Search & SERP APIs
Structured search results for agents, RAG grounding and SEO data, from classic SERP scrapers to neural and agent-first search.
| Vendor | Free tier | Paid plans | MCP / agent support | Verification |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tavily | 1,000 API credits/month, no card. Free for students; 100k free credits advertised for startup-program applicants. | from $30/mo | Yes | full verification |
| Exa | $10 of credits every month plus a $10 onboarding bonus, no payment method. | usage-based / pay as you go | Yes | full verification |
| SerpApi | 250 searches/month, 50/hour throughput. | from $25/mo | Yes | full verification |
| Brave Search API | $5 in free credits each month (about 1,000 searches); card required for verification. | usage-based / pay as you go | Yes | full verification |
| Firecrawl also | 1,000 credits/month, no card (about 1,000 pages or 500 searches), 2 concurrent requests. | from $19/mo | Yes | full verification |
| Bright Data also | Unlocker and SERP APIs: 5K requests/month free, no card (as stated on their pricing pages). Browser API page lists a 1 GB monthly free tier. | from $499/mo | Yes | full verification |
| Oxylabs also | $5 welcome credit toward any product (one-time as described), no ongoing free tier stated. | from $30/mo | Yes | full verification |
| ScraperAPI also | 1,000 free credits/month (max 5 concurrent) per the FAQ; 7-day trial with 5,000 credits. | from $49/mo | Yes | partial verification |
| Browserbase also | Free plan: 1 browser hour, 3 concurrent browsers, 1,000 search and 1,000 fetch calls, $5 in model tokens. | from $20/mo | Yes | full verification |
| Jina Reader also | No-key Reader at 20 RPM; new API keys come with 10M free tokens. | usage-based / pay as you go | Yes | partial verification |
Read the rankings carefully. Each vendor's best published price is shown, which is often on a larger plan. Rows marked component only exclude other charges; see methodology. Prices only, not quality.
AI/agent search query
One web search for an LLM/agent (about 10 results).
| # | Vendor | Plan / rate | Price per 1,000 | Monthly spend needed | Billing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jina Reader | $50 pack (s.jina.ai minimum) | $0.50 per 1,000 | none | prepaid |
| 2 | Browserbase | Parallel Fast | $1.00 per 1,000 | $20/mo | payg |
| 3 | Firecrawl | Standard | $1.66 per 1,000 | $83/mo | annual |
| 4 | Exa | Instant search | $4.00 per 1,000 | none | payg |
| 5 | Brave Search API | Search | $5.00 per 1,000 | none | payg |
| 6 | Hyperbrowser | All plans | $5.00 per 1,000 | none | payg |
| 7 | Tavily | Growth | $5.00 per 1,000 | $500/mo | monthly |
SERP query (structured search results)
One search-engine results page returned as structured data.
| # | Vendor | Plan / rate | Price per 1,000 | Monthly spend needed | Billing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Crawl4AI | Cloud Scale | $0.6653 per 1,000 | $499/mo | monthly |
| 2 | Oxylabs | Flexible - Google non-JS | $0.70 per 1,000 | $500/mo | monthly |
| 3 | Bright Data | SERP Scale ($499) | $1.31 per 1,000 | $499/mo | monthly |
| 4 | Apify | Business (SERP proxy) component only | $1.70 per 1,000 | $999/mo | monthly |
| 5 | ScraperAPI | Scaling (Google = 25 credits) | $2.38 per 1,000 | $475/mo | monthly |
| 6 | SerpApi | Big Data | $9.17 per 1,000 | $275/mo | monthly |
Head-to-head comparisons · Which tool should I pick?