Buyer's guide
Free SERP APIs in 2026
Every SERP API we track has some free allowance, but they differ on what renews each month, what needs a card and what the free searches return. Google's own free option, the Custom Search JSON API, stops on January 1, 2027. Allowances below come from vendor pricing pages checked on 2026-10-25.
Updated
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Ranking
Our picks, by use case
-
2,500 credits on signup with a GitHub or Google account, then 1,000 credits every month for verified accounts. One credit is one Google page of 10 results, in JSON, Markdown or compact text, with MCP and SDKs included.
Strengths
Recurring free Google searches, credits that never expire, and failed or empty searches never billed. Paid packs start at $10 when you outgrow it.
Watch out for
The monthly grant needs a linked GitHub or Google account, sign-up credits drop to 250 once the month's free budget is spent, and the free tier is limited to 5 requests per second.
-
2,500 free Google searches once, with no card. A minimal JSON API that many LangChain, CrewAI and Flowise examples already use.
What the free tier gives you
Enough free queries to build and test a real prototype.
Catches
The 2,500 don't renew, and paid credits expire after 6 months.
-
250 free searches a month on the broadest engine catalog (100+ APIs).
What the free tier gives you
Renews monthly and covers Google, Bing, YouTube, Amazon and more.
Catches
250 a month is small, and paid plans start at $15–25 per 1k.
-
4$1.50 → $1.00 / 1k
Bright Data
Best for: The biggest recurring free volume
5,000 SERP requests a month free on Bright Data's SERP API, on top of its proxy network.
What the free tier gives you
The most free requests per month in this list.
Catches
Account verification (KYC) can take days, the dashboard is built for proxy buyers, and paid entry is $1.50 per 1k.
-
5$1.23 → $0.35 / 1k
HasData
Best for: A small monthly allowance with simple pricing
1,000 free credits a month on HasData's Google SERP API.
What the free tier gives you
Renews monthly; paid plans drop to $0.35 per 1k.
Catches
Credits reset monthly on paid plans too.
-
6$5.00 → $5.00 (no volume discount) / 1k
Brave Search API
Best for: An independent index instead of Google
A $5 monthly credit, about 1,000 searches at Brave's $5.00 per 1k, from Brave's own web index.
What the free tier gives you
Not Google results, which some projects want; a clean, documented API.
Catches
A card is required even for the free credit, and paid use stays at $5.00 per 1k at every volume.
-
1,000 free API credits a month for AI-native search with page content and an optional answer.
What the free tier gives you
Search plus extraction in one call, already in many agent templates.
Catches
Its own index, not Google results; $7.50 → $5.00 per 1k once you pay.
-
1,000 free credits a month, which is 500 searches, shared with scrape and crawl, no card.
What the free tier gives you
Search and page scraping on one free balance.
Catches
Search costs 2 credits per 10 results; paid search is $7.60 → $1.20 per 1k.
-
Google's own API gave 100 free queries a day, then $5 per 1,000 up to 10,000 a day, from a Programmable Search Engine.
What the free tier gives you
Official and free at low volume, for projects that already have a key.
Catches
Closed to new customers, and it stops working on January 1, 2027. SerpKite's
/customsearch/v1keeps the same request anditems[]shape, so you change one hostname. -
10Custom
SearXNG (self-hosted)
Best for: Free software you run yourself
An open-source metasearch engine with a JSON output mode. You host it and it queries Google, Bing and others from your own servers.
What the free tier gives you
No per-search fee and full control.
Catches
You supply servers and IPs, Google blocks or CAPTCHAs unproxied traffic quickly, and results are unparsed beyond titles, links and snippets.
Features
Feature comparison
| SerpKite | Serper | SerpApi | Tavily | Brave | Firecrawl | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Real Google results | Own index | Own index | Unnamed upstream | |||
| Google web + core verticals News, Images, Maps, Shopping, Scholar… | News, images, video | Web, news, images | ||||
| ChatGPT / Perplexity / Gemini answers SerpKite: ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot Search, Google AI Mode and Brave | ChatGPT, Gemini (no Perplexity) | Partial | ||||
| Bing / DDG / Brave / Yandex | Bing, DDG, Brave, Yandex | Brave only | ||||
| Markdown output | Since Aug 2026 | |||||
| Resolved final URLs (post-/goto) | Guaranteed | n/a | n/a | n/a | ||
| Page content in the same call | include_content | Separate endpoint | scrapeOptions | |||
| Async batch + webhooks | 50% off | Partial | Crawl, batch scrape | |||
| Official SDKs TypeScript, Python, Go; LangChain and CrewAI tools | TS, Python, Go | 11 languages | Python, JS | Python, JS and more | ||
| Official MCP server | ||||||
| Credits never expire | 6 months | Monthly plans | ||||
| Spend caps and per-key limits | Monthly top-up limit | |||||
| Failed / empty results free | Incl. empty-200 detection | Empty free; 403/404 billed | ||||
| Public status with latency | p50 / p95 | Status page | ||||
| No query logs / DPA SerpKite: No query logs · results cached ≤ 24 h, no identity | Default | Enterprise | ZDR on Enterprise | |||
| Legal shield | No (honest policy) | $2M | ||||
| SOC 2 | Planned | Third-party audit |
Check = yes, cross = no, dash = not verified. SerpKite rows marked "Planned" are on the roadmap, not live.
Price
Price per 1,000 Google searches
| SerpKite | Serper | SerpApi | Bright Data | HasData | Brave Search API | Tavily | Firecrawl | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 2,500 on signup + 1,000/mo, no card | 2,500 once, no card | 250/mo | 5k/mo | 1k credits/mo | $5 credit, card required | 1k/mo | 1,000 credits/mo (500 searches), no card |
| Entry, ~$50 pack $ per 1k searches | $0.80 | $1.00 | $15–25 | $1.50 | $1.23 | $5.00 | $7.50 | $7.60 |
| ~100k searches / month $ per 1k | $0.60 | $0.75 | $7.25 | $1.31 | $0.50 | $5.00 | $5.00 | $1.60 |
| ~1M searches / month $ per 1k | $0.60 | $0.50 | $3.75 | $1.11 | $0.35 | $5.00 | enterprise | enterprise |
| Best public list price $ per 1k | $0.60 | $0.30 | $1.96 | $1.00 | $0.35 | $5.00 (no volume discount) | $1.20 | |
| Credit expiry | Never | 6 months | Monthly reset | Monthly | Monthly | Monthly | Monthly | Monthly (Scale: 1-month rollover) |
Public list prices for Google web search, verified on vendor pages on 2026-10-25. "Entry" is the ~$50 pack or plan (SerpKite also has a $10 pack at $1.00 per 1k). SerpKite's self-serve packs stop at 500K credits; larger volumes are quoted on request. Expiring credits raise the effective price if you don't use them in time. See SerpKite pricing.
Methodology
How we rank
We rank by fit for a use case, not by a single score. For each vendor we look at:
- Effective price: list price per 1k at four volumes, plus credit expiry and whether failed or empty results are billed.
- Correctness: Google parity of the top 10, and resolved destination URLs (after Google's
/gotochange). - Speed and reliability: p50/p95 latency and success rate, counting "200 OK, empty" as a failure.
- Agent ergonomics: output formats, token cost, MCP server, SDKs and framework integrations.
- Terms and trust: spend caps, data retention, DPA, compliance and how data is collected.
Measured results (latency, success rate, URL correctness) come from a reproducible benchmark with a public query set and scripts. Results are published monthly on /benchmarks. Until a run is published there, this ranking uses published features and list prices only, and we don't quote performance numbers.
Try it
One request to compare for yourself
curl https://api.serpkite.com/v1/search \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $SERPKITE_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"q":"best espresso machine 2026","country":"us","format":"markdown"}'1 credit per page of 10 results, SERP features included. Run it in the playground without signing up.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
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