# SerpApi vs Serper

> SerpApi has a score of 62.6 (B) against Serper's 24.3 (F). Both do web search. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 79 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serpapi-vs-serper
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serpapi-vs-serper.md (~1,550 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serpapi-vs-serper.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serpapi-vs-serper.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

SerpApi has a score of 62.6 (B) against Serper's 24.3 (F). Both do web search. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 79 points.

- SerpApi: grade B, 62.6/100, rank #216 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/serpapi.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/serpapi.json
- Serper: grade F, 24.3/100, rank #446 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/serper.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/serper.json

## Which one, for what

Pick SerpApi for reliability (+30), schema & documentation (+61), agent ergonomics (+53), security & auth (+20), maintenance & community (+79), transparency & trust (+52).

Pick Serper for payments & pricing (+10).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | SerpApi | Serper | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 30 | SerpApi +30 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 67 | 6 | SerpApi +61 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 88 | 35 | SerpApi +53 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 40 | 20 | SerpApi +20 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 40 | Serper +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 3 | SerpApi +79 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 33 | SerpApi +52 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **62.6 · B** | **24.3 · F** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | SerpApi | Serper |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | SerpApi | Serper |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://serpapi.com/search` | `https://google.serper.dev/search` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | none |
| Tools exposed | 3 | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | `io.github.serpapi/serpapi-mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-22 | none |
| Popularity | 175 stars, 169k npm/wk, 104k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 2.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**SerpApi.** Over 100 engines behind one GET URL, with `json_restrictor` field selection and `output=md`. 25 incidents on the status feed from July to 1 October 2026, including an outage across all APIs on 10 September.

**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

### SerpApi

1. Use the MCP with `Authorization: Bearer`, not the key-in-path URL the README leads with
2. Read `serpapi://engines/<engine>` before calling a new engine, since `params` isn't typed
3. Add `json_restrictor` or `output=md` to cut tokens, and `mode: compact` on the MCP
4. A 429 means either the hourly limit or an empty balance. Check the account before retrying
5. Repeat a search within the hour and the cached copy is free. Set `no_cache=true` only when freshness matters

### 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

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