Serper review
A prepaid API for real-time Google web and vertical search results.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Serper is a hosted API for retrieving structured, real-time Google search data. It is designed for developers and companies building AI applications, SEO tools, analytics systems, and other software that needs programmatic search results. The API is available through an API platform and returns JSON, with support for Google web search plus specialized search types such as images, news, maps and places, videos, shopping, scholar, patents, and autocomplete.
Pricing is prepaid rather than monthly recurring. The Starter plan costs $50 as a one-time credit purchase and includes 50,000 queries, 50 queries per second, real-time results, query-location customization, and credits valid for six months. Standard costs $375 for 500,000 queries and 100 queries per second. Scale costs $1,250 for 2,500,000 queries and 200 queries per second. Ultimate costs $3,750 for 12,500,000 queries and 300 queries per second. All listed plans include real-time results, query-location customization, and six-month credit validity. Published pricing notes that prices exclude sales tax, VAT, or GST.
Its main strength is breadth within Google search: one API covers multiple SERP types instead of focusing only on web results. That makes Serper a practical fit for applications that need several Google verticals through a common interface. The trade-off is a single-engine scope and country-level location targeting, with no verified integrations listed. Teams needing broader search-engine coverage, more granular targeting, or a free entry point should consider another SERP API. Serper is better suited to buyers who want straightforward Google search access, predictable prepaid credits, and higher query throughput as volume grows.
Serper pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Covers web, image, news, maps, video, shopping, scholar, and patent search
- Supports real-time results and query-location customization
- Offers up to 12,500,000 queries and 300 queries per second
- Where it doesn't
- No free plan; access starts with a $50 prepaid credit purchase
- Uses a single search engine rather than multiple engines
- Location targeting is limited to country-level customization
Serper fact sheet, pricing and score →
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