Take a Closer Look: DataForSEO API and Serpapi.com Compared
In this article, we will compare DataForSEO SERP API with a prominent provider of search engine results data – Serpapi.com. In contrast to Bright Data, which we’ve already reviewed, Serpapi.com is devoted solely to search engine result pages.
DataForSEO offers SERP API within a broad range of other marketing API solutions, such as for on-page metrics, domain analytics, AI-driven content, backlinks and many more. This makes the fundamental difference between these two. Although it’s not on a surface, DataForSEO and Serpapi.com have most of their search engines and endpoints similar. However, in many aspects they diverge. We tried to check DataForSEO API and Serpapi.com APIs against each other in the aspects that matter.
GUI & Free trial
Both vendors don’t restrict their trials in time. In the DataForSEO trial, we credit your account enough for 833 high-priority SERP API requests. Serpapi.com’s free plan includes only 100 searches monthly.
Serpapi.com user-friendly Playground features seven basic sets of parameters, overall and split search statistics with success rates. Our SERP API Explorer is equipped with eight parameters, but we also invite our new users to the Sandbox environment to try out actual API calls.
In our API Dashboard, along with the API Explorer, we provide an API Usage section with unified and detailed stats. And in the API Settings section, you can, for instance, set automatic re-parsing of the pages parsed with the wrong markup, or whitelist specific IP addresses to access our tools with your account.
Limits
Serpapi.com sets a monthly restriction for each service plan, and the more expensive the plan is, the cheaper the single request will be. DataForSEO sets no monthly restrictions. The only limit we set is 2000 POST and GET API calls per minute, up to 100 tasks in each POST. Even this can be raised upon your request. The expense limits control is very user-friendly in the API Settings section of our Dashboard where you can set your budgets for each API and endpoint.
Methods and data storage
DataForSEO has two main methods to deliver SERP results: Standard and Live. The standard method requires making separate POST and GET requests. It is more affordable than the Live method. Using the Standard method, you retrieve the results after our system collects them via the Tasks Ready and Task GET endpoints. Our Live method requires making only a POST request, and you get results in a real-time mode.
In Serparpi.com, any request to the API triggers a live search. Serparpi.com asynchronous and synchronous modes define the way to submit a search. Synchronous (default) mode opens and keeps an HTTP connection open until you get your results. In asynchronous mode, you submit your search and retrieve the result later using the Search Archive API. Thus you can submit multiple requests without waiting for them to complete.
Serpapi.com stores the results for 31 days after the search is made. With DataForSEO, JSON files are available for 30 days, and raw HTML – for 7 days.
Search engines and endpoints
Serpapi.com, as a single product provider, directs all its effort to dig into the SERP technology. DataForSEO, in turn, offers the full stack of marketing technology solutions in one place: APIs and databases operating with backlinks, keywords, on-page performance, business reviews and social media interactions, and much more.
At first glance, Serpapi.com outpaces DataForSEO in terms of the endpoints variety. However, many of the endpoints provided by Serpapi.com, DataForSEO also offers. Other endpoints might not yet be implemented in our system, such as Walmart or eBay searches, but we support other unicorns, such as Amazon in DataForSEO Merchant API. Below are the lists of the similar and unique SERP search engines and endpoints two vendors support.
Common search engines for the two vendors:
| DataForSEO SERP API | Serpapi.com |
|---|---|
| Google Organic | Google Search API |
| Google Maps | Google Maps API |
| Google Local Finder | Google Local API |
| Google Jobs | Google Jobs API |
| Google Images | Google Images API |
| Google Search by Image | Google Lens API |
| Google Trends (Keywords Data API) | Google Trends API |
| Google Autocomplete | Google Autocomplete API |
| Google Events | Google Events API |
| Google App Searches (App Data API) | Google Play Store API |
| Google Shopping Products (Google Shopping Merchant API) | Google Shopping API |
| Google Shopping Product Info (Google Shopping Merchant API) | Google Product API |
| People also ask (Google Organic SERP API) | Google Related Questions API |
| Bing | Bing Search API |
| Bing Organic | |
| Bing Local Pack | |
| Yahoo Organic | Yahoo! Search API |
| YouTube | YouTube Search API |
| YouTube Organic | |
| YouTube Video Info | |
| YouTube Video Subtitles | |
| YouTube Video Comments | |
| Baidu Organic | Baidu Search API |
| Apple App Data API | Apple App Store API |
| Naver Organic | Naver Search API |
Unique search engines and endpoints:
| Unique Google search engines for each vendor | |
|---|---|
| DataForSEO SERP API | Serpapi.com |
| Google News Google Dataset Search Google Dataset Info |
Google Reverse Image API Google About This Result Google Finance API Google Scholar API Google Immersive Product API Google Local Services API Google Videos API Google Health Insurance API Google Patents API |
| Other unique search engines and endpoints for each vendor | |
| DataForSEO SERP API | Serpapi.com |
| Seznam Organic Screenshot endpoint AI Summary endpoint Amazon (Google Merchant API) Trustpilot (Business Data API) Tripadvisor (Business Data API) Social Media (Business Data API) Business Listings (Business Data API) |
DuckDuckGo Search API Yandex Search API Yelp Search API eBay Search API Walmart Search API The Home Depot Search API |
In our system, as you see, some of the engines can be named differently, or they are included in other DataForSEO APIs, for instance:
- Google Lens API in Serpapi.com corresponds to Google Search by Image in DataForSEO;
- Google Trends API in Serpapi.com corresponds to Google Trends Keywords Data API;
- Google Play Store API in Serpapi.com corresponds to Google App Searches endpoint of App Data API in DataForSEO;
- Apple App Store API in Serpapi.com matches Apple App Data API in DataForSEO, featuring even more information on Apple products, such as reviews and listings;
- Google Product API in Serpapi.com corresponds to Google Shopping Product Info endpoint in Google Shopping API of DataForSEO Merchant API;
- Google Shopping API in Serpapi.com corresponds to Google Shopping Products endpoint in DataForSEO Merchant API, and is represented by the shopping elements in Google Organic Advanced SERP in DataForSEO;
- Google Related Questions API in Serpapi.com is implemented in the
people_also_ask_click_depthparameter of the POST request of the DataForSEO Google Organic SERP API. - Serpapi.com offers Google Autocomplete API. We are keeping pace, and have recently rolled out our v.3 improved Google Autocomplete SERP API supporting cursor position and client parameters. In addition to it, for keyword research, we offer many more features in our Keywords Data API and DataForSEO Labs API.
Serpapi.com provides three search engines on separate subdomains: Duck-Duck Go Search, Google Finance, and Google Scholar APIs. It’s worth noting that DataForSEO Google Organic SERP may include Scholarly Articles items.
DataForSEO Live Page Screenshot API allows capturing a screenshot of any SERP page by visualizing its HTML. Browser dimensions and scale factor are configurable. In the response comes the URL to a quality page screenshot on the DataForSEO storage. After setting a task, screenshots are available for 7 days.
DataForSEO Live AI Summary API provides a comprehensive summary of the content found in the ranked websites, and generates a response based on the specified prompt. It is compatible with all our engines, and additionally enables considering the answer box, featured snippet, and knowledge graph.
Both above-mentioned APIs require just specifying the ID of the task to obtain a screenshot of, or to summarize, respectively.
Interestingly, Serpapi.com still supports Russian Yandex, while on their Homepage they state that the usage of their capabilities for denial of war crimes is illegal. In contrast, in DataForSEO, we foster all our efforts to help our homeland. We donate half of our profits to the relevant state initiatives and volunteer foundations.
Search parameters
Structure and composition
Serpapi.com has structured its query parameters into sections and packed them into a smart interface. At the same time, POST requests in DataForSEO are more uniform across different search engines and carry just a sufficient minimum of specific parameters.
Both services support mobile and desktop SERPs. DataForSEO clearly lists the mobile-supporting endpoints, while in Serpapi.com, the user needs to figure out whether a certain endpoint has a device parameter. For example, while Google Search API and Google Shopping API support it, Google Maps API and Google Jobs API do not.
Both Serpapi.com and DataForSEO provided mechanisms to safeguard their clients against overspending for duplicate tasks. Serpapi.com allows to include or omit cached results. A cache is served only if the request and all parameters are identical, and expires after an hour. Cached searches in Serpapi.com are free. DataForSEO allows setting a Duplicate tasks limit in the Dashboard. Additionally, we assist our clients to set saving the IDs of such tasks, and if the SERP timeliness doesn’t matter for them, they can configure to save this cache for up to a month.
Filtering
Serpapi.com uses more additional filtering parameters than DataForSEO. Additional Parameters for filtering are entered in the search_param optional string of the DataForSEO SERP API Google Organic POST request. In Serpapi.com, filtering is conferred in the Advanced Filters and Advanced Parameters sections, with unique combinations for each engine. Many filters are parameters and vice-versa in different requests, which is very confusing.
DataForSEO supports timeframes in all its SERP APIs. Meanwhile, in Serpapi.com, only some APIs support filtering by dates. For example, in their Google Search API, Google News API, and Google Images API this function is implemented with the tbs parameter.
DataForSEO Google Local Finder SERP API can filter places by open days and hours providing valuable insights into the local market.
Location & localization
Both APIs deliver data relevant to a specific region, in a specific language, emulating a human search. Both consider country, city, and district parameters, as well as a search engine domain. DataForSEO also allows setting precise location coordinates in POST requests for most SERP API search engines, while Serpapi.com allows that only in Google Maps API and Bing Search API.
Pagination
Both vendors allow setting the number of search results. In DataForSEO, we provide 100 results by default, and bill customers for every 100 results accordingly. Our depth parameter indicates how many SERP results to return – up to 700 upon a single request. And the max_crawl_pages parameter limits the number of pages to scrape.
Serpapi.com also provides up to 100 results in one request. To obtain more, users have to make multiple searches setting the start pagination parameter to the number of pages they want to skip. It also provides the num parameter setting the maximum number of results to return.
Pixel ranking
Modern SERP features go in all shapes and sizes, and with DataForSEO, you can track a website’s pixel visibility. This trend-setting approach covers the distance between the result snippet and the page top, for mobile or desktop. Serpapi.com doesn’t consider screen dimensions and resolution, and doesn’t calculate rectangles.
SERP results
Output formats
Both services support the most popular JSON and HTML output formats.
Retrieved items
DataForSEO outpaces Serpapi.com in the number of item types returned in Google Organic Search response (44 against 40), and we are ongoingly adding the new ones. Below we have put together the similar Google Search item types returned by the two SERP APIs:
| DataForSEO SERP API | Serpapi.com |
|---|---|
| Answer Box | Answer Box |
| Carousel, Mention Carousel, Multi Carousel | Top Carousel |
| Organic | Organic Results |
| Paid | Ad Results |
| Knowledge Graph | Knowledge Graph |
| Recipes | Recipes Results |
| Events | Events Results |
| Local Pack | Local Pack |
| Local Services | Local Ads |
| Jobs | Jobs Results |
| Questions and Answers | Questions and Answers |
| Twitter Results | |
| People Also Ask | Related Questions |
| People Also Search | Related Searches |
| Visual Stories | Visual Stories |
| Short Videos | Short Videos |
| Google Flights, Google Hotels | Popular Destinations |
| Find Results On | Available On |
| Refined Products | Refine By, Refine This Search |
| Images | Inline Images |
| Video | Inline Videos |
| Top Sights | Top Sights |
| Top Stories | Top Stories |
| Shopping | Inline Shopping |
| Product Сonsiderations | Buying Guide |
And here are the lists of Google Search item types that are unique for each of the competitors, so you can compare them and find what you need.
| DataForSEO | Serpapi.com |
| App Commercial Units Currency Box Explore Brands Featured Snippet Found on the Web Google Posts Google Reviews* Hotels Pack Map Math Solver Perspectives Podcasts Popular Products Related Searches Scholarly Articles Shopping Stocks Box |
Broaden Searches DMCA Messages Discover More Places Grammar Check Immersive Products Inline People Also Search For Inline Products News Results** Pagination Product Result Showtimes Results Spell Check*** Sports Results Things To Know |
* Serpapi.com provides Google Reviews result in a separate Google Reviews Results API
** DataForSEO provides Google News results in a separate Google News SERP API.
*** Serpapi.com Spell Check API corresponds to the spell field in Google Search result array in DataForSEO.
Auto-reparsing
Both companies do their best to keep the SERP data structured and updated. They detect, implement, and document each Google markup change. Still, for the features appearing not to be parsed properly, DataForSEO provides the auto-reparsing option, with the re-parsed tasks’ IDs collected in the Tasks Fixed endpoint. However, both providers do not charge the API calls resulting in error status.
Turnaround and uptime
In DataForSEO, results come in up to six seconds for the Live-mode tasks, and one or five minutes for priority and standard queues respectively. Our turnaround time varies for different methods of delivery, and priorities. The key factor for our speed is an overall system load.
On this day, the Serpapi.com response time is an average of 2.39 seconds. However, turnaround can be slowed down by the proxy performance issues, query complexity, and high request volumes.
DataForSEO SERP API allows setting high priority to a task to raise its relative execution speed. The priority queue has a turnaround of up to 1 minute on average, compared to 5 minutes for the standard queue. Serpapi.com, on the other hand, has a single queue for all the tasks.
Both providers have public API status pages with 60 and 30 days history for DataForSEO and Serpapi.com, respectively.
Regarding the uptime, both vendors can boast the leading performance on the market: 99.95% for DataForSEO, and 99.97% for Serpapi.com. DataForSEO architecture is built on the redundancy principle – there’s always a backup component ready to replace a failed one, therefore, no single component will collapse the entire system.
Seamless integration
Libraries
Both competitors have prepared well-documented integrations for many programming languages.
DataForSEO supports the following integrations:
- PHP
- Node.Js
- Python
- cSharp
- Google Sheets
- Langchain
- Postman
Serpapi.com supports the following integrations:
- cURL
- Ruby
- Python
- Node.Js
- TypeScript
- PHP
- .NET
- Java
- Go
- Rust
- Google Sheets
Knowledge base
DataForSEO cares more about customers being informed. Most of Serpapi.com parameters’ names say nothing. They are not intuitively understandable and demand immersion into the details of documentation for each endpoint. Sadly, Serpapi.com has no website search. They have informational sections, such as FAQ and blog, while we have a separate full-scale Knowledge Base with the help center, white papers, blog and updates.
Documentation
Both DataForSEO and Serpapi.com provide comprehensive description, and code snippets for every parameter, field and function of their SERP APIs. Serpapi.com supplements them with the screenshots too, however, we have a separate dedicated endpoint for them, as well as a visual SERP Features Guide. The Serpapi.com documentation structure is very simple. DataForSEO, in turn, features overview, locations, languages, and errors in the separate endpoints, and keeps POST and GET requests apart.
User support
Our live chat support is available 24/7, and this system has been running for a long time. Serpapi.com users can email them or leave a live chat message, and they promise to reply within a single business day. Typically, they respond faster, but sometimes for over an hour. For their Enterprise clients, Serpapi.com offers priority support and tickets, while DataForSEO equally values and provides equally good support to all our customers, both paid and trial.
Pricing
Serpapi.com has a subscription-based month-to-month pricing model. DataForSEO SERP pricing consistently depends on the number of results in SERP, that is search depth, as well as on additional parameters, such as pixel ranking calculation. With both vendors, custom pricing is available.
DataForSEO prices are flexible, and do not depend on the plan you choose. In the Standard Queue, one million SERPs costs $600, giving the price of 0.0006 per SERP. For the Priority Queue, it makes $1 200 for one million SERPs, and $0.0012 per SERP, respectively. And for the Live Mode (in which Serpapi.com operates in all plans), it is $2 000 per million – $0.002 per SERP.
| DataForSEO prices | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 SERP | 1K SERPs | |
| Standard Queue | $0.0006 | $0.6 |
| Priority Queue | $0.0012 | $1.2 |
| Live mode | $0.002 | $2 |
The Serpapi.com plans start from the Developer Plan costing $50 monthly for 5 000 searches, that is $0.01 per search with up to 100 results. The more searches you make, the less a single search costs. The Production plan costing $130 monthly includes 15 000 searches, each costing $0.0087. For $250 monthly in the Big Data Plan, you get 30 000 searches, each costing $0.0083. They also offer High Volume plans costing from $500 up to $2 500, and Very High Volume plans – up to $8 000 monthly.
| Serpapi.com prices | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly payment | 1 SERP | 1K SERPs | |
| Developer Plan | $50 | $0.01 | $10 |
| Production Plan | $130 | $0.0087 | $8.6667 |
| Big Data Plan | $250 | $0.0083 | $8.3333 |
| Searcher Plan | $500 | $0.005 | $5 |
| Volume Plan | $1 000 | $0.004 | $4 |
| Infrastructure Plan | $2 500 | $0.0025 | $2.5 |
| Cloud 2M Plan | $4 000 | $0.002 | $2 |
| Cloud 3M Plan | $6 000 | $0.002 | $2 |
| Cloud 4M Plan | $8 000 | $0.002 | $2 |
Summary Table
| DataForSEO | Serpapi.com | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per Standard SERP | $0.0006 | n/a |
| Cost per Live SERP | $0.002 | $0.002 – $0.01 |
| Cost per 1M Standard SERPs | $600 | n/a |
| Cost per 1M Live SERPs | $2 000 | $2 000 – $2 500 |
We see that DataForSEO prices range from $0.0006 to $0.002 per SERP, regardless of the search volume. (However, upon request, our support team picks custom pricing for the high-volume searches). $0.0006 price assumes turnaround time up to 5 minutes, with POST and GET requests – meeting the needs of systems which do not require instant results. For $0.002 you get turnaround time up to 6 seconds and the Live method of retrieving results – a way to go for the systems requiring results in real-time. Moreover, with DataForSEO, you pay as you go, and your search credits do not expire after a month. Perfect if your search volume loads and expenses are not much predictable within a month.
Serpapi.com prices vary from $0.002 to $0.01 according to the search volumes. The cost per one SERP is an inverse ratio to their monthly charge. If obtaining results instantly is not critical for the system, this is hardly a good choice, considering their 3-fold rate difference with DataForSEO Standard method. If the instantaneity really matters, the Serpapi.com prices come down to the DataForSEO prices starting from the volume of 2 millions SERPs monthly. Also, with its monthly subscription-based pricing model, Serpapi.com does not roll over your unused search credits to the next month.
So, in the case if:
a) your system provides for instant results, and
b) you know positively that you will be making over 2M SERPs per month,
then you can consider the Serpapi.com solution. If you need less and/or not lightning-fast, DataForSEO is definitely a more rewarding provider. With us, you can make millions of SERPs for a fixed price per each, and deposit your account either for new searches or for additional parameters. And remember that you can reach our support team to adjust your custom price to your volumes.
Conclusions
As we see, both DataForSEO and Serpapi.com offer an impressive diversity of SERP APIs, and in many aspects, they are worthy rivals for one another.
DataForSEO covers the sweeping majority of the Serpapi.com portfolio, either in our SERP API, or, not so many, in our other APIs dealing, for instance, with keywords, business and app data ranking, and search by image. More organic item types in DataForSEO, combined with Google’s most in-demand SERP features, bring deeper insight into Google Organic SERPs.
Serpapi.com does not provide SERPs’ visual representation, while DataForSEO has the Screenshot API for this purpose. DataForSEO AI Summary API, and Pixel Ranking functionality offer a broad scope for innovative SEO solutions. Time filtering and precise location setting for all endpoints make DataForSEO SERP output even more granular.
Serpapi.com is faster than DataForSEO. Our Live method’s turnaround time is averagely up to six seconds, compared to 2.39 seconds stated by Serpapi.com.
DataForSEO prices are more affordable than Serpapi.com up to 2M searches volume, from which they pull even. Though with the latter, the more you pay, the less a single search costs. And with our non-Live queues, the prices are even lower.
Our pricing model is universal, speed-dependent, with just one limit across all our APIs. Our clients can configure their expenses point by point. Unfortunately, the Serpapi.com search credits unspent within a month are lost. Those aspects make the DataForSEO system more scalable and flexible than the Serpapi.com with its searches-per-month approach.
Certain digital marketers and researchers, SEO specialists, PPC-advertisers whose work depends almost solely on SERP results may find Serpapi.com more handy than DataForSEO. Some of the Serpapi.com APIs are designed for the ecommerce and academic fields; for the latter, the company offers special pricing plans.
DataForSEO is a clear way to go for handling the large traffic volumes, for continuous load, and scaling. It is a right choice for those who rely on popular search engines in their entirety, including but not limited by the SERP data. No matter whether you collect data, perform research, or drive online visibility – register an account with DataForSEO, and try out our SERP API. Get real SERP data for your ideas, and build innovative data-driven solutions.
