Best SERP API Comparison 2025: SerpAPI vs Exa vs Tavily vs ScrapingDog vs ScrapingBee

Source: Dev.to

We tested five SERP APIs with standardized benchmarks to find which performs best for different use cases. Exa delivered the fastest responses at 1.180 seconds with semantic search over a proprietary index at $5 per 1,000 queries. Tavily aggregates and parses content for LLM applications. ScrapingDog offers the lowest per‑request pricing at under $0.001 at scale. SerpAPI provides the broadest coverage with 20+ search engines. ScrapingBee bundles SERP access with general web scraping.

This comparison helps you choose a SERP API for SEO monitoring, AI agents, RAG applications, or price‑comparison tools. Each section includes benchmark data, pricing breakdowns, and code examples.

Overview Comparison

We tested five SERP APIs using a Python benchmark script that measured response time, success rate, cost, and free tier across 50 real‑world queries.

Response times vary based on what each API delivers: SerpAPI returns raw SERP data, Exa performs semantic search with embeddings generation, and Tavily aggregates content from multiple sources with AI ranking. These tests used free tiers, but some providers offer faster speeds for additional cost (e.g., SerpAPI’s Ludicrous Speed tiers claim 2.2× faster responses).

SerpAPI

SerpAPI scrapes 20+ search engines and returns structured JSON. The service handles CAPTCHA solving and proxy rotation automatically, so you make a request and get back parsed data without dealing with blocks or rate limits.

Speed

Our 50‑query benchmark measured a 2.972 s average response time with a 100 % success rate. Individual queries ranged from 0.070 s to 13.308 s, showing high variability. The free tier uses “Best Effort” speed with automatic refunds for failed searches. Paid tiers offer Ludicrous Speed (≈2.2× faster) for time‑sensitive applications. SerpAPI’s status page reports 99.911 % uptime over the last 30 days.

Speed Score (6.0/10): Mid‑tier performance places SerpAPI fourth out of five tested APIs; some queries complete in milliseconds while others take 10+ seconds.

Pricing

SerpAPI’s pricing uses monthly subscriptions based on search volume. Plans start at $75 / month for 5,000 searches, which works out to $15 per 1,000 searches (or $0.015 per search). Production‑tier plans include a U.S. Legal Shield for crawling public search data under First Amendment rights.

Pricing Score (3.0/10): At $15 per 1,000 searches, SerpAPI costs 3–15× more than alternatives like ScrapingDog ($0.20) or Exa ($5), earning the lowest pricing score among the tested APIs.

Developer Experience

SerpAPI provides SDKs for Ruby, Python, JavaScript, Go, PHP, Java, Rust, and .NET. Setup takes about five minutes:

from serpapi import GoogleSearch

params = {
    "q": "coffee",
    "location": "Austin, Texas",
    "api_key": "your_api_key"
}

search = GoogleSearch(params)
results = search.get_dict()

for result in results["organic_results"]:
    print(result["title"])

The Playground lets you test queries through a web interface before writing code. You can modify parameters via form controls and see both the rendered SERP and the JSON response. The dashboard tracks usage with response‑time graphs and search history.

Developer Experience Score (10.0/10): Eight official SDKs, an interactive playground, comprehensive documentation, and real‑time usage dashboards make SerpAPI the strongest developer experience among the tested APIs.

Search Capabilities

SerpAPI covers:

• Google (including AI Mode and AI Overview)
• Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, DuckDuckGo, Yandex
• Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Home Depot
• YouTube, Google Scholar, Google Patents
• TripAdvisor, Yelp

Each platform has its own endpoint with consistent JSON formatting. Most competitors support only 3–5 search engines.

Search Capabilities Score (10.0/10): Coverage of 20+ search engines and specialized platforms far exceeds any competitor, making SerpAPI the only choice for applications needing multi‑engine support.

Free Tier Generosity

The free tier provides 250 searches per month with no credit card required. All API endpoints work on the free tier, though you’re limited to Best Effort speed without access to Ludicrous Speed tiers. Failed searches receive automatic refunds, so the 250‑search limit only counts successful requests.

Free Tier Score (6.0/10): More generous than ScrapingBee (66 total) but less than Tavily (1,000 / month), Exa (2,000 one‑time), or ScrapingDog (11,000 with promotions).

When to Choose SerpAPI

SerpAPI works best when you need access to multiple search engines or specialized platforms through a single provider:

• SEO tools monitoring rankings across Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
• E‑commerce price monitoring pulling structured data from Amazon, Walmart, and eBay.
• Academic research platforms integrating Google Scholar without custom parsing.

The $15 per 1,000 searches pays for itself when infrastructure complexity is the bottleneck.

Skip SerpAPI if you only need Google search on a tight budget; alternatives can be 3–15× cheaper. AI applications requiring semantic search or embeddings should consider Exa or Tavily instead.

Exa

Exa is a search API built for AI applications using a proprietary embeddings‑based index. Instead of scraping Google or Bing, Exa maintains its own crawl optimized for semantic search.

Further details on Exa’s performance, pricing, and developer experience would follow in the complete article.