We decoded each vendor's credits into what 1,000 real searches cost.
Real per-search pricesFree tiers comparedBias disclosed up front
tldr.txt
→ crustapi tops our list: never-expiring credits, empties free, 3,000 free monthly (yes, it's ours) → serpapi for engines beyond Google and legal cover; dataforseo for cheap async bulk → watch the multipliers: some bill 5, 10, even 25 credits per Google search ! serper itself stays great for steady web-only volume burned inside 6 months
Serper.dev is a fast, cheap Google SERP API, and for a steady firehose it's genuinely hard to beat. People go looking for alternatives for three repeat reasons: credits expire after six months, empty searches still bill, and the 2,500 free queries are one-time.
Every option below is compared on the number that matters: dollars per 1,000 real Google searches, after decoding each vendor's credit math.
All prices normalized to successful Google searches from each vendor's live pricing page, July 12, 2026. Multipliers decoded per entry below. Something stale? Email support@crustapi.com and we'll fix it.
SO YOU CAN CHECK OUR WORK
How we picked
We pulled every vendor's live pricing page on July 12, 2026, and normalized to real Google searches. Where a vendor bills 5, 10, or 25 credits per search, we did that math for you.
Yes, ours, so read this entry knowing that. CrustAPI is a Google-only data API: thirteen surfaces (web, maps, places, news, shopping, images, videos, lens, scholar, patents, autocomplete, reviews, webpage) behind one endpoint, returning serper-compatible JSON.
The design goal was removing serper's three complaints. Credits never expire, empty and failed searches cost nothing, and the free tier refills monthly.
The cons: Google only, no legal shield, and it launched in 2026, so the track record is short. If you burn every credit inside six months on web search alone, serper stays cheaper and we say so.
The most established SERP API, covering Google plus 100+ APIs across other engines and platforms, from Bing to Amazon to YouTube, rated 4.8/5 on G2. You're paying for breadth, enterprise trust signals (SOC 2, ISO 27001), and their U.S. Legal Shield, not price.
Watch out for: unused searches vanish at each billing cycle's end, and the $2M Legal Shield only starts at the Production plan ($150/month). Our full comparison: CrustAPI vs SerpApi.
A quality-focused SERP API covering Google plus 60+ engines, with clean 1-request-per-search billing and a hosted MCP exposing 83 tools. The closest thing to a middle ground between serper's price and SerpApi's breadth.
Pay-as-you-go SEO data infrastructure for people building rank trackers and SEO tools. The cheapest bulk Google data on this list, if you can live with an async task queue, and deposited funds never expire, which is genuinely rare.
Watch out for: the billing model takes real study. Each unit covers 10 results (depth-100 queries cost 10x), search operators bill 5x, and the cheap rate rides a POST-then-poll workflow with a $50 minimum deposit.
The enterprise proxy giant's SERP product: Google plus six other engines across 195 countries, rated 4.7/5 on G2 (330 reviews, company-wide). Built for teams already living on their platform.
Watch out for: "pay only for success" means successful delivery, and their published billing exempts only failed requests, not empty results. Setup also runs through their full platform dashboard, which is heavy for a solo developer.
A general scraping suite (40+ endpoints from LinkedIn to Amazon) with a Google SERP API inside, all drawing on one credit pool, rated 4.7/5 on Trustpilot (585 reviews). Compelling if you want many scrape targets on one bill.
Entry, light$1.00 / 1kAdvance tier$2.00 / 1kFree tier40 searchesPer search5 to 10 creditsAgentsNo official MCP
Watch out for: the 5-to-10x credit multiplier means headline credit counts overstate Google capacity, and monthly credits reset on your billing date.
A scraping platform whose Google SERP API covers 15+ SERP features including AI Overviews, with proxies and rendering handled. Mid-pack pricing once you decode the credits, and they state plainly that failed requests are never charged.
Watch out for: the 10-credit multiplier makes plan numbers look 10x bigger than they are, and credits are monthly allotments with no documented rollover.
A popular general-purpose scraping API with a structured Google endpoint, rated 4.5/5 on Trustpilot. Great product for scraping arbitrary sites; expensive specifically for Google.
Watch out for: that 25x Google multiplier is the biggest gap between headline credits and real searches on this list, and unused credits reset at renewal.
A different animal: Tavily searches its own index and returns LLM-ready chunked content for AI agents, not Google rankings. Exa plays the same position.
Watch out for: no Google rank positions, local pack, or shopping SERPs. If your job is Google data, this isn't it; if your job is grounding an LLM, it's built for exactly that.
1 credit is one successful Google search. A search that returns nothing costs nothing, and Maps is the one exception: it bills 1 credit per business returned. Credits are prepaid and never expire.
Credits
You pay
Per 1,000
3,000 every month
Free, no card
$0
25,000
$49
$1.96
100,000
$149
$1.49
500,000
$549
$1.10
2.5 million
$1,999
$0.80
Packs continue up to 250 million credits for $100,000, which is $0.40 per 1,000. Prices ex-tax.
THREE STEPS
How do you get started?
No sales call, no card. From zero to your own comparison run in about two minutes:
Run a real query in the playground. Use one you already send serper and compare the JSON side by side.
3
Copy your key and run the curl.crustapi.com/v1/search?type=web&q=... returns the same data to your code.
WHO IT'S FOR
Who switches from serper?
AI agent builders. Official MCP, a CLI, and x402 self-payment; serper ships none of those.
Bursty or seasonal projects. Credits sit safely through quiet months instead of expiring at six.
Lead gen teams. Deeper maps records: phone, website, hours, review counts, and empties cost nothing.
Image-heavy workloads. About 100 images per credit against serper's 10 by default.
BEFORE YOU ASK
Common questions
Most on the list have free tiers, and six refill monthly. The biggest: CrustAPI at 3,000 searches a month, Bright Data at 5,000 records a month, and Tavily at 1,000 credits a month; serper's own 2,500 free queries are one-time.
For real-time Google searches at entry, serper's $1.00 per 1,000 is matched by Scrapingdog's light mode, with Bright Data at $1.50 and CrustAPI at $1.96 (falling to $0.40 at scale). DataForSEO's $0.60 per 1,000 is cheaper but async, with about a 5-minute turnaround.
Because a plan advertising 100,000 credits may bill 25 credits per Google search, which is really 4,000 searches. Always divide the credit count by the vendor's per-Google-search cost before comparing prices; the table above does it for you.
Serper wins raw entry price; we win on credits that never expire, free empty searches, ~100 images per credit, deeper maps data, and agent tooling. The full head-to-head with benchmark receipts is at crustapi.com/serper-alternative.
Billing an empty-but-successful response is common: we tested serper and a zero-result query cost 1 credit, and Bright Data bills on successful delivery regardless of result count. CrustAPI charges nothing for empty or failed searches.
WORKS WITH YOUR STACK
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Let the results decide
Shortlist two or three from the table, point your real queries at each, and compare the bills. Our side of that test costs nothing.
