The best Serper alternatives in 2026, tested on 20 searches

Maybe your agent searches Google in the middle of a conversation. Maybe a rank tracker runs overnight and nobody looks until morning. Serper is built for the first case, and you pay for its speed with a prepaid pack either way.

Serper is a Google search API: send a query, get Google's results back as JSON, with "People also ask" and related searches next to the organic list. I sent the same 20 searches through Serper and AnyAPI, from "rust vs go" to "mortgage rates today", and priced four more options from their own pages.

The best Serper alternatives

• Serper for search while someone waits
• AnyAPI for background searches with nothing to prepay
• Bright Data for under 5,000 searches a month
• DataForSEO for batch jobs that can queue
• Scrapingdog for a million searches a month on a plan
• SerpApi for every engine and every field

What makes a good Serper alternative?

I'm assuming you call Google search from code, for an agent, a rank tracker, or a research job, somewhere between a few thousand and a few million times a month. Here's what I compared:

• Price per 1,000 searches at your volume, on the cheapest self-serve way to buy it.
• What you prepay and what expires.
• What comes back: organic results per search, and the extra blocks like "People also ask".
• Speed, because for a chat product it decides the choice, and for a batch job it doesn't.

I didn't check result accuracy against a real browser, or engines other than Google. Twenty searches a side is enough to see a speed gap, not enough to rank vendors on reliability.

The best Serper alternatives at a glance

Tool	Best for	What it returns	Why pick it	Pricing
Serper	Search while someone waits	Google web results with "People also ask", plus Images, News, Maps, Videos, Shopping, Scholar, and more	0.9 s median	$1.00 to $0.30 per 1,000 by pack, six-month credits
AnyAPI	Background searches with nothing to prepay	Google organic results, News, Videos, Scholar, Patents, and Autocomplete, plus 402 endpoints on the same key	A page scraper for the links that came back	$0.50 per 1,000
Bright Data	Under 5,000 searches a month	Parsed Google results with rank, title, link, and description	5,000 free a month	$1.50 per 1,000 after that
DataForSEO	Batch jobs that can queue	Google results with rank, URL, description, domain, and breadcrumb	A $0.60 queue that answered in seconds	$0.60 queued, $2.00 live
Scrapingdog	A million searches a month on a plan	Google search, plus Google Trends, Jobs, Hotels, Lens, Finance, and Patents APIs	$350 for 1,200,000 searches	$0.29 per 1,000 on Premium
SerpApi	Every engine and every field	80-plus engines with the most complete result fields	A $2M Legal Shield	$25 for 1,000 searches

Serper (best for search while someone waits)

Serper pros:

• A 0.9 second median, and no search slower than 1.2
• "People also ask" and related searches alongside the organic list
• Integrations with LangChain, CrewAI, Haystack, and Jan, and 2,500 free searches to try it

Serper cons:

• Credits expire after six months
• The smallest pack is $50
• Only the $3,750 pack is cheaper per search than paying per request

If you're building a chat product or an agent that searches mid-conversation, pick Serper. Besides web search, it covers Google Images, News, Maps, Places, Videos, Shopping, Scholar, Patents, and Autocomplete.

Its slowest call in the test was faster than AnyAPI's median, and its response carried more of the results page:

The catch is the pack. Run 10,000 searches in six months and you've paid $50 while 40,000 credits expire. Here's each pack's rate against paying per request:

It also stops at Google, so scraping the pages that came back means another vendor.

Serper pricing: 2,500 free searches; Starter $50 for 50,000 credits ($1.00 per 1,000); Standard $375 for 500,000 ($0.75); Scale $1,250 for 2.5 million ($0.50); Ultimate $3,750 for 12.5 million ($0.30); credits valid six months

AnyAPI (best for background searches with nothing to prepay)

AnyAPI pros:

• Cheaper per search than every Serper pack but the largest
• Charged per call, with nothing prepaid and nothing expiring
• The same key scrapes the pages that came back

AnyAPI cons:

• A 3.0 second median, and one search took 9.3 seconds
• About 1.6 fewer organic results a search, and no "People also ask" or related searches
• Only 43 of its 100 top-five links were also in Serper's top five

AnyAPI is a catalog of 402 data APIs you pay for per call. Its Google search returns the organic list with position, title, link, and snippet, and separate endpoints cover Google News, Videos, Scholar, Patents, and Autocomplete.

It tries its cheapest source first, which keeps the price down and costs speed. For a nightly job that doesn't matter; for a loading spinner it does.

The 20 test searches cost $0.008. At 10,000 searches in six months, the bill is $5.00 instead of $50.

The lists also ranked differently. On "rust vs go" the first three results matched Serper's exactly; on "best crm for startups" only one link was in both top fives. If you track rankings over time, pick one service and stay on it.

curl https://api.getanyapi.com/v1/run/google.search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ANYAPI_KEY" \
  -d '{"query": "serper alternative", "gl": "us"}'

AnyAPI pricing: Pay per request with no plan; Google search $0.50 per 1,000; News, Videos, Scholar, Patents, and Autocomplete $0.99 per 1,000; page scraper $0.70 per 1,000; starter balance at signup

Bright Data (best for under 5,000 searches a month)

Bright Data pros:

• 5,000 free searches every month
• Billed only on success

Bright Data cons:

• $1.50 per 1,000 past the free tier, dearer than any Serper pack

If you run a few thousand searches a month, Bright Data's SERP API costs nothing, and there's nothing to size or renew. It returns parsed Google results with rank, title, link, and description.

Bright Data pricing: 5,000 requests a month free, then $1.50 per 1,000; Scale $499 a month including 380,000

DataForSEO (best for batch jobs that can queue)

DataForSEO pros:

• $0.60 per 1,000 on the Standard Queue, which answered in 5 to 12 seconds in the September test
• Pay as you go, no subscription

DataForSEO cons:

• The live endpoint is $2.00 per 1,000
• A $50 minimum deposit
• site: operators multiply the price by five

If your code can post a batch and collect it later, DataForSEO's queue is the cheapest fast option under a million searches. It returns Google results with rank, URL, description, domain, and breadcrumb.

Its footnote allows up to 45 minutes for a queued task; the September test's tasks finished in seconds.

DataForSEO pricing: Standard Queue $0.60, Priority Queue $1.20, Live $2.00 per 1,000; $50 minimum deposit

Scrapingdog (best for a million searches a month on a plan)

Scrapingdog pros:

• $350 for 1,200,000 searches, $0.29 per 1,000 if you use all of it
• Failed requests aren't charged

Scrapingdog cons:

• A Google search is 5 credits, so every plan's credit number is five times the search count
• Monthly plans, and unused credits don't roll over

Scrapingdog sells Google search alongside separate Google Trends, Jobs, Hotels, Lens, Finance, and Patents APIs, all on one credit plan.

If you run a million searches a month, every month, its Premium plan is the cheapest rate here that doesn't need a six-month prepay. Below that, its Standard plan works out to $0.45 per 1,000.

Scrapingdog pricing: Lite $40 a month for 200,000 credits, Standard $90 for 1,000,000, Premium $350 for 6,000,000; a Google search is 5 credits

SerpApi (best for every engine and every field)

SerpApi pros:

• 80-plus engines and the most complete result fields
• A $2M Legal Shield

SerpApi cons:

• $25 for 1,000 searches on Starter, the dearest on this page

Buy SerpApi when every engine and legal cover matter more than price; the Legal Shield starts on the $150 Production plan. The best SerpApi alternative compares it with paying per request.

SerpApi pricing: 250 free searches a month; Starter $25 for 1,000; Developer $75 for 5,000; Searcher $725 for 100,000

Which Serper alternative should you use?

• Someone is waiting on the answer: Serper.
• Background jobs under about 875,000 searches a month, nothing to prepay: AnyAPI.
• Under 5,000 a month: Bright Data's free tier.
• Batch jobs that can post and collect: DataForSEO's queue.
• A million a month, every month: Scrapingdog Premium.
• Every engine, every field, legal cover: SerpApi.

The limits of this comparison

• The live test ran from one machine. Serper's side is costed at its list price.
• Bright Data, DataForSEO, and Scrapingdog prices are from the cheapest SERP API, checked September 15, 2026.
• Result counts and top-five overlap compare the two lists with each other, not with a real browser.

For every SERP API priced at three volumes, see the cheapest SERP API. For rank tracking in particular, the best rank tracking APIs tests seven on one keyword list.