Is the Google Search API free? Prices, limits and options (2026)

November 8, 2026

Short answer

Only in small amounts, and not for new projects. Google's Custom Search JSON API gives 100 free queries a day and costs $5 per 1,000 after that, but it is closed to new customers and shuts down for everyone on January 1, 2027. New projects can use the free Programmable Search Element on up to 50 domains, Vertex AI Search for site search, or Gemini's Grounding with Google Search, which includes 5,000 free search requests a month on Gemini 3 models and then costs $14 per 1,000.

There is no longer a general, self-serve Google web search API that a new developer can sign up for. Google's own docs say the Custom Search JSON API is closed to new customers, and existing customers have until January 1, 2027 to move. What remains are narrower products: a site search widget, an enterprise search product for your own content, and search grounding inside Gemini. Here is what each one costs and returns, checked on Google's pages today.

Every Google search option, side by side

Option	Who can get it	Free part	Price after	What you get back
Custom Search JSON API	Existing customers only, until January 1, 2027	100 queries a day	$5 per 1,000, up to 10,000 a day	JSON results, 10 per request, never more than 100 per query
Programmable Search Element	Anyone with a Google account	Standard element is free and shows ads	Google's overview lists a Paid Search Element at $5 per 1,000	A search box and results page on your site, not raw JSON. New engines: up to 50 domains
Vertex AI Search (Google's pricing page now titles it Agent Search)	Google Cloud projects with billing	10,000 queries per account per month, as a free trial	$1.50 per 1,000 (Standard), $4.00 per 1,000 (Enterprise, needed for website search)	Search over your own data or the sites you index, plus storage fees
Grounding with Google Search, Gemini 3 models	Gemini API paid tier	5,000 search requests a month	$14 per 1,000, default cap 1,500 a day per project	A model answer with citations, plus Search Suggestions you must display
Grounding with Google Search, Gemini 2.5 Flash	Gemini API free and paid tiers	500 requests a day (free tier); 1,500 a day (paid tier)	$35 per 1,000 grounded prompts	Same as above. Google says 2.5 requests route to newer models on December 1, 2026
Full web search solution	By request	None listed	No public price	Google asks you to contact it
Search Console API	Owners of a verified site	No price on Google's limits page	n/a	Your own site's clicks, impressions and positions, not search results

What changed, in order

20 January 2026. Google's Programmable Search Engine blog said every new engine must use "Sites to search", capped at 50 domains. Existing engines set to "Search the entire web" keep it until January 1, 2027. The same post points Custom Search JSON API users to Vertex AI Search for up to 50 domains, or to a full web search solution on request.
The 50-domain cap. Google's help page says URL patterns cannot come from more than 50 distinct domains. Registered eligible nonprofits, accredited educational institutions and government agencies are exempt. If you switch "Search the entire web" off, you cannot turn it back on.
Closed to new customers. The JSON API overview now says the API is closed to new customers, and its pricing applies to existing customers until the January 1, 2027 discontinuation.
Bing is already gone. Microsoft retired the Bing Search APIs on August 11, 2025 and points customers to Grounding with Bing Search in Azure AI Agents.

The fine print on each option

Custom Search JSON API

You need a Programmable Search Engine ID and an API key. The list method takes num from 1 to 10, and Google says the API "will never return more than 100 results"; a start + num above 100 is an error. So one keyword costs up to 10 calls to read its full result set.

Vertex AI Search

It is built for search over content you control. On the pricing page, website search is an Enterprise Edition feature at $4.00 per 1,000 queries, which includes core generative answers. Index storage is charged too: Google counts a website data store as 500 KiB per page and gives the example of $2.38 a month for a 1,000-page site.

Grounding with Google Search

This is the closest thing to Google search in an API today, but the output is a Gemini answer, not a results list. On Gemini 3, Google's pricing page bills each search query the model runs, and one prompt can trigger several. Search costs are on top of token costs. The grounding docs also require you to show Google's Search Suggestions exactly as provided, keep them visible next to the grounded answer, and keep non-Google results separate.

Worked example: 30,000 searches a month

Route	Math	Monthly cost	Catch
Custom Search JSON API	3,000 free (100 a day), then 27,000 x $5 / 1,000	$135	Existing customers only, ends January 1, 2027
Gemini 3 grounding	5,000 free, then 25,000 x $14 / 1,000	$350 plus tokens	Answers, not result lists; more if prompts fan out
Vertex AI Search, Enterprise	10,000 free trial, then 20,000 x $4 / 1,000	$80 plus storage	Only the domains you index, up to 50 for site search
Brave Search API	30,000 x $5 / 1,000	$150, less Brave's monthly free credit	Brave's own index, not Google's results; card required
ScrapeIO Google Search endpoint	30,000 x 1 credit	About $56 at $1.88 per 1,000, or $30 at $0.99 per 1,000	Bought in packs; unused credits never expire

Brave's figures come from its API page: $5 per 1,000 requests and 50 queries per second on the Search plan, with a card required to prevent abuse.

Which one fits you

You search your own site or a few dozen sites: the free Programmable Search Element, or Vertex AI Search if you need an API and answers.
You build a chatbot that should cite fresh web pages: Grounding with Google Search, if you can live with the display rules.
You already have a Custom Search key: keep using it, but finish your migration before January 1, 2027.
You need your own site's Google performance data: the Search Console API. Google's limits page allows 1,200 Search Analytics queries a minute per site and 2,000 URL inspections a day per site.
You need raw result lists for many keywords, such as rank tracking or SEO research: a paid search results API.

What about free scraping libraries?

Open-source packages that fetch google.com result pages cost nothing to install, but they run into Google's rules. Google's robots.txt disallows /search for all user agents, and Google's terms of service forbid using automated means to access content in violation of machine-readable instructions such as robots.txt. Expect blocks, CAPTCHAs and breakage, and treat that route as a terms risk, not a free API. This is not legal advice.

Migration checklist for Custom Search users

List every engine ID (cx) and the code that calls it.
Pull 30 days of query volume from the Cloud console and project it forward.
Split use cases: site search (50 domains or fewer), answers for an AI feature, or full result lists.
Map fields. If you read items[].link, title and snippet, check the new response has the same three.
Run old and new side by side for a week and compare the top 10 for 50 sample queries.
Switch before December 2026, not on January 1.

Doing it with ScrapeIO

The google search API takes a query, an optional two-letter region, a date_posted filter and a page, and costs 1 credit a call. Answers are cached for 15 minutes and cached repeats are free. For ad research, pair it with the Google ad library advertiser search API and the google company ads API. Agents can call it through the Google Search MCP server.

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

For the wider market of web data APIs, see web scraping APIs compared.

Sources

Checked on 8 November 2026 from each vendor's own pages. Prices and limits change; follow the links before you decide.

100 free credits, no card. Credits never expire.

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