Frequently Asked Questions

Pay-as-you-go by product category. Three permanent tiers are unlocked by a single deposit:

Tier	Google SERP	News	Images	Unlocks at
Default	$0.60 / 1K calls	$0.20 / 1K	$0.60 / 1K	$10 minimum deposit
Growth	$0.06 / 1K calls	$0.02 / 1K	$0.54 / 1K	Single $100+ deposit
Scale	$0.03 / 1K calls	$0.01 / 1K	$0.42 / 1K	Single $500+ deposit

One Web call returns up to 10 pages of Google SERP results. So at Scale, that's $0.03 per 1,000 SERP pages — the cheapest published rate of any SERP API.

Google Maps uses separate endpoint prices and smaller discounts: Quick $15/$13.50/$10.50 per 1K calls, Deep $75/$67.50/$52.50, Place $1.50/$1.35/$1.05, and Reviews $3/$2.70/$2.10 across Default/Growth/Scale.

Yes. Every new account gets 10 free lifetime calls, shared across every endpoint — Web Search, News, Images, Videos, Shopping, AI Rank, LinkedIn, Maps, YouTube, and Instagram — no credit card required.

The SERP allowance covers /api/search and /api/search/quick. The Maps allowance covers only /api/maps/search/quick. Maps Deep, Place and Reviews require paid credits.

Free accounts run at the free rate-limit bracket: 1 concurrent request, 10/min, 100/hour, 500/day. Limits increase as soon as you add credits — see What are the rate limits? below.

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.

Web billing follows account state. Growth/Scale accounts and Default accounts with at least a $10 live balance are billed one published web-search unit per request for supported page depths; low-balance Default accounts can be billed per delivered page.

For Growth/Scale accounts and Default accounts with at least a $10 live balance, /api/search/quick and /api/search use one published Web category unit per request for supported page depths. Low-balance Default accounts can be billed per delivered page.

Scale tier Web pricing is $0.03 / 1K calls.

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. Promotional bonus credits expire 30 days after they are granted; only the bonus portion expires.

Yes — tier upgrades are permanent. A single deposit of $100+ unlocks Growth (10× off core categories and 10% off Maps). A single deposit of $500+ unlocks Scale (20× off core categories and 30% off Maps). 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.

Five engines, one consistent JSON shape:

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

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

Yes, on eligible Deep Search calls. Add include_aio=true to /api/search with engine=google to request AI Overview fields when available. It is off by default so organic SERP calls stay fast and predictable.

If the AI Overview is unavailable, the response still returns the rest of the SERP data with aiOverview set to null. There is no separate "AI Overview API" endpoint.

Pixel position is the y-coordinate (in pixels, from the top of the rendered SERP) of any element on the search results page. Add pixel_position=true to /api/search or /api/search/quick and every item — organic results, AI Overview, People Also Ask, featured snippet, knowledge panel, ads, shopping, videos, and local pack — comes back with two sibling fields: an integer pixel_position (the y-coordinate) and a pixel_box object containing the full bounding rectangle { x, y, w, h }.

Currently in BETA, supported on all four engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo) on desktop, US locale. See the full spec →

No. Pixel position uses the same per-call price as the underlying SERP search across all four engines. A request with pixel_position=true costs the same as one without — and you get the full pixel_box geometry (x, y, w, h) in the same call. Available on all paid tiers; free-tier responses include metadata.pixelPositionUnavailable: 'free_tier' instead of pixel data.

Rank tells you a result is #1 organic. Pixel position tells you the user has to scroll past 1,800 px of AI Overview, ads, and PAA boxes to actually see it. Two queries with the same rank can have wildly different real visibility and CTR. Pixel position is the metric that catches every SERP layout change Google rolls out.

Read the case study: Pixel Position vs Rank: Why Modern SEO Tools Need Both.

On Google SERP results, Serpent extracts:

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

Quick Search is organic-only for Google. Use Deep Search for richer Google SERP features, and add include_aio=true when you need AI Overview fields. Video Search also has a dedicated endpoint.

Yes. Pass country=us, country=uk, etc. and language=en for language. We support 112 country codes — see GET /api/countries for the full list. City/locality workflows should use Local or Maps endpoints rather than organic Web Search.

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.

Yes. If an integration repeatedly sends requests that fail because the service is temporarily unavailable, the API may return a temporary 429 cooldown with a Retry-After header. Validation errors, auth errors, billing errors, and normal rate-limit responses are handled separately.

site: queries can return organic SERP results, but Serpent is primarily built for retrieving SERP rankings and result pages. Treat site: output as search-result data, not as a guaranteed indexing audit or proof that a URL is indexed.

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.

Desktop SERPs only at this time. Mobile SERP rendering and mobile pixel positions are on the roadmap. Reach out at info@apiserpent.com if mobile is a hard requirement for your use case — it helps us prioritize.

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 five 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 category supports up to 10 pages per request. Growth/Scale accounts and Default accounts with at least a $10 live balance are billed one published web-search unit per request for supported page depths; low-balance Default accounts can be billed per delivered page. Scale tier: $0.03 / 1K calls.

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 is available on eligible opt-in Deep Search calls, with no monthly minimum and $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 offers Google AI Overview fields on eligible opt-in Deep Search calls.

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, optional AI Overview fields on eligible Deep Search calls, 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 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 five engines, so you can switch engines by changing one query parameter without rewriting your integration. See the API Reference for the complete schema.

Rate limits are per account (shared across all your API keys) and scale with your live credit balance. Each account has four ceilings: max concurrent requests, and max requests per minute, per hour and per day.

Published figures are standard allocations and "up to" maximums, not guaranteed floors — effective throughput can be lower under heavy platform load. "→ unlimited" means the listed number is the standard starting allocation and scales upward; higher custom limits are provided on request. Minute/hour/day windows reset on fixed UTC boundaries; a 429 tells you which window you hit — back off and retry. Your bracket tracks your current balance, so topping up raises limits instantly. This is separate from the permanent pricing discount tiers (Growth/Scale), which are unlocked by a single qualifying deposit and never downgrade. Need higher or custom limits? Email info@apiserpent.com.

Response time varies by endpoint, engine, result depth, and target country. The Playground shows live timing for your request, and API responses return structured JSON when results are delivered.

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.

Search data changes frequently. Serpent API provides a documented JSON contract so your integration can focus on the returned fields and normal API error handling.

Serpent gives your application a stable HTTPS interface and normalized JSON so you can focus on using the data rather than maintaining collection infrastructure.

Yes — try the live Playground from the menu (no signup needed for the demo key). For API integration, sign up to get 10 shared free calls 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.

No public SLA is currently published for pay-as-you-go accounts. Enterprise customers can contact info@apiserpent.com to discuss availability requirements.

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.