Google Search API Alternatives in 2026: 9 Options Compared

November 9, 2026

Google no longer sells a self-serve web search API to new developers. Its Custom Search JSON API is closed to new customers, and existing customers have until January 1, 2027 to move. So a Google Search API alternative today is one of four things: a narrower Google product, a SERP API that returns Google's result pages as JSON, an independent search index, or an AI grounding tool. Below are the main options with prices from each vendor's own pricing page. For Google's free tiers in detail, see Is the Google Search API free?

Google Search API alternatives at a glance

What Google itself points you to

Google's January 20, 2026 announcement splits its search products by job:

• Search on your own site: the Programmable Search Element, free, with "Sites to search" capped at 50 domains. Every new engine must use that setting.
• Enterprise search and grounding: Vertex AI Search. Google's pricing page now calls it Agent Search.
• Custom Search JSON API users: Vertex AI Search for up to 50 domains, or contact Google about its "full web search solution". Google publishes no price for that.

The ad-free Paid Search Element is also closed to new customers. And Bing is not a fallback: Microsoft retired the Bing Search APIs on August 11, 2025.

One workload, every option: 50,000 searches a month

For Google results alone at this volume, DataForSEO and Serper cost less than ScrapeIO. Units also differ: a Custom Search query returns at most 10 results, and each vendor defines its own "search" or "SERP". Check what one unit returns before you compare.

Pick by job

• Rank tracking for thousands of keywords: DataForSEO's standard queue or Serper. Lowest cost per result.
• Live Google results inside your product: SerpApi, Serper or DataForSEO's live mode.
• An AI agent that must cite sources: Gemini grounding if you already use Gemini and can follow its display rules; Brave if you want results you control.
• Search over your own site: the free Programmable Search Element, or Vertex AI Search for an API.
• Web search plus TikTok, YouTube, Reddit or LinkedIn data in one pipeline: ScrapeIO.
• A hobby project: the free tiers. Serper's 2,500 queries, Bright Data's 5,000 a month, SerpApi's 250 a month and Brave's $5 monthly credit.

Test before you switch: an overlap check

Run 50 of your real queries through your current setup and the candidate, then compare the top 10 URLs. This Python script scores each query from 0 (no shared results) to 1 (same set):

import requests

KEY, CX = "YOUR_GOOGLE_KEY", "YOUR_CX"
QUERIES = ["standing desk", "crm for startups", "python csv to json"]

def google_cse(q):
    r = requests.get("https://www.googleapis.com/customsearch/v1",
                     params={"key": KEY, "cx": CX, "q": q, "num": 10}, timeout=30)
    r.raise_for_status()
    return [i["link"] for i in r.json().get("items", [])]

def candidate(q):
    # Call the new provider and return its top 10 result URLs, in order.
    raise NotImplementedError

def overlap(a, b):
    a, b = set(a[:10]), set(b[:10])
    return len(a & b) / max(1, len(a | b))

scores = [overlap(google_cse(q), candidate(q)) for q in QUERIES]
print(round(sum(scores) / len(scores), 2))

Do not expect 1.0. Custom Search results come from your Programmable Search Engine and its settings, so they can differ from what google.com shows. A low score on a few queries tells you where to look by hand.

What about scraping Google yourself?

Google's robots.txt disallows /search, and its terms of service forbid automated access that violates machine-readable instructions such as robots.txt. A home-made scraper is a terms risk and a maintenance job, not a free API.

This is not legal advice. Terms and law change, and the answer depends on where you are and what you do with the data.

Doing it with ScrapeIO

The google search API takes query, an optional two-letter region, a date_posted filter (last hour, day, week, month or year) and a page. It costs 1 credit a call, answers are cached for 15 minutes, and cached repeats and failed calls are free. For ad research, add the Google ad library advertiser search API and the google company ads API. AI agents can call all three through the Google Search MCP server; endpoints are listed on the Google Search platform page.

curl "https://scrapeio.com/v1/google/search?query=standing+desk&region=US&date_posted=last-month" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY"

FAQ

When does the Google Search API shut down?

The Custom Search JSON API is already closed to new customers. Existing customers must move to another solution by January 1, 2027.

Is there a free Google Search API alternative?

Only free tiers. Serper gives 2,500 queries once, Bright Data 5,000 a month, SerpApi 250 a month, and Brave a $5 monthly credit, about 1,000 searches on its Search plan.

Can I still get full web results from Google directly?

Google asks you to contact it about a full web search solution and publishes no price. Grounding with Google Search returns web-backed answers, not a list of results.

Will I need to rewrite my code?

Usually only the request and the field mapping. Custom Search returns items[].link, title and snippet and pages with start; most alternatives use a page number and their own field names.

Sources

Checked on 9 November 2026 from each vendor's own pages. Prices and limits change; follow the links before you decide.

• https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview
• https://programmablesearchengine.googleblog.com/2026/01/updates-to-our-web-search-products.html
• https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/paid_element
• https://cloud.google.com/generative-ai-app-builder/pricing
• https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing
• https://brave.com/search/api/
• https://serpapi.com/pricing
• https://serper.dev/
• https://dataforseo.com/pricing/serp/google-organic-serp-api
• https://brightdata.com/pricing/serp
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/bing-search-api-retirement
• https://www.google.com/robots.txt
• https://policies.google.com/terms?hl=en-US