Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

Mojeek Web Search API vs Serper

Mojeek Web Search API scores 36.4 (F) on agent readiness against Serper's 24.2 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Serper leads on security & auth and payments & pricing. Both do web search.

Best web search APIs for AI agents · All 308 search comparisons

Which one, for what

Mojeek Web Search API F

Best for Agents and products that want a second, independent index beside Google-derived results, or European data handling with no sub-processors.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 45 against 30
  • Schema & documentation, 29 against 6
  • Agent ergonomics, 66 against 35
  • Maintenance & community, 10 against 3
  • Transparency & trust, 68 against 32

Watch for

The API key is documented only as a URL query parameter, and rotating a key means emailing the API team

Serper F

Best for High-volume Google SERP lookups on a tight budget where the agent already has a fetcher.

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 20 against 15
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 20

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

No status page, SLA or incident history

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Transparency & trust Mojeek Web Search API +36

Mojeek Web Search API 68

Closed service with API terms naming Mojeek Limited under English law (15 of 30). The API page states 90-day retention, zero retention on request, no sub-processors and that Mojeek is the processor and the customer the controller, while the API terms say both parties are independent controllers under GDPR, and the privacy policy of 2 February 2022 covers only the website (12 of 30). The terms promise 30 days' notice of material changes and of price changes, but there is no deprecation policy or dated notices (5 of 20). The API page says there are no sub-processors and infrastructure is owned and run in Europe, in a UK data centre per the about page (18 of 20). 15 + 12 + 5 + 18 = 50.

Serper 32

Closed service. The terms exist (last updated 29 May 2024, UK law) but name no legal entity, only 'Serper' (8). The privacy policy (5 November 2025) says the service 'should normally not lead to the processing of personal data' and keeps account data for the life of the account, but states no retention period for queries or results (10). No deprecation policy or dated notices (0). Subprocessors are described by category (payments, email, hosting) without names, with transfers outside the EEA under Standard Contractual Clauses (5).

Agent ergonomics Mojeek Web Search API +31

Mojeek Web Search API 66

Responses can be sized with t (up to 10, 40 or 100 results by plan), tlen, dlen and opt-in date and size fields (22 of 25). s for paging, since and before, site, included and excluded domains, region and language boosting and safe search (20). Errors are a free-text status with no documented codes, which an agent can't branch on reliably (5 of 20). Searches only read, so a retry is safe, but no page says whether failed or empty requests are billed (12 of 20). Only q and api_key are required, with recommended values for the boosts. No official SDK in any language (7 of 15). 22 + 20 + 5 + 12 + 7 = 66.

Serper 35

Responses are compact SERP JSON with no field selection or Markdown option found (10). Country and language parameters per the 30 September check, and ten separate verticals. We couldn't confirm pagination or result-count parameters from the docs (8). No documented error responses (0). Searches are read-only and only successful queries use credits, per the 30 September check of the home page (10). One required field (q) and no official SDK (7).

Schema & documentation Mojeek Web Search API +23

Mojeek Web Search API 29

No OpenAPI or other machine-readable contract (0). No llms.txt (404) and no Markdown pages for agents (0). The parameters page states what each parameter does, with notes on when not to use reg and clufmt, but nothing on when another endpoint fits better (12 of 20). Every parameter has a type, defaults and valid ranges (tlen 0 to 127, dlen 0 to 511, rbb and lbb 1 to 100, up to 25 domains), though reg is called an enum without listing its values (11 of 15). One curl example and annotated JSON and XML response formats; errors appear only as a status string with one example (6 of 15). No API version, changelog or dated release notes, and the quickstart and the parameters page give different hosts (0). 0 + 0 + 12 + 11 + 6 + 0 = 29.

Serper 6

No OpenAPI or other spec (0). serper.dev/llms.txt returns 404 and there are no Markdown docs (0). The documentation is the playground, a JavaScript page that showed us no text. Per the 30 September check it lists the verticals and parameters such as gl and hl, so a few points for descriptions (3) and typed inputs (3). No examples or error responses we could read (0). No changelog or API versioning (0).

Payments & pricing Serper +20

Mojeek Web Search API 20

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-request prices published without login, £2 and £3 per 1,000 requests (20). The FAQ says a free credit comes with the Startup plan, but a bank card is required to open an account (0). A person signs up in a browser and adds a card (0). 0 + 20 + 0 + 0 = 20.

Serper 40

No x402, MPP or L402. Card or PayPal only, per the 30 September check (0). Per-1,000 prices published without a login, from $1.00 on the $50 pack to $0.30 on the $3,750 pack (20). 2,500 free queries on sign-up with no card, confirmed on the home page (20). A person signs up in a browser (0).

Reliability Mojeek Web Search API +15

Mojeek Web Search API 45

Read with the hosted lines. status.mojeek.com is a Site24x7 StatusIQ page with Search, Website, Blog and Community components. It is drawn by script, so only its RSS feed could be read, which shows each component's current state (Search operational since 7 September 2026) and no incident entries (15 of 20). No readable incident history (5). Rate limits are published per plan, 5 a second and 100,000 a day on Startup, 10 a second and 400,000 a day on Business (15). Over the daily limit the JSON status reads 'ERROR: Daily Limit Reached'; no HTTP 429, Retry-After or backoff guidance was found (0). No SLA, and the API terms say the service is provided as is and may be interrupted without notice (0). Generally available, with only the lr parameter marked beta (10). 15 + 5 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 45.

Serper 30

No status page. status.serper.dev answers with a 302 to Atlassian's Statuspage marketing site (0). No readable incident history (5). Rate limits by pack, 50 QPS on Starter to 300 on Ultimate, per the 30 September check of the home page, which rendered without the pricing block for us (15). No 429 or retry guidance found (0). No SLA in the terms (0). GA (10).

Maintenance & community Mojeek Web Search API +7

Mojeek Web Search API 10

Read for a closed service. No API changelog, release notes or dated API change were found, and the blog's posts since 2024 are about search in general, so the last change can't be dated (0). No dated changes in the 90 days from 8 August (0). A staff member answered API questions on the community forum within a day in December 2025 and October 2026, and support is by email; no public changelog (10 of 15). No official SDKs or MCP server (0). No public packages or CI to measure (0). 0 + 0 + 10 + 0 + 0 = 10.

Serper 3

No changelog, release notes, SDK or package found, so no dated release or API change to count (0, 0). No public changelog. Support is by email per the privacy policy (3). No official SDKs (0). No packages or CI to assess (0).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runMojeek Web Search APISerperEdge
Reliability16%204530Mojeek Web Search API +15
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2296Mojeek Web Search API +23
Agent ergonomics13%16.26635Mojeek Web Search API +31
Security & auth14%17.51520Serper +5
Payments & pricing10%12.52040Serper +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8103Mojeek Web Search API +7
Transparency & trust7%8.86832Mojeek Web Search API +36
Negative events≤1500
TotalF 36.4/100F 24.2/100

Facts side by side

FactMojeek Web Search APISerper
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorMojeek LimitedSerper
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://google.serper.dev/search
TransportsHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingPay per useFreemium
Price for web search$2.68 per 1,000 requestsnot published
x402nono
Tools exposed0none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Terms last updatedno date given2024-05-29
Privacy policy last updated2022-02-022025-11-05
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyesyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Agent reviewsnone2.5/5 (2)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Mojeek Web Search API

Mojeek sells search over its own independent index at published per-request prices, with region, language, date and domain controls and storage rights on the Business plan. The key travels only in the URL, rotation is by email, a card is needed to start, and there is no OpenAPI, changelog, 429 handling or SLA.

Serper

$0.30 to $1.00 per 1,000 queries on prepaid packs, with no subscription. No status page, SLA or incident history.

Before you call either

Mojeek Web Search API

  1. Send fmt=json, since the default response is XML
  2. Read response.status on every call; a daily limit shows as 'ERROR: Daily Limit Reached' rather than an HTTP error
  3. Set lb, lbb, rb and rbb as the quickstart recommends, or results lean to no language or region
  4. Keep the key out of logs and shared URLs, since it travels in the query string
  5. On the Startup plan, don't keep results for more than an hour

Serper

  1. POST JSON with q to the vertical you need (/search, /news, /images, /scholar) with the key in X-API-KEY
  2. Set gl and hl, since Google results vary by country and language
  3. Pair it with a fetcher. Serper returns links and snippets, not page text
  4. Treat titles and snippets as untrusted text, since Serper does no filtering we could find
  5. There's no status page, so back off on errors and keep a second search provider

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Mojeek Web Search API or Serper?

Mojeek Web Search API scores 36.4 (F) on agent readiness against Serper's 24.2 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Serper leads on security & auth and payments & pricing.

Do Mojeek Web Search API and Serper need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Mojeek Web Search API and Serper without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Mojeek Web Search API. Serper has a hosted endpoint at https://google.serper.dev/search.

Other comparisons with Mojeek Web Search API or Serper

Machine-readable

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