| Product focus | Multi-platform structured APIs | Search engine result APIs |
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| Best for | Teams needing search plus non-search platform data | Teams focused primarily on SERP data |
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| Output format | Structured JSON for supported endpoints | Structured SERP/API JSON |
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| Structured JSON | Yes | Yes |
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| Google Search data | Supported endpoint | Core product focus |
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| Platform coverage | Search, maps, social, audio, podcasts, app stores, marketplaces, reviews, finance | Search/SERP-focused APIs with selected non-search APIs |
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| Generic URL scraping | Not the main positioning | No; search API focus |
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| Proxy management | Managed behind supported endpoints | Abstracted behind SERP APIs |
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| Entry price | $9/month Starter (20,000 credits) | $25/month Starter (1,000 searches), then $75 Developer, $150 Production, $275 Big Data |
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| Free tier | 2,000 free credits every month, no card required | 250 searches a month free, including ZeroTrace Mode and priority support |
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| Pricing model | Credit-based, one fixed published weight per endpoint (google/search is 3 credits) | Flat per-search plans with no per-engine multiplier: 1,000 searches for $25 up to 500,000 for $2,750, and multi-million Cloud tiers above that |
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| Cost of 1,000 searches | About $1.35 on the $9 Starter plan, $0.87 on the $29 Growth plan and about $0.30 on the $499 Enterprise plan | $25.00 on Starter, $10.00 on Production, $7.25 on Searcher, $5.50 on Infrastructure and $3.75 on Cloud 1M |
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| Throughput | Rate limited per minute: 5 on Free up to 1,000 on Enterprise | Per-hour throughput: 50 on Free, 200 on Starter, 3,000 on Production, up to 600,000 on the largest Cloud tier |
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| Legal posture | Public-data endpoints with documented sourcing; you review the target's terms | U.S. Legal Shield on every plan — SerpApi assumes defined legal responsibility for scraping on its customers' behalf |
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| Privacy and compliance | Standard data handling for API requests | ZeroTrace Mode discards search parameters and data after completion; SOC 2 Type II, SOC 3 and ISO 27001 certified, with uptime SLAs up to 99.97% |
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| Responsible use | Use for responsible public web data access and review Terms | Review SerpApi legal and terms pages |
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