Does the API return full-resolution images?

It returns the original image_url as Google indexes it, plus width and height, and a thumbnail. The image itself is served by the source site.

Can I turn on SafeSearch?

Yes, pass safe=active. The default is off.

Can I search by image instead of by text?

Use the Google Lens API (/v1/lens) for reverse image search. /v1/images is text-to-image search.

How much does it cost?

1 credit per page of results. Failed or empty calls are free.

POST /v1/images

Google Images API

Image search results from Google with the original image URL, dimensions, thumbnail and the page it came from. Filter by SafeSearch and recency.

Get a free API key Try in playground

1 credit per page of results 2,500 free credits, no card Failed calls are free

Overview

What the Google Images API does

The Google Images API returns the Images tab as JSON. Each result includes the full-size image_url with image_width and image_height, a thumbnail_url, and the link and domain of the page that hosts the image.

Image rights belong to their owners. Use the source page to check licensing before you reuse an image; SerpKite returns links, it does not re-host images.

What you get

images[] array: position, title, image_url, image_width, image_height, thumbnail_url, source, domain, link.
request object: Echo of the normalized request (endpoint, engine, q, country, language, page…), handy for logging.
meta object: request_id, credits_used, cached, engine, latency_ms, resolved_urls and parse_quality. parse_quality=empty means the call was not billed.

Request

POST /v1/images

cURL

Python

TypeScript

fetch

PHP

curl https://api.serpkite.com/v1/images \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SERPKITE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"q":"mid-century modern living room","country":"us"}'

Response (illustrative, placeholder domains)

200 OK · application/json

{
  "request": {
    "endpoint": "images",
    "engine": "google",
    "q": "mid-century modern living room",
    "country": "us",
    "language": "en",
    "page": 1
  },
  "results": [
    {
      "position": 1,
      "title": "Mid-century modern living room with walnut sideboard",
      "image_url": "https://interiors.example.com/uploads/mcm-living-room.jpg",
      "image_width": 1600,
      "image_height": 1067,
      "thumbnail_url": "https://thumbs.example.net/mcm-living-room-thumb.jpg",
      "source": "Example Interiors",
      "domain": "interiors.example.com",
      "link": "https://interiors.example.com/mid-century-living-rooms"
    }
  ],
  "meta": {
    "request_id": "req_01J8ZK4M6Q2V7",
    "credits_used": 1,
    "engine": "google",
    "cached": false,
    "latency_ms": 812,
    "resolved_urls": true,
    "parse_quality": "ok"
  }
}

Every response also carries X-Credits-Used, X-Credits-Remaining, X-Cache and X-Tokens-Estimate headers. Run this query in the playground

Reference

Parameters

The parameters /v1/images accepts, in the JSON body or the query string.

Google Images API parameters
Name	Type	Default	Description
`q` required	string	–	The search query. Required. Up to 2,048 characters.
`country`	string	us	Country to search from, as a two-letter ISO code (us, gb, de, in…).
`language`	string	en	Interface language, as a language code (en, de, fr, pt-BR…).
`num`	integer	10	Results per call. 10 per page; 100 fetches the top 100 as a depth bundle for 7 credits instead of 10. Values: 10, 20, 30, 50, 100.
`page`	integer	1	Results page, 1–10. Each page is billed separately.
`time`	string	–	Restrict to recent results. Shorthand for tbs=qdr:*. Values: hour, day, week, month, year.
`safe`	string	off	SafeSearch filtering. Values: off, active.
`format`	string	json	Response format. markdown is LLM-ready prose; compact is JSON with only the fields agents need. Values: json, compact, markdown.
`fields`	string	–	Comma-separated projection, e.g. results.title,results.link,knowledge_graph. Cuts tokens.
`max_age`	integer	–	Accept a cached result up to this many seconds old. Cache hits cost 50% of the credits.

Full reference, error codes and headers are in the API docs. Send a JSON array of up to 100 request objects to run them in one call.

Use cases

What people build with the Google Images API

Visual research

Collect reference images for design, moodboards or product ideas.

Dataset bootstrapping

Find candidate images and their source pages to review for a dataset.

Image SEO

See which pages rank in Google Images for your keywords.

Multimodal agents

Give a vision model real images to inspect, with the page they came from.

Pricing