SerpApi alternatives

Reachkit makes a competing cold email tool with a built-in lead database, so it’s on this list only for readers who use SerpApi to build prospect lists. I checked every price on this page in October 2026, on each vendor’s own site.

What SerpApi does well is hard to copy: 100+ named APIs across Google and other engines, parsed into fields, with only successful searches billed. So the replacement depends on what your calls were for:

• Cheap web search at volume: Firecrawl.
• Results with page content for an AI agent, billed monthly: Tavily.
• Pay per request, no subscription: Exa.
• Google Maps businesses without a monthly plan: Outscraper.
• Your brand in AI answers, tracked without code: Similarweb.
• Named contacts plus sequences in one tool: Apollo.
• Research on every lead, no code to maintain: Clay.
• Email addresses at the companies you found: Hunter.
• A target list turned into sent cold email: Reachkit.

Like-for-like SERP APIs such as Serper, SearchApi, DataForSEO and ScraperAPI fill the top-ranking pages for this search. I haven’t checked their prices, so they aren’t reviewed here.

For reference, SerpApi is free for 250 searches a month, then $25 for 1,000 on Starter (October 2026).

Firecrawl is a web data API for developers and AI agents. It searches, scrapes and crawls, and hands back markdown, JSON or HTML, so one call can turn a query into result links plus their content. It fits teams that used SerpApi to feed links and page text into a pipeline or an agent.

Price (October 2026): Free includes 1,000 credits monthly, card not required, about 500 searches by Firecrawl’s own count. Hobby is $19 a month with 5,000 credits, and Standard $83 a month billed yearly for 100,000. Search costs 2 credits per 10 results, so yearly Standard comes to about $1.66 per 1,000 searches by my math, against $10 on SerpApi’s Production plan.

Strengths:

• An open-source AGPL-3.0 core you can run on your own servers, though the hosted service has features self-hosting lacks.
• A hosted MCP server, which lets an assistant like Claude call Firecrawl directly, with a keyless tier for search and scraping within daily limits.

Drawbacks: credits on the plans below Scale expire at each reset, and an upgrade is billed in full without proration (unused credits carry over). The terms rule out refunds, and a scraped 403 or 404 page still costs a credit.

Versus SerpApi: Firecrawl sells web results and the pages behind them, while SerpApi splits each engine’s results page into fields such as ads, the local pack or the AI Overview. SerpApi’s Extract API (October 13, 2026) now fetches pages too, at one search each. If you rely on those fields, run your queries through both first. See the Firecrawl profile or Firecrawl alternatives.

Tavily is a search API made for AI agents. A query returns ranked results with content snippets a model can read, and Extract pulls the text of up to 20 URLs per call. Nebius, a NASDAQ-listed company, has owned it since February 2026. It fits agents and automations that used SerpApi for search; an r/n8n thread seeking a replacement tops this search.

Price (October 2026): the free Researcher plan includes 1,000 credits a month. Project costs $30 for 4,000 credits and Growth $500 for 100,000, or $0.008 a credit on pay-as-you-go. A basic search takes 1 credit and an advanced one 2, so 1,000 basic searches cost $5 to $8 depending on the plan.

Strengths:

• Searching and reading pages sit on one key, and failed extracts cost nothing.
• An official MCP server that accepts OAuth, an API key or no key at all.

Drawbacks: third-party reviews put its cost per query above raw search results APIs, and a Research request can take anywhere from 4 to 250 credits. Written reviews are scarce (3 on G2), and fees are non-refundable.

Versus SerpApi: Tavily’s endpoints are Search, Extract, Crawl, Map and Research, aimed at giving an agent material to answer from. There’s no Google Maps or Shopping endpoint, so rank and local tracking stay with a SERP API. See the Tavily profile.

Exa is a search engine built for software rather than people. It runs its own crawler and index, which held 1.4 trillion URLs as of August 2026 per its FAQ, instead of reselling Google results, and adds people search over 1B+ profiles plus company search. It fits developers whose volume comes in bursts.

Price (October 2026): prepaid credits, billed per request, with $10 free every month (up to 2,500 Instant searches) and no card. An Instant search runs $4 per 1,000 for up to 10 results; Fast or Auto runs $7.

Strengths:

• No subscription or minimum spend, and standard rates are public.
• A hosted MCP server, an official n8n node and plugins that bring Exa into Claude and ChatGPT.

Drawbacks: many meters, since extra results, content types, summaries and Agent compute each bill on their own. The default rate limit is 10 search requests a second. Exa’s privacy policy says query data can be used to train its models, and its pricing page lists zero data retention under Enterprise.

Versus SerpApi: a different index, not a copy of Google’s page, and priced per call instead of per month. It suits discovery and research; for exact Google positions, keep a SERP API. See the Exa profile.

Outscraper is a pay-as-you-go scraping service built around Google Maps. Pick categories and places, in the web app or by API, and get each business’s name, phone, website, address, rating and hours as a spreadsheet or JSON. Its Emails & Contacts Scraper then checks those websites for emails. It fits cold emailers who pulled local lists through SerpApi’s Google Maps API.

Price (October 2026): no subscription. Each 30-day period starts with 500 Maps businesses free; after that it’s $3 per 1,000, dropping to $1 per 1,000 past 100,000. Finding emails costs $3 per 1,000 domains and verifying them $3 per 1,000 addresses, each after its own free allowance. Prepaid credits never expire.

Strengths:

• You pay only in the months you scrape, which suits one-off list pulls better than a monthly allowance does.
• An API with SDKs in six languages, an official MCP server, an n8n node and Zapier. Its Trustpilot score was 4.6 across 330 reviews in October 2026.

Drawbacks: your balance isn’t a cap. Per Outscraper’s FAQ, a job that outgrows your credits runs to the end and the difference is invoiced, a recurring theme in its 1-star reviews. Per Outscraper, Google Maps shows at most 400 to 500 places a query, so a big area takes many queries. There’s a Google Search scraper too, but Outscraper’s own pages disagree on its rate, so check it in the app.

Versus SerpApi: SerpApi bills per results page, Outscraper per business returned. See the Outscraper profile.

Similarweb estimates traffic, keywords, ads and AI-search visibility for any website, mostly through a dashboard. Its AEO Intelligence plan tracks how a brand shows up in AI answers across 150 prompts; Similarweb’s AI Brand Visibility page lists ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini and Perplexity. It fits marketers who scripted SerpApi’s AI Overview or AI Mode APIs to watch their visibility and want to stop maintaining that code.

Price (October 2026): AEO Intelligence costs $99 a month billed yearly or $129 monthly, for one user and 3 months of history. The bundle that adds SEO data and competitor traffic is $333 a month yearly or $399 monthly. API and MCP access come only in packages priced by sales.

Strengths:

• Prompts, citations and competitor traffic in one interface, with nothing to host.
• Free sample data on similarweb.com and in a Chrome extension rated 4.6 from 3.8K ratings.

Drawbacks: one user per self-serve plan. Traffic figures are modeled estimates and weakest on small sites: in SparkToro’s test against Google Analytics, sites under 5,000 monthly users got the least accurate estimates of any group. Trustpilot’s one-star reviews often mention being billed once a trial ended.

Versus SerpApi: trends in a dashboard instead of raw results. AI Overviews sit in its Rank Tracker, part of the $333 bundle, so check coverage before you switch. See the Similarweb profile or Similarweb alternatives.

Apollo is a B2B contact database with email sequences, a dialer and CRM sync built around it. It puts its data at 240M+ contacts and 30M+ companies, and its plan chart lists a Google Maps business search on the paid plans. It fits teams that found companies with SerpApi and still needed the people.

Price (October 2026): a Free plan with 75 credits a month and no end date. Paid seats cost $65 a month on Basic ($49 on yearly billing) and $99 on Professional ($79 yearly). A verified email costs 1 credit and a mobile number 8, and credits don’t roll over.

Strengths:

• Data, sequences and calling on one login, with G2 reviewers singling out the size of its verified contact database.
• An MCP server on every plan, so Claude or ChatGPT can search Apollo; on Free, those connectors need a team with a corporate domain.

Drawbacks: pricing is per seat. Bounces on addresses marked verified and credits running out sooner than planned recur in reviews, and warmup beyond one mailbox per seat is paid in credits.

Versus SerpApi: people with email addresses instead of results pages to mine. See the Apollo profile, Reachkit vs Apollo or Apollo alternatives.

Clay is a table where each column can call a data provider, an AI model or a formula. Claygent, its research agent, browses the web for every row: the job you would otherwise script with a search API, looking each company up and reading what comes back. Waterfalls then try one provider after another for an email. It fits GTM engineers and agencies who’d rather configure than code.

Price (October 2026): the Free plan comes with 100 data credits plus 500 actions monthly. Launch costs $185 a month ($167 billed yearly) and Growth $495 ($446). Web research on the Helium model costs 1 data credit per row, plus an action, and enrichments that come back empty are free.

Strengths:

• Clay’s pricing page counts 150+ data providers, chained in a single lookup.
• Unlimited seats on every plan, and since September 2026 its Sequencer can send from inside Clay on paid plans.

Drawbacks: two meters, data credits and actions, make spend hard to forecast, and G2’s review summary lists a steep learning curve. The HTTP API, webhooks and CRM sync start on Growth.

Versus SerpApi: an answer for each row instead of a page of results. See the Clay profile, Reachkit vs Clay or Apollo vs Clay.

Hunter is an email finder and verifier built on public web pages, with a sender that runs sequences from your own inboxes. Give Domain Search a company’s website, say one a search turned up, and it lists the addresses Hunter has seen there, with where and when each one appeared. It fits people who found company sites through SerpApi and now need the person behind them.

Price (October 2026): Free with 50 credits a month. Paid plans run $49 (Starter, 2,000 credits, or $34 a month yearly), $149 (Growth) and $299 (Scale), and every plan allows unlimited users. A found email uses 1 credit and a verification half of one, and misses are free.

Strengths:

• The public source behind every address, so you can judge it yourself.
• The API and an official MCP server on every plan, Free included.

Drawbacks: coverage. In Clay’s 2025 work-email test, Hunter scored 97.15 on quality but found an email for 52.87% of contacts, and G2’s review summary mentions occasional outdated or incorrect addresses. Extra inboxes and warmup are billed per inbox, and Hunter gives no refunds.

Versus SerpApi: an address for each company instead of a list of companies. See the Hunter profile or Reachkit vs Hunter.

This is our product. It’s a cold email platform with a built-in lead database, for readers whose SerpApi searches were the first step toward outreach.

Reachkit’s Lead Finder searches 500M+ people and 70M+ companies by job title, seniority, location, industry, company size, technologies or named companies. Browsing is free; each lead you add costs 1 credit and is verified before it joins a campaign. Already have a Maps list? Import the CSV: Reachkit verifies it at 1 credit per 10 addresses and maps extra columns, like category or rating, to merge tags. Through the MCP connector, Claude or ChatGPT can do the searching and draft the campaign, and it’s built to ask before anything goes out.

Price (October 2026): Growth is $39 a month ($29 billed yearly) for the whole workspace, with 1,000 lead credits a month, 5,000 stored contacts and 15,000 campaign emails. The CRM, REST API and webhooks come with Scale, from $99. The trial runs 30 days with no card.

Strengths:

• The sending side comes with it. Connect Google, Microsoft or IMAP inboxes with no per-inbox fee, or have Reachkit register lookalike domains ($15 a year) and create Google or Microsoft inboxes ($5 a month), warmed with AI.
• No seat fees, however many teammates join.

Drawbacks: it doesn’t search Google, scrape Maps or return results pages. Per the help center, well-targeted searches typically verify 70 to 95% of leads. The REST API doesn’t cover Lead Finder, and new inboxes should warm for at least 3 weeks before campaigns.

Versus SerpApi: SerpApi tells you which businesses exist; Reachkit finds who to email there and sends the campaign. See pricing.

Start from what your SerpApi calls returned and what you did with the results next.

• You needed Google’s results page as fields (positions, ads, local pack, AI Overview): stay with a SERP API. If price is your one complaint, compare SerpApi’s rate at your volume ($10 per 1,000 on Production, $7.25 on Searcher) with the APIs on the ranking pages.
• An agent needed web search: Firecrawl for volume, Tavily for page content on a monthly plan, Exa to pay per call.
• You watched your brand in AI answers: Similarweb’s AEO plan, if its tracked engines match yours.
• You pulled Google Maps listings: Outscraper, and verify before anything gets sent.
• You were building a sales list: Apollo for contacts with sequences, Clay for research per row, Hunter for addresses at domains you already have.
• The list ends in a cold email: Reachkit.

Before you cancel, note that a cancelled SerpApi plan’s searches stay usable until the renewal date.

SerpApi is very good at its actual job: 100+ named APIs across Google and other engines, parsed, with fair rules on what counts as a search and support that reviewers keep praising. If you need the results page itself, I’d stay, or move between SERP APIs on price alone.

Most people who reach cold email from SerpApi used it for something else: finding businesses to contact. That’s list building, and in cold email the list decides most of the outcome. A results page tells you a company exists. You still need the right person, an address that won’t bounce and warmed inboxes before the first send. Reachkit covers that stretch, from a described buyer to a sent campaign.

Related: SerpApi pricing and review, Firecrawl alternatives and Reachkit vs Apollo.