# SearchAPI.io vs SERPHouse (slim)

> SearchAPI.io scores 50.1 (D) to SERPHouse's 42.4 (E) for web search. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-serphouse.md (~4,950 tokens) · this version ~2,480 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-serphouse.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-serphouse
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

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.

- SearchAPI.io: D 50.1, rank #1075 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/searchapi-io.min.md
- SERPHouse: E 42.4, rank #1283 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/serphouse.min.md
- SearchAPI.io, good 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.
- SERPHouse, good 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 Runs on your own machine.

| Category | SearchAPI.io | SERPHouse |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 90 | 40 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 59 | 66 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 52 | 64 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 28 | 11 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 30 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 0 | 23 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 62 | 50 |

| Fact (where they differ) | SearchAPI.io | SERPHouse |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | SearchApi | Patoliya Infotech LLP |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://www.searchapi.io/api/v1/search` | `https://mcp.serphouse.com/YOUR_API_KEY/mcp` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| Price for web search | $4 per 1,000 requests | not published |
| Tools exposed | none | 23 |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.searchapi/mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | none | 2026-07-06 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-04-11 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-04-11 | no date given |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | none |

Why the edge:
- 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.)