SERP API pricing ladders: where does the cheapest vendor change?

For recurring Google SERP Light or default-depth work, the cheapest published bill is DataForSEO at 10,000 searches for $6 and at 100,000 for $60, then ScrapingDog at 1,000,000 for $350. The named cheapest-vendor changes occur at 5,001, 150,001, 200,001, and 333,334 monthly searches, with a tie at exactly 150,000, using the published Bright Data free tier, DataForSEO Standard Queue, and ScrapingDog Google SERP Light prices retrieved July 26, 2026. (Bright Data, DataForSEO, ScrapingDog)

That answer is narrower than “cheapest SERP API” because output depth and latency are not identical. The comparison is one successful Google search at each vendor’s lowest published non-JavaScript Google SERP endpoint, with DataForSEO’s default 10-result depth. Taxes, screenshots, AI summaries, deeper result pages, and premium delivery are excluded. “Effective per 1,000” means the amount actually payable at the stated volume divided by the volume, so unused plan allowance stays in the number.

The normalized answer

N/P means the vendor does not publish enough information to calculate the bill. Quote means a public self-serve ladder stops before that volume. Bills are monthly except Serper’s six-month prepaid packages and the explicitly annual Traject Data rows. Every input in this table was retrieved from the linked first-party page on July 26, 2026.

The normalized answer table

ScrapingBee also publishes a dedicated Google API at 10 credits for light mode and 15 for normal mode. The site’s current vendor meter records the 20-credit Google HTML route, so the table preserves the engine-compatible number instead of silently selecting a different output. At 100,000 searches, the published light route would fit the $99 Startup allowance, while normal mode needs the $249 Business allowance. (ScrapingBee credit rules, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)

DataForSEO’s $6, $60, and $600 are consumed usage, not initial card outlay. The account requires a $50 minimum deposit, which remains account balance, so a buyer running only 10,000 searches still funds $50 first. (DataForSEO pricing, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)

Exact volumes where the cheapest vendor changes

The recurring ranking below includes Bright Data’s 5,000-request monthly free tier but excludes one-time signup credits. It includes only exact public prices and the Google SERP Light or default-depth meter defined above. The underlying prices and allowances were retrieved July 26, 2026 from Bright Data, DataForSEO, and ScrapingDog.

Exact volumes where the cheapest vendor changes table

The exact tie and step arithmetic is:

1. DataForSEO at 150,000 searches: 150,000 × $0.0006 = $90. ScrapingDog Standard is also $90 and covers 1,000,000 credits ÷ 5 credits = 200,000 Google SERP Light searches. (DataForSEO, ScrapingDog, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)
2. Search 200,001 forces ScrapingDog onto Pro at $200, while DataForSEO is 200,001 × $0.0006 = $120.0006. (DataForSEO, ScrapingDog, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)
3. The next crossover solves $200 ÷ $0.0006 = 333,333.333..., so the first whole search where ScrapingDog is lower is 333,334. At that volume DataForSEO is $200.0004 and ScrapingDog remains $200. (DataForSEO, ScrapingDog, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)

This is a price ordering, not an equivalence claim. DataForSEO Standard Queue publishes a slower queue and a 10-result default depth, while endpoint schemas and feature depth vary across vendors. (DataForSEO pricing, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)

One complete worked bill

Take 250,001 successful Zenserp searches in one month. This volume exposes a plan-boundary cost that the round checkpoints hide. The dataset records one plan search per successful search, no published overage rate, and these two adjacent monthly plans. (Zenserp pricing, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)

One complete worked bill table

The meter and allowance arithmetic is:

metered searches       = 250,001 searches × 1 search/search = 250,001 searches
Large shortfall        = 250,001 - 250,000                  = 1 search
Premium headroom       = 500,000 - 250,001                  = 249,999 searches
Premium utilization    = 250,001 ÷ 500,000                  = 50.0002%

Because the record publishes no overage rate, the Large plan does not provide a checkable way to buy that extra search. The next checkable self-serve bill is Premium at $499.99. (Zenserp pricing, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)

bill at 250,000        = $299.99
bill at 250,001        = $499.99
plan-step increase     = $499.99 - $299.99                  = $200.00
effective rate at edge = $499.99 ÷ (250,001 ÷ 1,000)        = $1.999952 per 1,000

The $200 increase is a plan-floor effect, not a $200 per-search rate. At 250,000 searches, Large’s bill normalizes to $299.99 ÷ 250 = $1.19996 per 1,000; one additional search moves the workload to Premium and leaves 249,999 searches of unused allowance. (Zenserp pricing, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)

Full published plan ladder for all 24 SERP-tagged records

Allowances below stay in each vendor’s own unit. $N/mo annual means the vendor publishes that effective monthly amount only with annual billing. Custom, N/P means the offer exists but its price is not published. All ladder rows were retrieved from their linked first-party pricing pages on July 26, 2026.

Full published plan ladder for all 24 SERP-tagged records table

ScrapingDog’s complete 27-tier ladder

Every allowance and monthly price below is published on the ScrapingDog pricing page, retrieved July 26, 2026. The Google SERP Light capacity divides credits by the published 5-credit request cost.

ScrapingDog’s complete 27-tier ladder table

Caching, retention, and redistribution clauses

No reviewed SERP record contains a verified clause that limits how long a customer may cache or retain returned results. No reviewed record explicitly prohibits redistribution of the returned result data as such. That negative finding is limited to the first-party pages in this guide, retrieved July 26, 2026, and is not legal advice.

SearchApi.io has the only concrete retention clause, but it describes SearchApi’s own storage rather than a customer’s cache. Zero Data Retention is Enterprise-only; when enabled, the clause says: “No request parameters, HTML, or JSON responses are stored or logged.” The same documentation exposes search history for the last year, while the exact default storage duration for raw HTML and JSON is not published. (SearchApi Search Analytics, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)

SearchApi’s terms prohibit a customer from reselling or redistributing the service without written consent, not from redistributing every returned fact. Its data clause separately prohibits removing copyright, trademark, source attribution, and other proprietary notices. The legal protection guarantee also excludes claims caused by the customer’s storage, redistribution, or commercialization of data, which removes coverage rather than prohibiting those activities. (SearchApi terms, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)

Scale SERP, SerpWow, and ValueSERP point to Traject Data terms that label the service for personal use and prohibit selling or reselling purchased products or services. That clause is unusually broad, but it still does not state a cache lifetime or expressly say that returned SERP facts may not be redistributed. It should be cleared with Traject Data before commercial embedding. (Traject Data terms, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)

Serper says it does not cache anything, but that describes how Serper fetches fresh Google results. It is not a customer-side no-cache rule. (Serper FAQ, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)

Where payable terms require special handling

These are data-model boundaries, not reasons to hide a vendor.

• DataForSEO tasks are searches, not individual results. The vendor publishes $0.0006 per default-depth SERP task, so 100,000 searches cost 100,000 × $0.0006 = $60. The current engine records one task as one search and reproduces that total. (DataForSEO pricing, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)
• Serper is prepaid, not unrestricted pay as you go. Its published packages require cash purchases of $50, $375, $1,250, or $3,750. The current engine preserves those as one-time pack prices and selects the smallest published pack that covers the workload; it does not relabel an effective per-credit rate as a monthly or unrestricted rate. (Serper pricing, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)
• Oxylabs Custom+ has no published commitment floor. The current engine does not turn that missing commitment into zero: at 10,000 Google results it selects the published $49 Micro plan rather than inventing a $10 Custom+ purchase. (Oxylabs pricing, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)
• Oxylabs appears twice. The SERP-specific and Web Scraper API records now point at overlapping products but encode different allowances and top-up behavior. At 1,000,000 Google results, one engine path returns $900 while the current product page’s top-up caps make the $999 Business plan the safer payable answer. (Oxylabs SERP product, Oxylabs Web pricing, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)
• Three Traject products cannot be normalized. Scale SERP, SerpWow, and ValueSERP publish credit allowances but do not publish how many credits one search consumes. Treating one credit as one search would be an inference, so their checkpoint cells remain N/P. (Scale SERP, SerpWow, ValueSERP, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)

The practical buying rule is therefore simple. Use the normalized payable table, not the engine’s raw winner, and verify output depth before signing: DataForSEO wins the 10,000 and 100,000 checkpoints on consumed cost, while ScrapingDog Google SERP Light wins at 1,000,000 under the published assumptions. (DataForSEO, ScrapingDog, retrieved Jul. 26, 2026.)