Questions & answers

Among the vendors in our table, the lowest list price is DataForSEO's Standard queue at $0.60 per 1,000 SERP tasks, which works out to $0.06 per 1,000 results. Parallel's fast mode is $1 per 1,000 requests with 10 results included. Google's Custom Search API is closed to new customers. Serper is often named as a low-price option, but we have not verified its current prices.

No. Google says the Custom Search JSON API is closed to new customers. Existing setups are outside this answer. For a new project, compare the SERP APIs and AI search APIs in the table on this page, and check each vendor's own terms and limits before you commit.

No. Microsoft retired the Bing Search APIs on August 11, 2025, and new customers could no longer sign up. Microsoft's notice points developers to Grounding with Bing Search as part of Azure AI Agents. If you find an older guide that depends on the Bing API, treat its code as out of date and look for a current provider.

A SERP API returns the ranked results page for a query as structured data, with links, titles, snippets and features. An AI search API returns a short answer or passages, and some attach quotes to their source pages. If you track positions or study the page, use a SERP API. If an agent needs evidence for a claim, use an AI search API.

No. An ask call returns one short answer plus the quotes it rests on, with each quote matched word for word against its page, or a plain not found. A search call returns ranked sources with matching passages copied word for word. If you need the full page, fetch it from the source URL yourself.

Google's Custom Search API gives 100 queries a day for free, but it is closed to new customers. Brave includes $5 of free credit each month on its Search plan. Exa gives new accounts $10 of credit, which covers up to 2,500 Lite searches. Tavily's Researcher plan includes 1,000 credits a month. Hyperresearch Answers includes free credit to start.

Vendors charge in different units. Extra results, deeper modes, page fetches and advanced search types can each add cost. Tavily, for example, bills basic search at one credit and advanced search at two. Before you compare, match the units, add the extras your workload uses, and check the rate limits, since a plan may cap how fast you can run a batch.

Hyperresearch is our editorial pick across this site, based on its own BrowseComp and DeepSearchQA runs, but it is built for AI agents rather than rank tracking. For rank tracking you need the results page itself, so SerpApi and DataForSEO are the options to compare on coverage, location settings and price per 1,000 results.

Serper is the low-price raw SERP option we would test first, and its homepage offers 2,500 free queries with no credit card required. We have not verified its current list prices, so this page does not give a figure. Check the pricing page directly, then compare its cost per 1,000 results against SerpApi and DataForSEO on the same query set.

This page does not give legal advice. The terms of each search engine and data source limit what you may do with its results, and the rules can differ by country and by use. Read the terms of the engines you query and talk to a lawyer before you build a product on scraped or licensed results.

Brave lists its Answers plan at $4 per 1,000 requests, plus $5 per million input and output tokens, with $5 of free credit each month. Its Search plan costs $5 per 1,000 requests and allows 50 queries per second. Brave also runs its own independent index, which some teams want as a second source next to a main provider.

Many do, but the coverage varies by vendor. Some return ads and features as separate fields, and some group them or leave them out. Read the sample response in the docs before you build a parser. Test it on queries that trigger maps, news and featured snippets, since those are the cases where parsers most often break.