and the USDC contract on Base.
  3. The agent's wallet signs a gasless USDC authorization (EIP-3009) and sends the request again with the signature.
  4. We verify and settle it on-chain, then hand back a real API key that's already loaded with credits.

From there the key works like any other. The agent calls /v1/search and spends the credits it just bought.

The 402 challenge

Call the top-up endpoint with no key and you get back the payment terms.

# ask to top up, no key curl -X POST "https://crustapi.com/v1/x402/topup?pack=agent"
402 Payment Required { "error": "Payment Required", "x402Version": 2, "accepts": [ { "scheme": "exact", "network": "eip155:8453", "asset": "0x8335…2913" } ], "pack": "agent", "priceUsd": 5, "credits": 2500 }

After payment

Your x402 client signs the authorization and retries. We settle it and return a key that's ready to use.

200 OK { "apiKey": "key_live_…", "credits": 2500, "packId": "agent", "txHash": "0x…" }

A few things worth knowing:

  • Payment is USDC on Base, and it's gasless. Your agent signs an authorization, so it doesn't need ETH to pay for gas.
  • The agent pack is a $5 first deposit for 2,500 credits. The bigger packs work the same way, just pass a different pack as you scale up.
  • Credits from an x402 payment are identical to credits bought with a card. One credit per successful search, and empty results are free.

Ask your AI

Still have questions? Copy this md file with detailed product description to ask your agent about it.

Agents can fetch it directly at crustapi.com/llms.txt.

Stuck on something that isn't here? Email support@crustapi.com and a human will answer.