Google Search API alternatives and what they cost

You cannot buy Google's official Search API any more. Google's own documentation says the Custom Search JSON API is closed to new customers and gives existing customers until January 1, 2027 to move off it. Picking a Google Search API alternative is now a migration question with a deadline on it. The replacements split into three groups: SERP scrapers that return Google's own results, independent indexes that return their own, and agent-oriented search that returns page content instead of a list of links. Across ten published open-web rates from nine vendors, 1,000 plain searches costs $1.00 to $35.00, a 35x spread for what looks like one product. Those are the vendors' published rates, checked November 9, 2026.

What Google offers now

Google's Custom Search JSON API terms, checked November 9, 2026, were always narrow: 100 free queries a day, $5 per 1,000 after that, and a hard ceiling of 10,000 a day. The Site Restricted JSON API, which lifted that cap for engines covering ten or fewer sites, stopped serving traffic on January 8, 2025.

Neither of Google's own paths is a swap. Its closure notice points to Vertex AI Search, which Google is renaming Agent Search, for searching up to 50 domains. Its Standard Edition costs $1.50 per 1,000 queries, as published on Agent Search pricing on November 9, 2026, but it searches data stores you configure, not the open web. For full web search, the notice offers a contact form rather than a price. The nearest open-web price Google publishes is grounding on Google Search at $35.00 per 1,000 requests plus Gemini tokens, and its own worked example totals $35.1375. That is seven times the old $5, and it returns a grounded answer rather than a list you can parse.

This is the second official search API to close in two years. Microsoft retired the Bing Search APIs on August 11, 2025 and points customers to Grounding with Bing Search inside Azure AI Agents.

The three groups, and which one fits

SERP scrapers run your query against Google and return the results page as JSON, ranking and all. Use them when the ranking itself is the data: rank tracking, ad monitoring, share of voice. Serper is far cheaper, at $1.00 per 1,000 against SerpApi's $25.00 entry rate, per Serper and SerpApi pricing, checked November 9, 2026. SerpApi carries SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, more engines, and a U.S. Legal Shield on every plan, which is what procurement is buying.

Independent indexes run their own crawl and ranking. Brave Search API is the main one, answering every query from its own index with no fallback to Google or Bing. You do not get Google's ordering, which matters if your product is about Google and stops mattering if you only need good documents for an agent to read. At $5 per 1,000, per Brave's pricing checked November 9, 2026, it is the rate Google charged, without the daily ceiling.

Agent-oriented search returns page text rather than a list of links. Exa runs its own index; Tavily, Firecrawl, Olostep and String pair a search call with page retrieval. Use them when the next step is always "read the pages", and price the whole job, because a $5 search followed by 10,000 fetches is mostly a fetching bill.

The three are not substitutes. A rank tracker built on Brave measures the wrong engine, and a research agent on a SERP scraper still has to fetch every result itself.

What 1,000 searches actually costs

One basis for every row: a plain search returning about ten results, no page content fetched, at the vendor's published self-serve rate, with a plan's monthly price divided by the searches it includes. Vertex AI Search is in the table but outside the $1.00 to $35.00 range, because it searches your data, not the web. Checked November 9, 2026.

Three of these price in credits rather than in searches, and the conversion is where comparisons go wrong. All the credit figures here are checked November 9, 2026 against the vendors' own pricing and API pages. Olostep's API reference states five base credits per search, so its $0.40 per 1,000 credits on Scale is $2.00 per 1,000 searches, not $0.40. Firecrawl charges two credits per ten results, so its Scale plan's 1,000,000 credits for $749 a month buy 500,000 searches, $1.50 per 1,000. Tavily's basic search is one credit and its advanced search is two. None of them hides the arithmetic. They just do not do it for you.

String is a web search and fetch API for developers and AI agents. String's /search sits in the agent group: a Google, DuckDuckGo or Brave query in, organic results as JSON out, then the same API fetches the URLs. It ships an MCP server, so an agent calls both steps as tools. Full rate card on the pricing page.

What we have not measured

String publishes the Web Data Frontier Benchmark, and it does not measure search. It is a fetch benchmark. In the October 30, 2026 run, 17 providers fetched 100 bot-protected sites, five attempts each, and String returned verified content on 98.6% of its 500 requests. That says how often a page comes back. It says nothing about result quality or freshness for any search API here, String's included. If a listicle orders search APIs by a benchmark score, check what the benchmark measured.

FAQ

How to let an AI agent search the web without Google's official API?

Give the agent a search tool and a fetch tool. Search returns candidate URLs, fetch returns their content as clean text. Exa, Tavily, Firecrawl, Olostep and String expose both, and most ship an MCP server so the agent calls them as tools. With Google's API closed to new customers, this is the default path, not a workaround.

Best SerpApi alternatives for scraping search results?

Serper is the direct substitute on price: $1.00 per 1,000 searches at entry against SerpApi's $25.00, falling to $0.30 at 12.5 million. Across the ten open-web rates checked November 9, 2026, the range is $1.00 to $35.00 per 1,000. SerpApi adds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and engines beyond Google. Our SerpApi alternatives page compares more replacements.

How to scrape Google search results?

Send the query to a vendor that runs it against Google and parses the results page for you. Serper and SerpApi both do this in real time and return JSON, and String's /search defaults to Google. Doing it yourself means running proxies and parsers against a page Google actively defends, which is the part these vendors sell.

I'm a growth marketer tracking SERP rankings across markets - what's the best API for that?

Use a SERP scraper, not an independent index, because the ranking you track is Google's. Check the vendor takes a country and language per query. Serper, SerpApi and String's /search all do. An independent index gives you a stable, cheap and irrelevant number.

SerpApi vs a general scraping API for Google results?

SerpApi parses the results page into typed fields and keeps up as Google's layout changes. A general scraping API hands you the page and leaves parsing to you: cheaper per call, more work per layout change. Pick SerpApi when the SERP structure is itself the product.

Does String offer a web search endpoint?

Yes. POST /search runs a Google, DuckDuckGo or Brave query and returns the top organic results as JSON with position, title, URL, display URL and snippet. It is $1.20 per 1,000 searches on Starter and $0.70 on Growth, as of November 2026 on the pricing page. We have not benchmarked its result quality against Brave, Exa or SerpApi.

Sources

Checked November 9, 2026. Every price is the vendor's own published rate.

• Google: Custom Search JSON API, Site Restricted JSON API, Vertex AI Search, Agent Search pricing, migration guide.
• Microsoft: Bing Search APIs retiring August 11, 2025.
• Brave Search API. SerpApi pricing. Serper.
• Exa pricing.
• Tavily: credits and pricing.
• Firecrawl: pricing, billing.
• Olostep: pricing, Create Search reference.
• String: Search overview, pricing.
• Web Data Frontier Benchmark, October 30, 2026 run: usestring.ai/benchmark, harness and targets. A fetch benchmark, with no search-quality measurement in it.
• Related: Best web search APIs, Firecrawl alternatives, comparisons hub.