Frequently Asked Questions

Pay-as-you-go, flat per call. Three permanent tiers unlocked by a single deposit:

Tier	Web	News	Images	Unlocks at
Default	$0.60 / 1K calls	$0.20 / 1K	$3.00 / 1K	$10 minimum deposit
Growth	$0.06 / 1K calls	$0.02 / 1K	$0.30 / 1K	Single $100+ deposit
Scale	$0.03 / 1K calls	$0.01 / 1K	$0.15 / 1K	Single $500+ deposit

One Web call returns up to 10 pages of Google SERP results. So at Scale, that's $0.03 per 10,000 SERP pages — the cheapest published rate of any SERP API.

Yes. Every new account gets 10 free Web searches on Google, Bing, Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo — no credit card required. Sign up with Google in under 30 seconds, generate an API key, and start calling.

The free credits cover Web search only (/api/search and /api/search/quick). News, Images, Videos, Social, and AI Ranking endpoints require paid credits.

Flat per call. Page count does not multiply the cost. Whether you request 1 page or 10 pages of Google results in a single search, you pay the same price.

This is intentionally different from most SERP APIs, which either bill per page or per "result block." With Serpent, a 100-result deep search costs the same as a 10-result quick search.

Same price. /api/search/quick (returns 1 page, ~10 results) and /api/search (returns up to 10 pages, ~100 results) are both billed at the same flat per-call rate.

So at Scale tier: 10K calls × 10 pages = 100,000 SERP pages for $0.30 — that's $0.000003 per page.

No. Pure pay-as-you-go. No monthly minimum, no recurring charge, no per-seat fee. Top up credits when you want; they don't expire.

Unlike SerpApi, Serper.dev, Zenserp, and most SERP APIs that gate features behind tiered subscriptions, every endpoint and feature is available from day one.

Purchased credits never expire. Free trial credits expire after 12 months of account inactivity.

Yes — tier upgrades are permanent. A single deposit of $100+ unlocks Growth tier (10× off all endpoints, forever). A single deposit of $500+ unlocks Scale (20× off, forever). Future top-ups can be smaller; you keep the unlocked tier on your account.

Note: tier is unlocked by a single qualifying deposit, not cumulative. A user who deposits $50 + $50 stays on Default; a $100 deposit goes straight to Growth.

Payments are processed via DodoPayments. Accepted methods: credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Amex), debit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, UPI (India), and most international cards.

Because credits are delivered instantly, purchases are generally non-refundable. We make exceptions for technical failures, duplicate charges, unauthorized transactions, or service discontinuation. Submit refund requests within 7 days of purchase via info@apiserpent.com. See the full Refund Policy.

Four engines, one consistent JSON shape:

• Google — engine=google
• Bing — engine=bing
• Yahoo — engine=yahoo
• DuckDuckGo — engine=ddg

Plus dedicated AI Ranking endpoints (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) and Social Media APIs (YouTube, Instagram).

Yes. Google AI Overviews (AIO) are extracted on Google Web search calls when present, returned in the ai_overview field with full text and citation sources. AIO is one of the hardest SERP features to extract reliably — Serpent uses purpose-built parsers that catch the four AIO render variants Google ships.

AIO data is included at no extra cost — there's no separate "AI Overview API" upcharge.

On Google Web search results, Serpent extracts:

• Organic results (~10/page, up to 10 pages)
• AI Overview (AIO) — when present
• Featured Snippet (position zero)
• People Also Ask (PAA)
• Related searches
• Inline videos
• Sponsored / ads

Bing/Yahoo support PAA, ads, organic, related, and shopping. DuckDuckGo supports organic, ads, related, and a dedicated video endpoint.

Yes. Pass country=us, country=uk, etc. and hl=en for language. We support 112 country codes — see GET /api/countries for the full list. Country targeting works on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo.

Up to 10 pages in a single /api/search call (~100 results), all paginated for you and merged into one response. Quick search (/api/search/quick) returns 1 page (~10 results). Both billed at the same flat rate — see "Do you charge per call or per page?" above.

In September 2025 Google removed the num=100 query parameter, capping a single SERP page at 10 results. DIY scrapers now have to paginate — start=0, start=10, start=20… — and stitch the results.

Serpent's /api/search endpoint paginates and merges for you. One call, up to ~100 results, all in a single JSON response. No client-side pagination logic, no extra calls, no upcharge.

Real-time. Every call hits Google fresh — no cached responses, no queue delay. This is unlike DataForSEO Standard Queue (~5-minute delay) or Bright Data's "discovered" tier. If you're rank-tracking on a schedule or building real-time agents, you get current data on every call.

Pass device=mobile or device=desktop on Google Web search. Mobile SERPs differ — different organic ordering, different AIO format, different ad placements — and that matters if you're auditing mobile rankings or running mobile-first SEO.

AI Ranking measures how visible your brand or URL is when users ask Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity a question. Instead of scraping a SERP, we ask the AI assistant a query and analyze the answer for citations, mentions, and ranking position.

Use it to track AI search visibility ("AEO" — Answer Engine Optimization) the same way you'd track Google rankings. Endpoints: /api/ai/rank/claude, /api/ai/rank/chatgpt, /api/ai/rank/gemini, /api/ai/rank/perplexity.

SerpApi's entry plan is $25/month for 1,000 searches — that's $25 per 1,000 calls. Their Big Data plan ($275/month) drops to about $9.17 per 1,000 calls, the cheapest published rate they offer.

Serpent at the Default tier is $0.60 / 1K calls, pay-as-you-go, no subscription. At Scale tier (single $500 deposit) it's $0.03 / 1K calls — over 300× cheaper than SerpApi's cheapest published rate.

Feature parity: both extract Google AIO, PAA, Featured Snippets, ads, organic, shopping. SerpApi has a wider engine catalog (80+ engines including niche verticals); Serpent focuses on the four engines that matter for ranking and bundles AI Ranking endpoints (Claude / ChatGPT / Gemini / Perplexity) that SerpApi does not offer.

DataForSEO's Google SERP API is $0.60 per 1K calls in the Standard Queue (~5 minute delay) and $2 per 1K calls Live (real-time). Multi-page requests aren't a flat charge — each extra page costs 75% of the base rate, so a 10-page deep search adds up to about 7.75× the single-page price.

Serpent's Web call is flat per call, real-time, and includes up to 10 pages by default. Scale tier: $0.03 / 1K calls — every call returns up to ~100 results without a per-page surcharge.

Bright Data's SERP API entry rate is around $2.50 per 1K successful requests on pay-as-you-go, dropping to roughly $1.05–$1.50 per 1K at higher volume commitments — but those discounts typically require a $500+/month minimum. Their AI Overview extraction is a paid add-on (brd_ai_overview) on top of the base call.

Serpent: AIO included in the base call, no monthly minimum, $0.03 per 1K at Scale.

Serper.dev's entry tier is $50 for 50K credits ($1 / 1K credits). Their cheapest top-tier rate is $0.30 per 1K credits at high volume. Serper bills 100-result queries as 2 credits and 10-result queries as 1 credit, so a 100-result deep search effectively costs $0.60 per 1K queries at top tier.

Serpent's Growth tier (single $100 deposit) is $0.06 per 1K calls flat, regardless of result depth. At Scale ($500 deposit): $0.03 per 1K calls — the cheapest published per-call rate of any SERP API. Serpent also extracts Google AI Overviews; Serper does not.

Three reasons:

1. No subscription overhead. Most competitors price for monthly seats and SLAs; we don't carry that fixed cost.
2. Volume discount built in. A single deposit triggers a permanent tier discount — you don't pay for a tier you haven't earned.
3. Lean infrastructure. One stack, one architecture, one deployment. We pass those efficiencies through.

The economics work because Serpent is a focused product, not a 20-product enterprise scraper platform.

Pick Serpent if you want pay-as-you-go billing, the lowest per-call price, AI Overview extraction included, and the same JSON shape across Google/Bing/Yahoo/DuckDuckGo. Most SaaS, agency, and rank-tracker workloads fit here.

Pick a different provider if you specifically need Google Maps SERP extraction (we don't support Maps yet), Google Scholar, or you require an enterprise SLA with 24/7 phone support and contract guarantees.

Send your API key in the X-API-Key header on every request. Generate keys from your dashboard. Keys can be revoked or rotated at any time.

Example: curl -H "X-API-Key: sk_live_..." "https://apiserpent.com/api/search?q=mesothelioma&engine=google&country=us"

Clean JSON. Same top-level shape across all four engines, so you can switch engines by changing one query parameter without rewriting your parser. See the API Reference for the complete schema.

Tier	Requests / minute	Queue priority
Free trial	30	Lowest
Default	200	Standard
Growth	400	High
Scale	600	Highest

If you need higher limits, email info@apiserpent.com.

Quick search: typically 2–5 seconds. Deep search (up to 10 pages): typically 8–15 seconds depending on engine and target country. Results are scraped fresh on every call — no stale cache.

Yes. It's a REST API — call it from Python, Node.js, Ruby, Go, PHP, Java, .NET, cURL, n8n, Zapier, Make, anywhere that can make an HTTPS request. The docs include copy-paste examples for the most common stacks.

Google detects scrapers via TLS fingerprinting, JavaScript challenges, mouse-movement heuristics, and IP reputation. Even with proxies, a naive Python/requests script gets a CAPTCHA wall within a few hundred requests.

Serpent handles all of that — JS rendering, fingerprint normalization, IP rotation, CAPTCHA bypass — so you focus on your data layer. That's the whole reason SERP APIs exist.

Yes — try the live Playground from the menu (no signup needed for the demo key). For API integration, sign up to get 10 free Web searches and run real queries from your code.

Public SERP data is broadly considered legal to scrape under U.S. law (see hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn, Van Buren v. United States) when you're collecting publicly accessible information without authentication or paywall bypass. SERP APIs like Serpent operate within this scope.

That said, "legal to scrape" and "permitted by Terms of Service" are different things — Google's ToS does technically restrict automated access. Most rank-tracking, SEO, and AI agent workloads operate in this practical gray zone, which is why dedicated SERP API providers exist.

Always consult your own legal counsel for your specific use case and jurisdiction.

We log API metadata (your API key, timestamp, endpoint, status code) for billing and abuse prevention. We do not retain the SERP results we return to you — they're scraped fresh, sent to you, and discarded. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

Pay-as-you-go accounts use a best-effort 99.5% target with no contractual SLA. Enterprise accounts (custom volume) include a 99.9% SLA with credit-back on missed availability. Email info@apiserpent.com for enterprise terms.

No. Only successful responses (HTTP 200 with valid JSON) are billed. Timeouts, 5xx errors, and parse failures are free. We log the attempt for monitoring but never deduct credits for results we couldn't deliver.

You get an HTTP 402 Payment Required response with { "error": "insufficient_credits" }. Credits are checked atomically per request — there's no overdraft. Top up from your dashboard and resume; nothing else changes.

Serpent API is a product of Contentladder Marketing Pvt Ltd. We've been building search and SEO infrastructure since 2022. Read more on our About page.