Whether you want to keep an eye on your competitors or the performance of your own SEO strategy, the best way to go about it is through a SERP API. The question is: how do you know which of the providers on the market are worth your money? The answer to this and other questions relating to the easiest ways to scrape SERP data are here, so read on!
Regardless of the type of software we are reviewing, the starting point of our research is the product’s ease of use. Your technical expertise aside, the solution should have an intuitive interface supplemented with extensive product documentation, should you come across some issues.
The average time it takes a search engine results API to return data is one of the telltales of the top solutions from this category. While the target plays a significant role in fetching results, a search engine API should return requested data between a couple of seconds to several minutes—the shorter the delivery time, the better.
When shopping for the best SERP APIs, you’ll discover that there’s a limit on the number of concurrent requests you can make within a set timeframe. The industry standard places the average simultaneous request count per second between 20 and 35.
In other situations, you’ll find that there is a limit on the number of requests you can make per hour or day, which is typically 20% of the total request count.
SERP APIs should allow you to customize your query by first letting you select the type of query, i.e., a raw URL or query phrase. Setting a location is another must-have option to look for in Google search results API. This option will help you scrape Google search results from different locations on a country or city level. To further fine-tune your query, SERP APIs should give you the option to choose between desktop and mobile SERPs and specify the number of results per page you want it to retrieve.
Another essential feature relates to the type of search results these solutions can fetch. The best search engine results APIs will allow you to retrieve organic results, sponsored ads, videos, questions, images, related searches, answer boxes, and knowledge panels.
A Google search results API should provide SDKs or coding examples for commonly used programming languages, including Python, PHP, JavaScript, and Go.
When it comes to a proxy network that helps deliver search engine data, you’ll notice that this type of APIs either have their own proxy infrastructure or rely on some of the best proxy servers in the industry. While the in-house solution tends to be a better option, the emphasis is on a proxy network's quality. It should have the capacity to handle large API call volumes. To help avoid getting blocked, a search engines API should further provide a vast number of IPs (preferably residential) and CAPTCHA-solving technology.
Once you send a request, the API service returns the data you requested in various formats. Some tools from this category are limited to JSON formats, while other, more flexible APIs can retrieve data in other forms as well, including CSV, raw HTML, and XML.
One of the more important questions we’ve asked during our SERP API research is whether the solution uses HTTPS encryption. APIs that support HTTPS protocols earned extra points in our rankings.
Friendly and knowledgeable customer support is as important as the solution you use, especially if you’re not familiar with how everything works. Prompt responses from the support team can help you grasp the product much quicker, which is why we pay special attention to this aspect of the service.
If you've been looking for a fast and accurate way of collecting data from Google, Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo, SerpWatch SERP API might be a perfect solution for that. The SerpWatch API is incredibly easy to use and can be integrated with any web service or application.
Pros
Cons
One of the key features of SerpWatch SERP API is that it uses rotating proxies, making sure that, regardless of the request volume, you don’t end up on Google’s blacklist. The API tool further ensures a high request success rate using residential proxies with the CAPTCHA solving technology.
The fact that users get a new residential IP address with every request doesn’t only mean they’ll get requested data, but that they can also get search engine results from different locations. The Google search engine API further supports targeting customizations, allowing users to specify their target on a country and city level.
Another highlight of this valuable tool for scraping Google search results is that it can fetch the most versatile types of SERP features, including images, videos, answer boxes, maps, and featured snippets. The API tool automatically parses collected data, letting users get their data in JSON format.
If you want to scrape search engine data for free, you can do that with SerpWatch SERP API. Arguably the best SERP API offers the first 100 requests for free. Meanwhile, the pricing is quote-based, so you need to contact the company to get more information about the SERP API’s pricing.
Smartproxy is primarily known as one of the industry-leading proxy service providers, but the company’s SERP scraping API has been getting recognition from its users, too. The intuitive product interface, excellent coverage of major search engines, and search query customizations all make Smartproxy SERP scraping API one of the top search engine API tools.
Pros
Cons
Thanks to Smartproxy’s SERP scraping API, parsing Google search results has never been easier. The search engine proxy scraper allows you to scrape Google results - regardless of the type of data you want to collect. It fetches data from featured snippets, videos, images, popular products from Google Shopping, ads, local packs, and more.
As far as search query customization goes, the Smartproxy SERP scraping API lets users choose their target location on a country and city level. The solution covers the most popular search engines that, apart from Google, include Bing, Yandex, and Baidu. It delivers requested data in raw HTML and parsed JSON formats.
Another area where Smartproxy shines is its proxy network. While some SERP APIs use third-party proxy infrastructure, Smartproxy has its own - featuring over 40 million IPs. Smartproxy is also highly scalable and features a user-friendly interface.
Smartproxy offers three pricing plans: Lite ($100/per month), Basic ($250/per month), and Standard ($500/per month). The search engine API differentiates these plans based on the number of requests included in each of them. The lowest-priced tier includes 35,000 requests and goes up to 250,000 (with the Standard package). The prices are exclusive of VAT.
The company also offers a 3-day money-back guarantee, so users can opt out of using this tool if, for any reason, they don’t like it.
SheerSEO is an intuitive search engine scraper that helps collect structured SERP data in two simple steps. Users first have to initiate a task and, after that, get results from it. It’s that simple! So, if you have many keywords or an application where you want to collect search engine data, SheerSEO is your winning choice.
Pros
Cons
SheerSEO's SERP checker API allows users to get mobile and desktop search engine results data. On the list of supported search engines are Google and Bing, with Google being the default search engine. Optimizing your search query further allows setting a localization code, which is particularly useful since search engines in different countries display different results.
Before sending a request, you can set its priority to either high or low. Once you add a keyword and create a task, SheerSEO will return organic results containing the URL and SERP position for websites with the best ranking for the specified keyword.
The SERP checker API can retrieve results in less than a minute and up to eight hours. It all depends on your target and task priority. The output is in JSON format.
Another thing worth mentioning is that SheerSEO uses its own proxy infrastructure. The company offers comprehensive product documentation and code examples for Java, Python, and PHP, contributing to the API’s overall ease of use. The customer support is excellent and available via live chat, phone, web form, and email.
The SheerSEO search engine API comes with a free trial and 300 free credits. If you decide to become a paying customer, you can choose between two pricing models, i.e., Pay-Per-Use and monthly subscriptions. The former starts at $49, including 51,579 credits, while the latter costs $200/month. The cost per 1,000 credits is $0.8.
OxyLabs is easily one of the most user-friendly SERP APIs. The vendor allows users to test its API, which they can do by simply visiting the OxyLabs website. With OxyLabs, you don’t have to worry about proxies and captchas. The company behind this Google search engine API has its own proxy infrastructure, helping users analyze retrieved data.
Pros
Cons
OxyLabs delivers search engine data in real-time and at excellent speeds, ranging from four seconds to five minutes. The delivery times, meanwhile, depend on your target. Scraping Google search results can be done via keywords and URLs.
Integration methods the SERP API supports are callback, real-time, and SuperAPI. The provider recommends the callback method (push-pull) as the most reliable one. One of the data sources is a direct URL, allowing users to retrieve data from a specific Google page. You can also perform a keyword-based search, which supports a myriad of query customizations. These include the option to set a domain, language, country, device, and browser.
It is possible to disable auto-correction, enable Javascript rendering, and specify the starting page, the number of results per page, and the number of pages the OxyLabs API should return.
The vendor further offers a Google product search API, allowing users to scrape Google Shopping data, including product pages, prices, and keyword-based searches.
OxyLabs's API service doesn't stop here. It is also possible to scrape Google results containing paid ads, Google Hotel, and Suggestions search pages.
The API delivers data in a raw HTML format or as parsed JSON data, while the rate limit sits at 20 requests/second.
We must not leave the OxyLabs customer support out, which is, by far, one of the most impressive ones. The chat representatives are friendly and ready to answer any questions you might have.
The Google search API pricing ranges from $99/month to $10,000/month, depending on the plan you choose. The Starter plan costs $99/month, including 29,000 search engine results API pages. Next is the Business plan, which supports 160,000 search engine results API pages for $399/month. If you need more pages, you should go with the Corporate package, which includes 526,000 API pages. For those that need more than ten million API pages, OxyLabs has prepared the enterprise API plan, which starts from $10,000/month.
SERPChecker is a robust tool for analyzing SERPs. The SERP checker API comes from Mangools, the company that offers one of the best SERP checkers and has a keyword research tool and backlink analysis solutions. The company has set both feet in the SEO arena, helping develop and maintain a healthy SEO strategy.
Pros
Cons
The SERPChecker Google search results API allows you to send SERP requests and choose a SERP page for a specified keyword. The solution then fetches data relating to keyword difficulty, search volume, and various SEO metrics.
Thanks to the SERP localization functionality, you can easily narrow down your search to a country, district, and all the way to a particular city. SERPChecker supports over 52,000 locations, so you should be able to target your local audience with high accuracy.
To help you further segment your audience and keep up with your competitors, the SERP API lets you choose whether you want it to display mobile or desktop results. The number of SEO metrics available to SERPChecker users is quite impressive. The solution allows you to check anything from page and domain authority to Facebook shares and external backlinks.
Another functionality that caught our attention is the Google SERP Feature detector, which shows how carousels, featured snippets, Google ads, and other SERP features affect organic results. The Google search engine API has implemented a scale from one to five to help you determine how much engagement these features take away from organic results.
All of these features are available from within the SERPChecker’s interface, but if you already have an app and want to integrate it with the tool, you can request API access.
We must also mention that this is yet another company with a highly responsive and knowledgeable customer support team, which is a big plus.
The pricing for the SERPChecker’s online SERP analysis tool ranges from $29.90/month to $79.90/month. If you opt for the API, the Google search API pricing starts at $280/month, including 100 requests within 24 hours. The Premium plan API raises the number of requests to 500/24 hours, while the price stands at $850/month. The top-tier plan, Agency, costs $1,450/month and includes 1,000 requests/per 24 hours.
The company behind Serpstack has some of the best solutions in various categories, including invoicing and digital signature software. Serpstack isn’t an exception. The search engines API excels at scraping all types of search engine results data, including web results, news, images, and more. It also has a free version, allowing users to try the service before switching to paid plans.
Pros
Cons
Serpstack is an easy-to-use search engine results pages API. It offers code examples in a multitude of programming languages, including Nodejs, Python, Go, and PHP. The Google search data API is one of the few solutions that support such a high level of query customization.
You can specify the search engine from which you want to collect data. If not set, Serpstack delivers data from Google. The type of search engine data you can retrieve ranges from web results to images, videos, shopping, and news. The Google search scraper further supports the option to set country, language, and a Google domain.
If you want to scrape data from a specific period, you can request the data from last week, hour, day, year, or set a custom range.
With this Google search images API, you can search images by sorting them by type. The API will return images as line drawings, clipart, and gifs. Other valuable options for sorting images include sorting images by color and use policy.
Serpstack delivers SERP data in JSON and CSV formats. The company has its own proxy infrastructure that can withstand huge volumes of requests. Reaching out to the support team is possible via a website form, although you might not need to contact them at all. Everything is well explained, including both the product and pricing.
The Google search data API has a free version, including 100 searches/month and JSON results. The paid plans support the same features but differ by the number of searches per month they offer. The Basic plan provides 5,000 searches with a price tag of $29.99/month.
If you need more searches per month, the Business plan supports 20,000 for $99.99/month, while the Business Pro package offers up to 50,000 for $199.99/month. If you go with the annual subscription, you’ll save 20% on each of these plans. This search engine API also has the Enterprise plan with custom pricing, SLAs, and solutions.
So far, Apify has been used for nearly 1.4 million times, and that number is rapidly increasing each day. The number of Apify users counts over 7,725 marketing and search engine enthusiasts. The API is incredibly intuitive and requires that you create an account and get your API key. After completing these steps, you can scrape Google search results without interruption.
Pros
Cons
While searching for the best SERP API, Apify knocked us off our feet with its feature offer and unparalleled customer support. The search scraper does an excellent job of extracting search engine data, delivering structured results in various formats. These include JSON, XML, CSV, and XLS.
The company offers a rock-solid proxy infrastructure that combines its own proxy infrastructure and third-party proxy service providers. Apify allows you to retrieve data from Google search results through keyword and URL-based queries. You can further customize a query to look for SERPs from a specific country, and in either of the 80+ languages that the Google search results API supports.
It is further possible to set a UULE parameter, which can be quite useful for local rankings. The remaining customization options allow users to set the number of search results per page, access unfiltered results, and retrieve custom HTML attributes via the custom data functionality.
The types of Google data Apify’s API can return range from organic and paid results to People Also Ask and Related Queries. The platform offers code examples for Python, PHP, and Node.js.
Apify allows users to create a free account, granting them 100 SERPs. After exceeding this limit, the Google search API pricing climbs to $3/1,000 SERPs. The Personal plan costs $49/month, which supports 16,000 SERPs. Other available plans include Team ($499/month), Business ($999/month), and Custom (custom pricing).
Another outstanding search engine scraping tool is SerpsBot. With a simple pricing structure and the ability to fetch all Google features, the API has become a favorite tool among data miners, SEO, and marketing professionals.
Pros
Cons
SerpsBot offers a simple way to get Google data from different devices, locations, and in different languages. The search engine API supports a high level of search query customization. For instance, you can use Google’s search filters, such as site:, which will include only the results from the domain you specify containing your search query. You can also set the number of SERP pages you want the API to return and choose whether Google should auto-correct typos.
One of the remarkable things about the SerpsBot API is that it can place an API call within a short timeframe of 1.5 second thanks to its proxy infrastructure. To be on the safe side, the Google search data API also uses a third-party proxy provider, ensuring all services are up and running during maintenance.
The output formats available include JSON and CSV. The API can fetch all types of Google features, such as knowledge graphs, featured snippets, and organic results. You don’t have to worry about rate limits, as there are none unless you exceed 1,000 requests within a second.
SerpsBot delivers results in real-time and provides extensive product documentation. Should you come across any issues, you can contact the search engines API support team via live chat and email.
If you decide to create an account on SerpsBot, you’ll receive 100 free credits, with each API call counting as one credit. The solution allows you to scrape Google results without a monthly fee. The pay-as-you-go model lets you buy credits based on your requirements. The more credits you buy, the lower the price. For example, if you need anywhere between 1,000 and 5,000 credits, the Google position checker API charges $2/per 1,000 API calls. Meanwhile, the price significantly drops if you purchase between 100,001 and 1,000,000 credits, with 1,000 API calls costing $0.75.
Ranking among the top SEO solutions, DataForSEO believes in an API-based approach to data collection. The provider further simplifies the process of fetching data from different search engines, helping data miners, SEO marketing, and software companies quickly obtain the latest, most accurate pieces of information.
Apart from a Google search engine results API, DataForSEO covers other search engines, including a Google popular times API, Baidu SERP, Google Images, Yandex SERP, Yahoo SERP, Google News, and Bing SERP.
Pros
Cons
DataForSEO has done many things right to make its API stand out from the competition, starting with comprehensive product documentation and 24/7 live customer support. The live chat support is available to free trial users, which is of great help if you’re a novice in scraping Google search results.
For 750 businesses, DataForSEO is the best SERP API, and we can’t argue the top-notch service the company offers. Features-wise, the API covers a variety of search engines and data types. You can scrape organic results from Bing, Baidu, and Yandex. It is also possible to get local packs from Bing.
As Google is the most popular search engine, DataForSEO makes sure you get pretty much any type of data from the search engine and its search verticals, including Google News, Maps, and Images. Apart from organic and paid SERPs, the API scrapes the following types of data: knowledge graphs, answer boxes, carousels, top stories, related searches, and more.
The SERP checker API allows you to choose between two SERP data delivery types - standard and live. The latter is an excellent choice for fetching SERP data in real-time. The standard method creates a separate POST and GET request, which affects data delivery times. If you’re not in a rush to fetch search engine data, this method is a more budget-friendly solution.
Query customization allows you to set a search keyword, device, language, and country. The maximum number of concurrent calls per minute is 2,000. We also like the high service availability and the fact that the Yandex, Bing, Yahoo, and Google search engine API boasts an impressive uptime rate of 99.95%.
DataforSEO has a pay-as-you-go pricing structure, which eliminates long-term contracts from the equation. Depending on the set priority, the price per 1,000 tasks varies from $0.75 to $3. The same applies to data delivery times that go from 11 seconds to 45 minutes.
The API further offers bonuses you can get based on the payment amount, which will add extra funds to your account. If you want to test the SERP API, you can do so with the free funds you’ll get for that purpose.
Ranking among the top search engine APIs, Dataflow Kit offers a wealth of search engine data extraction features and then some. The solution is second to none as far as ease of use goes, and if you want to try the DFK API, you’ll get 500 free credits to evaluate the service.
Pros
Cons
Webflow Kit’s Google search data API is your one-stop-shop for all of your SERP scraping and data extraction requirements. The tool helps users retrieve data from several search engines, including Google, DuckDuckGo, Baidu, Yandex, and Bing. Dataflow Kit’s data extraction capabilities don’t end there, though. It is further possible to obtain data from Google News, Google Shopping, and Google Images.
The search engine results API supports various query customizations, while a search query is keyword-based. You can use Google filters too, such as inurl:, intitle:, and others to narrow down your search. Whichever search engine you select, the search engine API will generate snippets for supported programming languages. These include Curl, Python, Node, PHP, and Go.
To further customize your search query, Dataflow Kit enables you to set a country, language, and the number of pages you want the API to return. You’ll be spoiled for choice when it comes to output formats. The provider supports JSON, XML, XLS, and CSV.
Unlike many other SERP APIs we’ve reviewed, Dataflow Kit doesn’t have its own proxy infrastructure but relies on a third-party provider. On the flip side, the proxy service it uses is one of the best in the industry.
The Google search results API allows users to save SERP data to either S3 compatible storage or upload the data to some of the best cloud storage platforms, such as Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive.
Dataflow Kit allows you to select the number of credits you want to purchase, and the minimum number of credits you can buy is 10,000 at $10. Following the industry’s best practices, the provider only deducts credits from your account for successful requests. A single SERP page costs three credits.
The company that many recognize as a top-class proxy provider, Luminati, added a search engines API to their product offering. The solution is intuitive, and it comes with clear documentation to help you get started in minutes.
Pros
Cons
Luminati’s search engine crawler allows you to scrape different search engines, including Google, Yahoo, and Bing. A few providers can stand shoulder to shoulder with Luminati when it comes to the proxy infrastructure, boasting a proxy network of over 72 million residential IPs. The Bing, Yahoo, and Google position checker API backs its search engine data extraction services with a robust and reliable proxy infrastructure, as well as an uptime rate of 99.99%.
Customizing search queries includes the option to specify a country and city and use different UULE parameters. You can also select your preferred domain and enable a safe search. The keyword-based searches can return the most versatile type of results, including web results, images, hotels, shopping, and videos. Supported output formats are HTML and JSON.
We cannot leave the company’s professional support out. They are available 24/7, responding to user queries promptly.
The SERP checker API offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model. The price per 1,000 requests is $3.50. Monthly subscriptions start from $500 for 200,000 requests and go up to $30,000 for 100 million requests. A yearly subscription, meanwhile, can save you 10% off all premium plans.
Now that you have a better view of the industry’s leading SERP APIs, it’s time to select one of them. Don’t worry, though. We’re here to help you shortlist your top contenders and choose the one that suits you perfectly.
The first step is to think about the search engine pages results API features that are essential to your project. For example, if scraping multiple search engines is important to you, scratch off the APIs that don’t provide data extraction services for anything other than Google.
The next thing is to look for a SERP API with a free trial. That will allow you to test it without any financial investments. More importantly, look at the vendor’s pricing, especially if you're planning on running large SERP data extraction projects. Set your budget, and you’ll get the solutions that are within and outside your spending range. Then choose accordingly.