Google's official Search API vs SERP APIs: what are your options in 2026?
The Custom Search JSON API gives 100 free queries a day and $5 per 1,000, capped at 10k a day, and is closed to new signups as of August 2026.
Google does have an official search API. Most people who go looking for it end up somewhere else, and the reasons are worth being specific about rather than waved at.
What the Custom Search JSON API actually gives you
The Custom Search JSON API, checked in August 2026, includes “100 search queries per day for free.” Beyond that it is “$5 per 1000 queries, up to 10k queries per day”: a hard ceiling, not a soft rate limit you can pay your way past.
Two things about it matter more than the price:
It searches a Programmable Search Engine you configure, not raw google.com. The API sits behind a search engine ID you set up yourself. You can configure it to search the entire web rather than a fixed list of sites, but what comes back is still shaped by that configuration, not a direct mirror of what a person typing the same query into google.com would see.
It is closed to new customers. Google’s own documentation states the pricing above “applies only to existing customers” and that the API “is closed to new customers and will be discontinued on January 1, 2027.” If you do not already have access, signing up is not an option: Google’s stated recommendation for new projects is Vertex AI Search, a different product with its own setup and pricing model built for enterprise search rather than a drop-in SERP call.
What a SERP API gives you instead
A SERP API scrapes and parses the actual results page Google serves for a query: organic results, and depending on the query, People Also Ask, knowledge panels, ads, local packs and related searches, all as structured JSON. It is not a curated index you configure, it is what the search engine actually returned.
On FastAF, a /serp request costs 5 credits. A request we ran while writing this post (August 2026) returned 10 organic results for that one call:
import requests
API_KEY = "faf_live_..."
resp = requests.get(
"https://api.fastaf.co/v1/serp",
params={"query": "project management software", "country": "us"},
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"},
timeout=60,
)
resp.raise_for_status()
for r in resp.json()["organic_results"]:
print(r["rank"], r["title"], r["link"])Comparing the two on the numbers that matter
| Custom Search JSON API | FastAF /serp | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 100 queries/day | 500 credits once, no card (100 searches) |
| Price at volume | $5.00 per 1,000 queries | $2.50-$1.33 per 1,000 searches, pack-dependent |
| Daily cap | 10,000 queries/day, hard limit | No daily cap; bounded by prepaid credits and concurrency |
| Result source | Your configured Programmable Search Engine | The actual Google results page |
| Result types | Web results from the configured engine | Organic, People Also Ask, knowledge graph, ads, local, related searches |
| New signups | Closed since 2025, shutting down Jan 1, 2027 | Open |
The price-per-1,000 figures on our side are pack list prices, not a single “cheapest” number: compare at the volume you actually run, the same way you should with any vendor’s headline rate.
When the official API is enough (if you can still use it)
If you are an existing customer, under 10,000 queries a day is genuinely fine, and your use case is closer to “site search box” than “rank tracking”: searching your own site or a fixed set of properties, low volume, no need for the visual layout of the real results page. That is what a Programmable Search Engine was built for.
When you need a SERP API
Rank tracking, SEO competitive analysis, ad monitoring, or anything that needs to reflect what a real searcher sees, all point toward a SERP API rather than a configured search engine:
- You need the actual organic ranking positions and rich result types (PAA, local pack, ads), not a curated index.
- Your volume could realistically cross 10,000 queries a day, or already does.
- You are a new project and cannot sign up for the Custom Search JSON API at all.
- You need results by country, language and device without building that logic on top of a search engine config.
The short version
The Custom Search JSON API is cheap, has a real free tier, and is closed to anyone who was not already using it before Google shut the door. For a site-search widget on your own property, and only if you already have access, it still does the job within its 10k/day ceiling. For anything that needs to look like the real Google results page, at a volume with room to grow, a SERP API is the only route left open. See pricing for the full credit table, or start on the free tier to check field coverage against your own queries.