Looking for a serper alternative?
Same JSON shape, live data, and paid funds that never expire.
✓ paid funds never expire (theirs expire at 6 months)
✓ zero-result searches cost $0 (theirs cost 1 credit in our test)
✓ ~100 images per request (theirs: 10 default, 50 at best)
✗ Google Search starts at $1.00 per 1,000 successful requests
→ speed is a wash: both answer in about a second
CrustAPI vs Serper
| CrustAPI | Serper | |
|---|---|---|
| Paid funds expire | Never | After 6 months |
| Free tier | $6 of free usage each month | 2,500 once, no card |
| Empty results | Free | 1 credit, even for zero results |
| Images per billed unit | ~100 | 10 default; 100 costs 2 credits |
| Maps data | Counts, hours, sites, stars | Lean place fields |
| Entry price | $49 deposit: 49,000 Google searches at standard prices | $50 for 50,000 |
| Batch (100 queries) | In the dashboard | API + dashboard |
| MCP for AI agents | Official (crustapi-mcp) | None official |
| CLI | crust | None official |
| Agents can self-pay | x402, no signup | No |
| Reverse image (Lens) | Yes | Yes |
Serper figures from their public site and our paid probes of their API, July 11, 2026. Anything stale? Email support@crustapi.com and we'll fix it.
The zero-result receipt
On July 11 we sent the same nonsense query to both APIs. A search that finds nothing should cost nothing, and one of them agrees.
Raw timings, both billing probes, and the exact script: the benchmark file. Re-run it yourself.
Switching is a few lines in one file
Same result arrays, same field names, same extras like knowledgeGraph and peopleAlsoAsk. We built it that way on purpose, so your parser, schema, and prompts keep working.
GET instead of POST, type= instead of a URL per endpoint, lowercase header. That's the migration.
Why people switch
Your funds stop being a countdown
Serper credits expire six months after purchase; their public Trustpilot reviews include a customer describing about $1,000 expiring. Ours never expire, and our terms say so in writing.
You only pay when it works
Pay per successful search; zero results and failures cost nothing. If 12 of your 100 lead-gen queries come back empty, you pay for 88.
The free tier refills
Serper's 2,500 free queries are one-time. Ours renews monthly: free to try, no card, so a small project may never pay at all.
More data per request
Maps includes review counts, hours, websites, and an opt-in star distribution serper doesn't sell. Shopping adds a condition field, and images are drawn below.
We measured 99 on July 11. Routinely 85 to 100.
Default. num=100 returns 100 images for 2 credits, so 50 per credit at best.
Speed, measured
Identical queries, same machine, medians. Serper won two of the four rows, and here they are anyway.
Both live in the one-second band, so switch for the economics, not speed. Raw data and the script: benchmarks/serper-crustapi-2026-07-11.txt.
How much does CrustAPI cost?
CrustAPI Google Search starts at $1.00 per 1,000 successful requests. Paid funds never expire. If your project pauses, the remaining paid balance waits for the next run:
$50 paid, 20,000 usable searches. The rest burned on the six-month clock.
Paid funds keep their saved rates and remain available until spent.
Compare image count and fields per response as well as the price of the request. CrustAPI Images uses the Google Search rate, starting at $1.00 per 1,000 successful requests.
| Deposit | Google Search / 1,000 requests | Maps / 1,000 businesses | LinkedIn Profiles / 1,000 | LinkedIn Companies / 1,000 | LinkedIn Posts / 1,000 requests | People, Jobs, Refresh / 1,000 units |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10+ | $1.00 | $1.96 | $4.00 | $3.00 | $6.00 | $1.96 |
| $149+ | $0.76 | $1.49 | $3.00 | $2.50 | $4.50 | $1.49 |
| $549+ | $0.56 | $1.10 | $2.50 | $2.00 | $3.30 | $1.10 |
| $1,999+ | $0.41 | $0.80 | $2.00 | $1.75 | $2.45 | $0.80 |
| $6,500+ | $0.33 | $0.65 | $1.75 | $1.60 | $1.95 | $0.65 |
| $27,500+ | $0.28 | $0.55 | $1.60 | $1.50 | $1.65 | $0.55 |
| $50,000+ | $0.26 | $0.50 | $1.50 | $1.50 | $1.50 | $0.50 |
| $100,000+ | $0.20 | $0.40 | $1.50 | $1.50 | $1.50 | $0.40 |
Every eligible account gets $6 of free usage monthly. Each deposit keeps its prices until spent; paid funds never expire. People and Jobs bill per successful search, Refresh per accessible profile. Full profiles in People use the read rate per full profile. See all billing details.
Larger deposits unlock lower endpoint prices. Each deposit keeps its prices until spent. See the full deposit table on the pricing page. Prices in USD, ex-tax.
When serper is the better pick: you run a steady, high-volume, web-search-only firehose and reliably burn every credit inside six months. Their raw rate at scale is hard to beat, and we say so.
Which should you pick?
Other serper alternatives
We're one option, not the only one. If neither of us fits:
How do you switch?
- Sign up. a free plan, no card, so the trial costs nothing.
- Point requests at crustapi.com/v1/search?type=web with your key in x-api-key. Run both APIs in parallel for a week (the parameter mapping is in the questions below), then cut over.
- Compare the responses and the bill, and keep whichever wins. If it's us, your serper credits have six months left anyway.
Common questions
CrustAPI’s standard Google Search price is $1.00 per 1,000 successful requests. Larger deposits lower it to $0.20. Paid funds never expire and empty searches are free. Compare the current price and returned fields for the endpoints you actually use.
Yes. All 13 surfaces are covered: web, maps, places, news, shopping, images, videos, lens, scholar, patents, autocomplete, reviews, and webpage scraping, with compatible JSON.
Yes, for what your code actually reads: web returns organic with knowledgeGraph, peopleAlsoAsk, and relatedSearches, matching serper's field names. One scoping note: our richer maps endpoint wraps its results slightly differently (the places array and fields still match). The request side is GET with a type parameter instead of POST to per-surface URLs, typically a few lines in one client file.
q, gl, hl, page, and location work the way you'd expect, and date ranges (tbs) work on web, news, images, and videos. Maps uses limit for businesses per search (up to 100), and reviews uses num for page size. We don't support num on web or images yet; images just returns about 100 every time.
Our Maps endpoint bills per business returned, starting at $1.96 per 1,000 businesses, with review counts, hours and websites. Places uses one charge per successful search at the Google Search rate, starting at $1.00 per 1,000 requests.
New, launched in 2026, and we won't pretend otherwise; what de-risks it: no contract, paid funds never expire, and the free tier is big enough to test with for real. If you're moving serious volume, email support@crustapi.com with your numbers first and we'll tell you straight whether we can carry it.
The status page at status.crustapi.com is public and externally monitored. Failures return clean JSON errors your retry logic can handle, and failed requests are never billed, so an outage costs you nothing. When something does break, email support@crustapi.com and a human answers.
No. The $6 free allowance resets monthly on the date shown in Billing. Paid funds remain available until spent. Existing unused free usage is protected separately during the transition until its original reset date.
That's our problem. We run the scraping infrastructure, monitor every surface, and fix breakage on our side. You keep calling the same endpoint.
Run the test yourself
Point your real queries at both APIs for a day. It costs nothing on our side, and the results decide, not this page.
Try for free