Free Google SERP API in 2026: What's Free, What's Nearly Free

You typed "free Google search API" because you need Google results as data and you would rather not pay for them. Fair enough. The honest answer has two parts: the official free option is closing, and the free tiers that remain are small.

This guide lists every free route we could find, from Google itself to paid SERP vendors to doing it yourself. We read each official pricing page on 2026-10-23, wrote down the numbers, and did the cost maths. We did not run benchmarks or hands-on trials of other vendors' products, so you will find no speed or success-rate claims here.

Every free option at a glance

All figures below come from each vendor's own page, read on 2026-10-23. "Not stated" means the page did not say, not that the answer is no.

What Google itself offers (and what it closed)

Start here, because most "free Google search API" pages still point at Google's own product. Five Google offerings come up, and only one of them gives you search results as data.

Custom Search JSON API: free quota, closed door

Google's overview page still says the API "provides 100 search queries per day for free". Extra requests cost $5 per 1,000 queries, up to 10,000 queries a day.

But the same page says "The Custom Search JSON API is closed to new customers." Existing customers "have until January 1, 2027 to transition to an alternative solution." If you do not already hold access, the free quota is not available to you. If you do, you have a hard deadline.

Google's page also does not describe full-web search. It says that if your use case "necessitates full web search", you should contact Google to express interest. So even before the shutdown, the product was never a general "Google results as JSON" feed. Our migration guide and replacement code cover the switch.

Programmable Search Element: free, but it is a widget

The Programmable Search overview lists a Standard Search Element as free, with no daily limit. The same chart says it shows ads and runs as client-side JavaScript.

That makes it a search box for your own website. It does not hand you rows of results to store, rank-check or feed into a pipeline.

Agent Search (formerly Vertex AI Search): free queries, different job

Google's pricing page offers 10,000 free queries per account per month, then $1.50 per 1,000 queries on the Standard edition and $4.00 on Enterprise. Storage is $5 per GiB a month with 10 GiB free.

It searches data you put into it. Google's Custom Search page itself calls it "a favorable alternative for searching up to 50 domains". It is a good way to search your own content, and the wrong tool if you want the results Google shows the public.

Gemini API Google Search tool: free requests, answers not rows

The Gemini API pricing page (updated 2026-10-22) lists 5,000 free search requests a month for Gemini 3 and newer models, then $14 per 1,000. Older Gemini 2.5 Flash lists 500 free requests a day, then $35 per 1,000 prompts that use the tool.

The tool's docs describe citations with a URL and title, plus a snippet for rendering search suggestions in your UI. They do not describe a ranked list of results or position data. It suits an assistant that needs sourced answers, not a rank tracker.

Search Console API: your data, not the SERP

The Search Console API returns clicks, impressions, CTR and position for properties you own, up to 50,000 rows a day per search type. Its usage limits page allows 1,200 queries per minute per site and mentions no price.

It is excellent for your own performance reporting. It cannot show you who ranks for a keyword you do not own, which is what a SERP API is for.

Free tiers and trials from SERP APIs

Every SERP vendor needs a way to let you test before paying, so most give something away. Here is each one, in the same format: the free part, where it stops, and who it suits.

Bright Data: 5,000 requests a month

Free: the SERP API page is headed "5K Requests/Month for Free", with no credit card. After that: pay-as-you-go at $1.5 per 1,000 requests, or a Scale plan at $499 a month that includes 380,000 requests and then $1.3 per 1,000.

Watch out: the pricing block says "5K records per month" while the heading says requests, so confirm the unit at signup. Best for: a large free monthly volume if you can live with a cap.

SerpApi: 250 searches a month

Free: SerpApi's pricing lists a free plan of 250 searches a month, capped at 50 an hour. After that: Starter is $25 for 1,000 searches, Developer $75 for 5,000, Production $150 for 15,000. The page says plans are month-to-month.

Watch out: the jump from free to paid is steep at low volume. Our SerpApi pricing explainer walks through the ladder.

Serper: 2,500 free queries

Free: Serper offers 2,500 free queries and says no credit card is required. The page does not say when they expire. After that: packs from $50 for 50,000 credits ($1.00 per 1,000) up to $3,750 for 12.5 million ($0.30 per 1,000). Pack credits are valid for 6 months.

Watch out: there is no monthly allowance, so the trial is a one-time test. See how Serper credits work.

SearchApi: 100 free requests

Free: SearchApi offers 100 free requests with no card. After that: Developer is $40 a month for 10,000 searches ($4 per 1,000), falling to $1.5 per 1,000 on the 1 million plan. The page says you can use only 20% of your plan's credits each hour.

ScrapingDog: 100 free credits

Free: every account starts with 100 credits, no card, per its pricing page. A standard Google search costs 5 credits (10 with the advanced option) per its docs, so the free credits cover about 20 searches. That division is ours.

After that: Lite is $40 for 200,000 credits, Standard $90 for 1 million. Because of the 5-credit cost, the real price per search is five times what the credit price suggests.

Zenserp: 50 searches a month

Free: Zenserp lists a free plan of 50 searches a month. After that: Small is $49.99 for 25,000 searches ($2.00 per 1,000), down to $899 for 1 million.

DataForSEO: $1 credit, then pay per SERP

Free: new accounts get a $1 credit, plus a sandbox that returns mock data, per its pricing page. At the standard-queue rate that is about 1,666 SERPs (our division). After that: the minimum top-up is $50, and funds do not expire.

On its Google organic page, DataForSEO prices a SERP of up to 10 results at $0.60 per 1,000 in the standard queue (about 5 minutes typical turnaround), $1.20 in the priority queue and $2.00 live. Extra depth adds one base price per additional 10 results. Watch out: the cheap queue is asynchronous. See our DataForSEO pricing explainer.

ValueSERP, Oxylabs and others

ValueSERP (now under Traject Data) says "Start for free" without giving an amount; paid plans start at 25,000 credits for $50 a month on the annual billing shown, or pay-as-you-go from $2.50 per 1,000. Oxylabs gives a $5 welcome credit and lists Google at $1.00 per 1,000 results on its $30 Starter plan. SerpHouse gives 4,000 credits that do not roll over, but its page does not say how many searches that is.

The near-free route: pay-as-you-go

If free tiers keep running out, the practical answer is a pay-as-you-go API with no monthly plan. You deposit a small amount, spend it per search, and keep the rest. Fractions of a cent per search count as "near-free" for most projects.

Serpent API: up to 20× off, from $0.03 per 1,000, no subscription

Full disclosure: we run Serpent. We put it here because the numbers hold up, and we will point out where they do not. The Google SERP API is a plain REST endpoint that returns structured JSON.

Free: 10 free API calls when you sign up (one shared pool across products, no card), plus one free demo run a day on the site without signing up.

Price per 1,000 Google web searches (the same Web rate applies to all five web engines):

There is no monthly fee. Deposited credits never expire; promotional bonus credits expire 30 days after they are granted. The pricing page has the full rules, including that existing credit keeps the rate it was bought at.

How billing works: Quick Search (/api/search/quick) is always one call and one charge. Deep Search (/api/search) bills one unit per page of results you request, up to 10 pages. Quick returns organic results only. Deep adds People Also Ask, related searches, featured snippets, knowledge panels and ads, and can include an AI Overview on eligible paid calls when you ask for one. The API docs list every parameter.

Where it falls short: 10 free calls is the smallest free pool in this guide, so it is for checking the response shape, not for running a project free. At the Default rate, ScrapingDog's $90 Standard plan works out lower per search (about $0.45 per 1,000 by our maths) if you will use 200,000 searches every month. And the lowest rates need a $100, $500, $1,000 or $1,250 deposit first. For comparison, DataForSEO asks for a $50 top-up to go paid, while Serpent starts at $10; once your lifetime deposits reach $50, later top-ups have a $100 minimum.

Best for: variable or small volume, no subscription, and teams that want to start free and pay only when they ship. You can test the output in the playground without writing code.

The other near-free options

DataForSEO's standard queue matches our $0.60 per 1,000 Default rate. The trade-off is waiting: its page quotes about 5 minutes. Serper reaches $0.30 per 1,000 only on its $3,750 pack. Bright Data is $1.50 per 1,000 pay-as-you-go, with the free 5,000 first. ScrapingDog works out lower than most subscriptions once you are at 200,000 searches a month or more, on our maths.

What it costs at 1K, 10K, 100K and 1M searches

This is arithmetic from the published prices above, not a quote. Each row is the cash you would pay in a month for that many Google web searches of 10 results, buying the smallest plan or pack that covers the volume. Taxes and annual-billing discounts are ignored, and Google's figures ignore its 100 free queries a day.

Three things to read from it. Subscription plans make small volumes expensive: 1,000 searches costs $25 to $50 on most plans, versus under a dollar pay-as-you-go. Pay-as-you-go prices scale almost in a straight line, so there is no cliff at a plan boundary. And Serpent's lower tiers need a bigger deposit up front, though a deposit is spent down on searches and does not expire.

On the headline question: among the vendors we compared today, the lowest published Google rate we found is Serpent's $0.03 per 1,000 on Enterprise Plus, which needs one $1,250 deposit. The next lowest we could work out is ScrapingDog's largest plan at roughly $0.14 per 1,000 (our division of $30,000 for 1.1 billion credits at 5 credits a search), then Serper at $0.30 on its $3,750 pack and Serpent Growth at $0.30 on a $100 deposit. We did not check every vendor in the market, so treat it as the lowest among these.

Free scraping: what "free" really costs you

If every API is too expensive, writing your own scraper looks free. It is free in licence fees only. Here is what you pay instead.

Google's rules say no

Google's robots.txt carries Disallow: /search for all user agents. Google's terms of service say not to use "automated means to access content from any of our services in violation of the machine-readable instructions" and not to "abuse, harm, interfere with, or disrupt" its services.

Google's unusual traffic page explains the reCAPTCHA you meet when Google detects automated traffic. Search engines' terms restrict automated access, so read them and ask your own counsel what that means for your project; we are not lawyers. Our plain-English legal explainer covers the SerpApi case.

The engineering bill

• JavaScript is required. Google began requiring it in January 2025, so a plain HTTP request returns an empty shell. Our test write-up shows what comes back.
• Pages hold 10 results. Google removed &num=100 in September 2025, so the top 100 is now ten requests. See what changed.
• Blocks and captchas. You need a steady supply of clean IP addresses and a plan for challenge pages. Scraping without getting blocked goes through the options.
• Maintenance. Layouts change and your parser breaks, usually without an error. Silent breakage is the costly kind.

A rough illustration, with an assumption we are making up for the example: if you value an engineer's time at $50 an hour and spend four hours a month keeping a scraper alive, that is $200 a month. At our $0.60 Default rate, $200 buys 333,333 searches. Your numbers will differ, but the comparison is worth doing. Our true cost of a Google scraper and free scraping guide go deeper.

How to choose

The pattern: use free tiers to evaluate, then move to a pay-as-you-go plan when you ship. Our SERP API pricing comparison goes deeper on the paid side, and do SERP API credits expire? explains the expiry traps.

Looking for a different engine? We cover free Bing, free Brave and free rank tracking separately.

Quick start and moving off Custom Search

Serpent uses one GET request with your key in the X-API-Key header. Here is Deep Search for Google:

curl "https://apiserpent.com/api/search?q=best+laptops+2026&engine=google&num=10" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY"

The same call in Python:

import os
import requests

resp = requests.get(
    "https://apiserpent.com/api/search",
    params={"q": "best laptops 2026", "engine": "google", "num": 10, "country": "us"},
    headers={"X-API-Key": os.environ["SERPENT_API_KEY"]},
    timeout=60,
)
data = resp.json()
if not data.get("success"):
    raise SystemExit(data.get("message"))

for row in data["results"]["organic"]:
    print(row["position"], row["title"], row["url"])

If you only need the organic list, GET /api/search/quick takes the same q, engine, country and num parameters, bills one call and returns organic results only.

Moving from Custom Search is mostly renaming fields. Where you read items, read results.organic; where you read each item's link, read url. title and snippet keep their names, and every row also carries a position. The replacement code post has drop-in Node, Python and Go versions.

Limits and unknowns

Being straight about what this guide does not know:

• No tests were run. Everything here is from official pages and arithmetic. We did not measure speed, success rate or result quality for any vendor, including our own, so we make no such claim.
• Prices change. Every figure is dated 2026-10-23. Check the vendor's page before you commit.
• Gaps on vendor pages. Several pages do not state a card requirement, a trial expiry or a credits-per-search rule (Serper's rule for requests above 10 results, ValueSERP's free amount and Oxylabs' credit count among them). We marked those "not stated" rather than guess.
• Vendors we did not cover. Others exist, so "lowest" above means lowest among those compared.
• Google's products move. Google renamed Vertex AI Search to Agent Search, and its shutdown timeline for Custom Search could change. Re-read the official page.
• Vendor pages are not neutral. They describe their own products. The Google and Search Console facts are the most reliable here.

FAQ

Is there a free Google SERP API?

Not one you can build on. Google's Custom Search JSON API still lists 100 free queries a day, but it is closed to new customers and ends on January 1, 2027. Third-party SERP APIs offer small free tiers instead: 5,000 requests a month at Bright Data, 250 a month at SerpApi, and one-time trials elsewhere.

Is the Google Custom Search JSON API still free?

Only for existing customers. Google's overview page says the API provides 100 search queries per day for free, then $5 per 1,000 queries up to 10,000 a day. It also says the API is closed to new customers and that existing customers have until January 1, 2027 to move to an alternative.

What is the best free alternative to the Google Custom Search API?

For free volume, Bright Data's 5,000 requests a month is a large recurring allowance. For a Google-only trial, Serper offers 2,500 free queries. When you outgrow free, Serpent API starts at $0.60 per 1,000 searches with no subscription and a $10 minimum deposit.

Can the Google Search Console API return search results?

No. The Search Console API returns clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position for sites you own. It does not return the results page for an arbitrary query, so it cannot replace a SERP API.

Is it free to scrape Google myself?

It costs no licence fee, but it is not free. Google's robots.txt disallows /search, its terms restrict automated access that goes against machine-readable instructions, and its unusual-traffic page lists search scrapers as automated traffic. Add blocks, captchas and maintenance time, and check the terms and your own counsel first.

What is the cheapest paid Google SERP API?

Among the vendors we compared on 2026-10-23, Serpent API has the lowest published Google rate: $0.03 per 1,000 on Enterprise Plus after one $1,250 deposit, $0.05 on Enterprise after $1,000, $0.10 on Scale after $500, $0.30 on Growth after $100 and $0.60 on Default. DataForSEO's standard queue is also $0.60 per 1,000 but returns results asynchronously.