Scraping search engine results pages (SERPs) has become harder than ever. Google now requires JavaScript rendering to display search results, which means your requests library and BeautifulSoup combo won’t get you very far. Add Cloudflare protection, CAPTCHAs, and constantly changing page structures to the mix, and you’re looking at a full-time maintenance job just to keep your scraper running.

SERP APIs solve this by handling proxies, browser automation, and anti-bot bypassing for you. You make an API call, you get structured JSON back.

This guide covers 9 SERP scraper APIs across three categories: tools for SEO and marketing teams, developer-friendly options for easy integration, and enterprise solutions for high-volume operations. The right choice depends on what you’re building.

We grouped 9 SERP APIs into three categories based on their strengths.

Quick picks by use case:

• Multi-engine SEO campaigns → SerpApi
• Keyword and backlink data → DataForSEO
• Cheapest Google-only option → Serper
• AI and RAG applications → Firecrawl
• Beginner-friendly onboarding → ScrapingBee
• Fastest response times → Scrapingdog
• Enterprise scale with compliance → Bright Data
• Scheduled recurring scrapes → ScraperAPI
• Maximum flexibility and custom scrapers → Apify

Here is a reference table:

Let’s break it down.

What is a SERP (Search Engine Results Page)?

When you type something into Google or another search engine and hit enter, the page that pops up with all the results is called a SERP. It’s basically the list of websites, answers, and other information the search engine thinks will help you.

What is a SERP Scraper?

A SERP scraper is a tool that automatically grabs information from search results pages. Instead of a person manually copying details, the scraper does it automatically - it requests search results, downloads the page, and pulls out useful information like page titles, website links, descriptions, where each result ranks, which ones are ads, and any special features like knowledge panels or featured snippets.

What is a SERP Scraper API?

A SERP scraper API is a service that lets you collect search engine data through code. Instead of building your own scraper from scratch, you send a request to the API with your search query, and it returns organized data from the search results. This makes it easier for developers and businesses to gather search data at scale without worrying about technical challenges like avoiding blocks or handling different result formats.

Traditional scraping means running your own infrastructure: headless browsers, proxy pools, CAPTCHA solvers, and code that breaks every time Google updates their HTML. A SERP API handles all of that on the provider’s servers. You send a query, they return the results.

What you get back depends on the provider:

• Basic APIs return organic results and ads
• Advanced APIs include local packs, shopping listings, image carousels, and AI overviews
• Multi-engine APIs support Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, and platforms like Google Maps or YouTube

Most charge between $1 and $15 per 1,000 searches, with free tiers ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand requests.

We reviewed over a dozen SERP APIs and narrowed down to 9. The market has plenty of options, but not all of them handle the hard parts well or fit every use case. Here’s what separated the ones that made the cut from the rest:

• Success rates above 90% across different query types and search engines
• Output format that gives you structured JSON, not raw HTML you have to parse yourself
• Pricing transparency with clear models and usable free tiers
• Developer experience including solid documentation, SDK support, and quick time-to-first-request
• Multi-engine coverage for teams that need Bing, Yandex, or Baidu alongside Google

The 9 that passed these filters naturally grouped into three categories based on their strengths: tools optimized for SEO and marketing workflows, developer-friendly options for fast integration, and infrastructure built for high-volume enterprise operations.

These tools are built for teams that live in spreadsheets, dashboards, and rank tracking software. They prioritize multi-engine coverage, SEO-specific metrics, and integrations with marketing workflows.

SerpApi is the closest thing to an industry standard in the space of SERP scraper APIs.

It supports over 80 search engines including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, and even niche platforms like Google Shopping, Google Jobs, and Apple App Store. If you need data from multiple sources, this is the API that covers the most ground.

The output is well-structured JSON with organic results, ads, featured snippets, knowledge panels, and related searches all parsed out. You get location and device targeting, plus a search archive that stores your past API requests for up to 31 days. The documentation is thorough and there are SDKs for Python, Ruby, Node, Java, and more.

Pricing starts at $75/month for 5,000 searches, which works out to about $15 per 1,000 requests. That’s on the expensive side compared to alternatives, but the breadth of coverage and reliability justify it for teams running multi-platform SEO campaigns. There’s a free tier with 250 searches/month to test things out.

Best for: SEO agencies and marketing teams that need data from multiple search engines in one place.

DataForSEO built its entire platform around the needs of SEO professionals.

Beyond basic SERP scraping, it offers keyword difficulty scores, search volume estimates, backlink analysis, and competitor tracking through a unified API. If you’re building an SEO tool or dashboard, having all of this in one place saves you from stitching together multiple services.

The API returns structured JSON and supports Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex. One standout feature is AI-generated summaries of search results, which can speed up content analysis workflows. There are no monthly quotas, just rate limits, so you pay for what you use without worrying about hitting a cap mid-month.

Pricing follows a pay-as-you-go model with a $50 minimum deposit. Costs vary by endpoint, but SERP data runs around $0.60 to $2.00 per 1,000 requests depending on queue type. Response times range from near-instant on Live Mode to several minutes on Standard Queue, so choose based on your latency requirements.

Best for: Teams building SEO tools or dashboards that need SERP data alongside keyword and backlink metrics.

Serper takes a different approach: do one thing well and keep it affordable.

It focuses on Google search data and optimizes for speed and simplicity. Response times typically land in the 1-3 second range, making it one of the faster options available.

This SERP scraper API returns clean JSON with organic results, ads, knowledge graphs, and related searches. No frills, no complex configuration. You make a request, you get results. The free tier includes 2,500 queries to get started, which is enough to build and test a project before committing to a paid plan.

Paid pricing starts at $50 for 50,000 queries, working out to about $1 per 1,000 requests. At higher volumes, rates drop to around $0.30 per 1,000. That’s significantly cheaper than SerpApi, though you’re limited to Google. For teams that only need Google data and want to keep costs low, Serper hits a good balance between price and performance.

Best for: Developers and small teams focused on Google search data who want fast responses and low costs.

SerpApi takes this category. While DataForSEO offers deeper SEO metrics and Serper wins on price, SerpApi’s coverage across 80+ search engines makes it the most versatile choice for marketing teams running multi-platform campaigns. The higher cost per request pays off when you need Google, Bing, Yahoo, and niche platforms like Google Shopping or YouTube in one integration.

These APIs prioritize clean integration, minimal setup, and output formats that work without extra parsing. If you want to go from zero to working code in under 10 minutes, start here.

Firecrawl combines search and scrape into a single API call. The /search endpoint returns results from web, news, and image sources, with optional filtering by category like GitHub repositories, research papers, or PDFs. When you enable scraping, you get full page content in markdown alongside the search results.

The search endpoint supports location targeting and time-based filtering for recent results. Output formats include markdown, HTML, rawHtml, screenshots, and extracted links. The markdown is clean enough to feed directly into RAG pipelines or language models without additional parsing.

Firecrawl goes beyond search with endpoints for crawling entire sites, mapping all URLs on a domain, and extracting structured data using AI. The API handles JavaScript rendering and anti-bot protection automatically. It can also perform page actions like clicking and scrolling before extraction, which helps with dynamic content. Native integrations exist for Langchain, LlamaIndex, OpenAI, Anthropic, N8N, and Zapier.

Firecrawl offers a free tier with 500 credits. The Hobby plan costs $16/month for 3,000 credits, Standard is $83/month for 100,000 credits, and Growth runs $333/month for 500,000 credits. Search costs 2 credits per 10 results; scraping adds 1 credit per page.

Best for: Developers building AI applications who need search results with full page content in a single call.

Scrapingdog earned a spot here based on performance. Independent benchmarks put it among the fastest SERP APIs available, with response times consistently under 3 seconds. When speed matters, those numbers make a difference.

The Google SERP API returns structured JSON with organic results, People Also Ask, related searches, and knowledge panels. There’s also support for Google Maps, News, Shopping, and image search through dedicated endpoints. Proxy rotation, CAPTCHA solving, and JavaScript rendering are all handled automatically.

Integration is straightforward. Pass your API key and query parameters, get JSON back. The documentation covers Python, Node, PHP, Ruby, and cURL with copy-paste examples for common use cases.

Pricing starts with a free tier of 1,000 credits. Paid plans begin at $40/month for 200,000 API credits. Note that Google SERP requests cost 5 credits each, so that works out to 40,000 searches per month on the base plan. At higher volumes, costs drop significantly.

Best for: Developers who need fast response times, especially for real-time applications.

ScrapingBee positions itself as the beginner-friendly option. The onboarding flow walks you through your first request, and the documentation includes copy-paste examples for common use cases. If you’re new to SERP scraping, the learning curve is gentler here than with most alternatives.

The Google Search API returns JSON with organic results, ads, related searches, and People Also Ask sections. Beyond Google, there’s support for general web scraping with JavaScript rendering, screenshot capture, and data extraction. The same API key works across all endpoints, so you can expand beyond SERP data without managing multiple services.

One practical feature is the no-code scraping tool built into the dashboard. You can test queries and see results before writing any code. For teams with mixed technical backgrounds, this makes prototyping faster.

Pricing starts at $49/month for 250,000 API credits. There’s a free trial with 1,000 credits to test. The cost per request varies by feature, with basic SERP scraping using fewer credits than JavaScript-rendered pages.

Best for: Teams new to SERP scraping who want guided onboarding and room to expand into general web scraping.

Firecrawl wins this category. Scrapingdog is faster and ScrapingBee has smoother onboarding, but Firecrawl does more in fewer API calls. The /search endpoint handles web, news, and image sources with category filtering. The crawl, map, and extract endpoints cover most data collection needs. And the markdown output works with Langchain, LlamaIndex, and OpenAI out of the box.

These platforms are built for high-volume operations where you need millions of requests per month, custom infrastructure, or access to a wide range of pre-built scrapers. Expect enterprise pricing, but also enterprise-grade reliability.

Bright Data operates at a different scale than most SERP APIs. Their proxy network includes over 150 million residential IPs across 195 countries, which translates to high success rates even on heavily protected sites. The SERP API sits on top of this infrastructure, offering Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, and Baidu coverage.

Beyond raw SERP data, they provide over 120 pre-built scrapers for specific platforms like Amazon, LinkedIn, and social media sites. The Web Scraper IDE lets you build custom scrapers without managing infrastructure. For teams with compliance requirements, there are GDPR and CCPA features built into the platform.

The platform supports both real-time and asynchronous requests, with results delivered as structured JSON. You can filter by location down to city level, specify device types, and set up scheduled scraping jobs. Enterprise features include dedicated account managers, SLAs, and custom proxy configurations.

Pricing is custom and typically starts in the hundreds per month. They offer pay-as-you-go options starting around $0.001 per request at high volumes, but you’ll need to contact sales for exact quotes. There’s a free trial to test the infrastructure.

Best for: Enterprise teams running millions of requests who need global coverage and compliance features.

ScraperAPI has been around since 2018 and now handles over 36 billion requests monthly. The Google Search endpoint returns structured JSON with organic results, ads, People Also Ask, and knowledge panels. For other search engines like Bing and Yahoo, you can use their general web scraping API.

One feature that sets them apart is scheduled scraping. You can set up recurring jobs that run daily, weekly, or on custom intervals, with results delivered to a webhook or stored for later retrieval. This is useful for rank tracking and monitoring use cases where you need consistent data over time.

The API handles proxy rotation and CAPTCHA solving automatically. There are premium and ultra premium proxy tiers for difficult targets that use residential IPs and browser rendering at higher credit costs. Geographic targeting covers most major regions.

Pricing starts at $49/month for 100,000 API credits on the Hobby plan. The Startup plan at $149/month includes 1 million credits and adds concurrent request limits. At enterprise scale, rates drop below $0.001 per request. There’s a 7-day free trial with 5,000 credits to test, plus an ongoing free tier with 1,000 credits monthly.

Best for: Teams that need scheduled, recurring SERP data collection with reliable infrastructure.

Apify takes a marketplace approach. Instead of one monolithic API, they host over 10,000 pre-built scrapers called “Actors” that you can run on their cloud infrastructure. For SERP scraping, the Google Search Results Scraper is the most popular, returning organic results, ads, People Also Ask, and related searches in JSON format.

The marketplace model means you’re not limited to what one company builds. Community developers contribute scrapers for specific use cases, and you can modify or build your own using their SDK. If you need to scrape a niche site that other SERP APIs don’t cover, chances are someone has already built an Actor for it.

All Actors run on Apify’s managed infrastructure, so you don’t need to provision servers or manage proxies. You can schedule runs, chain Actors together into workflows, and store results in their integrated dataset storage. The platform handles scaling automatically based on your workload.

Pricing works on a usage-based model. The free tier includes $5 of platform credits monthly. Paid plans start at $39/month for the Starter tier, which includes $39 in credits plus additional features like more concurrent actors and longer data retention. Enterprise plans offer custom pricing and dedicated support.

Best for: Teams who need flexibility and access to a wide range of pre-built scrapers beyond just SERP data.

Bright Data takes this category. ScraperAPI’s scheduling features and Apify’s marketplace flexibility are both strong, but Bright Data’s infrastructure is in a different league. The 150 million IP proxy network, combined with 120+ pre-built scrapers and enterprise compliance features, makes it the strongest option for high-volume operations. If you’re processing millions of requests, the reliability and global coverage justify the enterprise pricing.

Nine tools is a lot to sort through. Here’s how to narrow it down based on what you’re actually building.

Choosing by use case

For AI and RAG applications, Firecrawl stands out because it returns full page content in markdown rather than just snippets. That output format works directly with language models without extra parsing. For a deeper comparison of search APIs built for AI workflows, see our guide to web search APIs for AI applications.

Free tier comparison

Pricing by budget level

DIY vs API decision matrix

Read our detailed guide on web scraping for beginners for more info.

Scraping public data has legal precedent on its side. The hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn case established that accessing publicly available information doesn’t violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Search results are public by definition, so SERP scraping falls into this category.

That said, Google’s terms of service prohibit automated access to their search results. ToS violations are civil matters rather than criminal ones, and when you use a SERP API, the provider assumes this risk on your behalf. That’s part of what you’re paying for.

A few practices keep you on solid ground: respect the rate limits your API provider sets, don’t republish raw SERP data as original content, and use the data for analysis or research rather than impersonation. Check your provider’s terms for specific restrictions on how you can use the data.

This isn’t legal advice. If your use case involves significant commercial risk, consult an attorney familiar with data scraping law.

The right SERP API depends on what you’re building. For SEO and marketing teams that need multi-engine coverage, SerpApi’s breadth across 80+ search engines makes it the most versatile choice. Developers building AI applications will get the most out of Firecrawl’s combined search-and-scrape approach with markdown output. Enterprise operations running millions of requests need infrastructure like Bright Data’s 150 million IP proxy network.

Don’t pick based on price alone. A cheap API that doesn’t cover your search engines or returns data in the wrong format will cost you more in workarounds than a pricier tool that fits your workflow.

Most of these tools offer free tiers, so test before you commit. Start with your use case, try a few options, and scale up once you know what works.

Is it legal to scrape Google search results?

Yes. The hiQ v. LinkedIn case established that scraping publicly available data doesn’t violate federal law. Google’s ToS prohibits automated access, but that’s a civil matter, and SERP API providers handle this risk for you.

What’s the cheapest SERP API?

Serper offers the lowest per-request cost at $1 per 1,000 queries for Google data. DataForSEO’s Standard Queue runs $0.60 per 1,000, though response times are slower. At enterprise volumes, Bright Data and ScraperAPI drop below $0.001 per request.

Can I scrape SERPs for free?

Several APIs offer free tiers: Serper gives 2,500 queries to start, Firecrawl includes 500 credits, and SerpApi provides 250 searches monthly. DIY scraping is technically free but costs significant developer time to build and maintain.

What’s the difference between a SERP API and a proxy?

A proxy only handles IP rotation. You still need to render JavaScript, parse HTML, and handle CAPTCHAs yourself. A SERP API does all of that and returns structured JSON. You’re paying for the full pipeline, not just the IPs.

How do SERP APIs handle CAPTCHAs?

Most providers use a combination of automated CAPTCHA solving, browser fingerprint rotation, and residential IP pools. The specifics vary by provider, but handling this complexity is part of what you pay for.

Which SERP API has the best success rate?

Most providers claim 95%+ success rates, but these numbers are hard to verify independently. Enterprise options like Bright Data offer SLAs with guaranteed uptime and success rates. For critical applications, look for providers that back their claims with contractual guarantees.

Can you scrape Google AI Mode

Yes some SERP scraper APIs like SerpAPI and ScrapingDog provide the feature to scrape Google AI Mode.

Are there any open-source SERP scraper APIs available?

Yes, Firecrawl is an open-source web scrape API that provides LLM-ready, structured data. Scrape, crawl and extract the web with a single API. Firecrawl is ideal for AI companies looking to empower their LLM applications with web data.