Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

SearchAPI.io vs SERPHouse

SearchAPI.io scores 50.1 (D) on agent readiness against SERPHouse's 42.4 (E), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. SERPHouse leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do web search.

Best web search APIs for AI agents · All 326 search comparisons

Which one, for what

SearchAPI.io D

Best for Agents that need parsed results from many engines, especially shopping, ads, travel and social sources, at a low price per search.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 90 against 40
  • Security & auth, 28 against 11
  • Transparency & trust, 62 against 50

Watch for

MCP loads one tool per engine with no toolsets

SERPHouse E

Best for Low-cost Google, Bing and Yahoo result parsing for SEO and rank tracking, with many Google verticals.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 66 against 59
  • Agent ergonomics, 64 against 52
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 23 against 0

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

The hosted MCP server takes the API key only in its URL path, and the REST API also accepts api_token in the query string

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.

Reliability SearchAPI.io +50

SearchAPI.io 90

Honeybadger status page at status.searchapi.io with Landing Page and API components and monthly history (20). Re-read on 4 November 2026, it shows no incidents in September, October or November 2026, and its incident feed's newest entry is the 11 February 2026 partial outage, so the window from 6 August is clean (30). The hourly cap is published, 20 per cent of the plan's monthly searches in any hour (15). The OpenAPI file lists a 429 response with an error string, but no Retry-After or backoff guidance was found. The partial 5 is kept pending the founder's rule on in-between values (5). The terms of 11 April 2026 give a 99.9% SLA for all plans with a credit of 100% of the monthly price, and the pricing page lists it on every plan (10). GA (10). 20 + 30 + 15 + 5 + 10 + 10 = 90.

SERPHouse 40

Read with the hosted lines. No status page is linked from the site or docs, and status.serphouse.com did not answer on 6 November 2026 (0). No readable incident history (5). Rate limits published, 60 requests a minute and 60 concurrent on every self-serve plan (15). 429 is documented as 'slow down', and a 200 can carry "status": "error" with 'Please try again', with no Retry-After or backoff guidance. Failed requests aren't charged (5 of 15). The pricing page lists a 99.99% uptime SLA on Basic and Regular and the docs a 99.95% one, but no SLA terms or credits were found in the terms (5 of 10). Generally available (10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 5 + 5 + 10 = 40.

Maintenance & community SERPHouse +23

SearchAPI.io 0

No changelog (/changelog answered 404 on 4 November 2026) and no dated API change found, so the last release can't be dated (0). No releases to count (0). No public issue tracker or changelog to judge replies by. A Discord server is linked from the footer and wasn't tested (0). The 15 for io.searchapi/mcp in the official MCP registry rested on a reading of the registry's JSON API, which this run doesn't use, and no ordinary registry page shows the entry, so the line falls to 0, as graphiti, linear-mcp and copilot-studio-mcp read it. No official SDKs were found; the footer links a GitHub organisation whose pages answered 403 (0, 15 before). No public packages or CI (0). 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 0.

SERPHouse 23

Read for a closed service, with its repositories read as code. No changelog or dated API change was found. The newest release is MCP server 1.1.0 on 6 July 2026, 123 days before 6 November, and the last commit in its repository was on 22 July (10). No release or dated change in the 90 days from 8 August; the about page's 2026 entry (Forums, Place Details and Scraper APIs) is undated (0). No changelog; support by email. Issues weren't read, since the GitHub API refused us for its rate limit (5 of 25). Not in the official MCP registry, though the repository's server.json names io.github.SERPHouse/serphouse-mcp. Node.js SDK last changed 24 June 2026, PHP SDK 10 May 2024, and no Python SDK repository was found under the SERPHouse organisation (5 of 15). The MCP repository has an npm publish workflow and no tests (3 of 10). 10 + 0 + 5 + 5 + 3 = 23.

Security & auth SearchAPI.io +17

SearchAPI.io 28

API keys with a documented api_key query-string option, and OAuth with expiring, rotating tokens for the MCP. The MCP page, re-read on 4 November 2026, now tells clients to send the token in the X-MCP-Token header and not in a URL. The registry's ?token= reading came from a JSON API this run doesn't use and is struck. The api_key query option stays documented in the API reference. 20 less 10 (10). Every action is a read, and there are no tool subsets (15). Results are third-party snippets and scraped AI answers, with no injection guidance (0). No per-call audit log found. The privacy policy says account logins are logged by IP (0). The trust centre at security.searchapi.io answers robots.txt with an app page, so it was left unread on 4 November 2026. No certifications, bounty or security.txt (404 on 4 November 2026) found. The partial 3 is kept pending the founder's rule on in-between values (3).

SERPHouse 11

One key per account, one account per user, no scopes or rotation found (10). The REST API documents api_token in the query string and the hosted MCP server takes the key only in its URL path, less 10 (0 of 30). Searches only read, with no read-only or restricted key (8 of 20). Results are third-party snippets and AI Overview text, with no prompt-injection guidance (0). An account tool shows plan and credit usage; no per-call log was found (3 of 15). No security.txt (404), disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification found (0 of 20). 0 + 8 + 0 + 3 + 0 = 11.

Agent ergonomics SERPHouse +12

SearchAPI.io 52

The MCP exposes over 100 tools, one or more per engine, with no toolsets or filtering documented (5). page, time_period, location, country, language and safe search. Google's num has been fixed at 10 since September 2025 (18). Status codes are documented, but not how to recover from each (12). Searches are reads, and only HTTP 200 responses are billed, so retries are cheap. MCP annotations aren't visible (10). Two required parameters, engine and q. No official SDKs (7).

SERPHouse 64

23 MCP tools with no toolsets or filtering (15 of 25). num_result, max_pages, paging, device, location, language, date and video filters (16 of 20). Status codes are tabulated, but a 200 can also mean an error and the body carries only 'Please try again' (10 of 20). Searches only read and failed requests aren't charged, but the MCP tools carry no readOnlyHint or other annotations (10 of 20). serphouse_search needs only q and defaults to the US; most other tools need loc or loc_id. Official Node.js, PHP and Python SDKs are documented (13 of 15). 15 + 16 + 10 + 10 + 13 = 64.

Transparency & trust SearchAPI.io +12

SearchAPI.io 62

Closed service with published terms (15). Privacy policy dated 11 April 2026. Data sits in the US, cached results are purged on an unstated schedule, and zero retention is Enterprise only (15). Google's num phase-out is documented, and there's no deprecation policy (3). US data location stated, and the privacy policy links a subprocessor page (15).

SERPHouse 50

Closed service under terms naming Patoliya Infotech LLP in India, and the MCP server is MIT (18 of 30). The terms give retention periods (JSON results up to 6 months, HTML up to 1 month, search history indefinitely) and say personal data sits on DigitalOcean in India, and they advise EEA users not to use the service. The privacy policy is generic and neither document carries a date (15 of 30). No deprecation policy, and the terms allow products to be discontinued without notice (0 of 20). DigitalOcean in India named for account data; no sub-processor list (6 of 20). 18 + 15 + 0 + 6 = 39.

Payments & pricing SERPHouse +10

SearchAPI.io 30

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Monthly plans only, priced in public, from $40 for 10,000 searches to $5,000 for 5 million (10). 100 free requests with no card (20). A person has to sign up in a browser (0).

SERPHouse 40

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-1,000 prices for SERP, autocomplete and top-100 requests published without login (20). Free trial of 4,000 credits for 7 days, 'No Credit Card Required' (20). A person signs up in a browser and confirms an email (0). 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 = 40.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runSearchAPI.ioSERPHouseEdge
Reliability16%209040SearchAPI.io +50
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25966SERPHouse +7
Agent ergonomics13%16.25264SERPHouse +12
Security & auth14%17.52811SearchAPI.io +17
Payments & pricing10%12.53040SERPHouse +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8023SERPHouse +23
Transparency & trust7%8.86250SearchAPI.io +12
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 50.1/100E 42.4/100

Facts side by side

FactSearchAPI.ioSERPHouse
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorSearchApiPatoliya Infotech LLP
Hosted endpointhttps://www.searchapi.io/api/v1/searchhttps://mcp.serphouse.com/YOUR_API_KEY/mcp
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPStreamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPaid
Price for web search$4 per 1,000 requestsnot published
x402nono
Tools exposednone23
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registryio.searchapi/mcpnot listed
Last releasenone2026-07-06
Terms last updated2026-04-11no date given
Privacy policy last updated2026-04-11no date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesyes
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 reviews3/5 (2)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

SearchAPI.io

A 99.9% SLA in the terms on every plan, no status-page incidents since 11 February 2026, and over 150 engine endpoints behind one URL. The MCP loads one tool per engine with no toolsets, there is no changelog or official SDK, and every account starts with a browser signup.

SERPHouse

SERPHouse returns parsed Google, Bing and Yahoo results at published prices from $0.62 per 1,000 requests, with a 23-tool MCP server and a 4,000-credit trial without a card. The hosted MCP puts the key in its URL, there is no status page, changelog or security contact, and the terms keep search history indefinitely.

Before you call either

SearchAPI.io

  1. Send the key as Authorization: Bearer, not api_key= in the URL
  2. Connect the MCP through OAuth or the X-MCP-Token header. Never put the token in the MCP URL
  3. Call the REST API with engine= when context is tight. The MCP loads one tool definition per engine
  4. Page Google results with page. num is fixed at 10
  5. Pace bursts. One hour can use at most 20 per cent of the plan's monthly searches

SERPHouse

  1. Send the key as Authorization: Bearer, not as api_token in the URL
  2. Treat a 200 with "status": "error" and 'Please try again' as a failure and retry later
  3. Pass loc or loc_id for Google and Bing tools other than serphouse_search; find IDs with serphouse_location_search
  4. Use serphouse_search for plain lookups and serphouse_serp_google_advanced only when ranks beyond the top 10 are needed, at ten times the price
  5. Keep under 60 requests a minute on self-serve plans

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, SearchAPI.io or SERPHouse?

SearchAPI.io scores 50.1 (D) on agent readiness against SERPHouse's 42.4 (E), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. SERPHouse leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

Do SearchAPI.io and SERPHouse need an API key?

SearchAPI.io takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. SERPHouse needs an API key.

Can an agent call SearchAPI.io and SERPHouse without installing anything?

Yes. SearchAPI.io has a hosted endpoint at https://www.searchapi.io/api/v1/search and SERPHouse at https://mcp.serphouse.com/YOUR_API_KEY/mcp.

Other comparisons with SearchAPI.io or SERPHouse

Machine-readable

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