metasearch.sh vs SerpApi

SerpApi sells Google web, News, Scholar and Images result pages as JSON, on monthly plans. metasearch.sh will list SerpApi at $0.0375 a call once it is enabled. Today the same jobs run on serper, brave, linkup and others, behind one key and one prepaid balance, at each engine's list price × 1.5.

Price

per 1,000 callsSerpApi directSerpApi through uscheapest engine here
Google News searchStarter plan: $25 a month for 1,000 searches$25$37.50not enabled yet$1.50serper · news
Google Scholar searchStarter plan$25$37.50not enabled yet$1.50serper · scholar
Google Images searchStarter plan$25$37.50not enabled yet$1.50serper · images
SerpApi plans
Monthly plans only, renewed automatically: Starter $25 for 1,000, Developer $75 for 5,000, Production $150 for 15,000. No pay as you go.
SerpApi free tier
250 searches a month.

Where SerpApi wins

  • Going direct costs less on every plan: $0.025 a search on Starter, down to $0.01 on Production, against SerpApi through metasearch.sh.
  • 250 free searches every month.

Where metasearch.sh wins

  • Serper's Google endpoints serve the same modes (news, scholar, images, places, patents) for a fraction of SerpApi's plan price.
  • No monthly plan: buy credit when you need it; it does not expire while your account is open.
  • One key and one balance for 8 engines across 12 modes: serper, exa, jina, brave, linkup, perplexity, firecrawl, xai.
  • Failed, timed-out and empty calls cost nothing; you pay for the engine that returned results.
  • Ask several engines in one call and get one list, merged by rank fusion.
  • Any page as markdown from $0.00075 with our own fetch, escalating to rendering services when a page needs a browser.
  • Live X posts through xAI, in social mode.
  • Auto routing picks the mode and says why in the response, at no charge.
  • The open-source search-cli and an MCP server for Claude Code, Cursor and VS Code, on the same key.
get your keyevery price

Sources

Also compared: Tavily · Exa