Best SERP Scraping Proxies 2026: APIs and IPs Compared
Google search results are the one scraping target where a dedicated SERP API almost always beats raw proxies: Google serves CAPTCHAs aggressively by IP rate, and SERP products absorb that problem for a per-thousand price. The November 2026 entry points: Apify's GOOGLE_SERP proxy group from $1.9 per 1,000 SERPs, Oxylabs from $1.00 per 1,000 non-JS Google results, Bright Data's SERP API at $1.50 per 1,000 requests (5,000 free monthly), and ScraperAPI at 25 credits per SERP request.
For SERP scraping in 2026 (verified November 2026): Apify Proxy ships a GOOGLE_SERP group from $1.9/1,000 SERPs with maintained Google Search Actors on top. Oxylabs prices its SERP API by results: non-JS Google from $1.00/1K results down to $0.70, JS from $1.35. Bright Data gives 5,000 free SERP requests monthly, then $1.50/1K (pay-as-you-go) or $1.30/1K on its $499 Scale plan. ScraperAPI charges 25 credits per SERP request (about $3.73/1K at Startup-plan credit rates). Rolling your own with rotating datacenter proxies ($0.45 to $0.50/GB) plus a CAPTCHA solver is the raw alternative.
SERP options compared (November 2026)
| Option | Entry price | At volume | Free tier | Billed by | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apify GOOGLE_SERP | $1.9/1K SERPs | plan-tiered | $5 platform credits | per 1K SERPs | running maintained Google Actors |
| Oxylabs SERP API | $1.00/1K results (non-JS Google) | $0.70/1K | $5 welcome credit | per 1K results | volume structured SERP data |
| Bright Data SERP API | $1.50/1K requests | $1.30/1K (Scale, 380K incl.) | 5,000 requests/month | per 1K requests | free monthly allowance, enterprise |
| ScraperAPI | 25 credits/SERP (≈$3.73/1K at Startup) | cheaper at Business scale | 5,000 credits for 7 days | credits | mixed SERP + page scraping in one API |
| Rotating datacenter proxies | $0.45-0.50/GB | $0.30-0.40/GB | none | per GB | custom stacks with CAPTCHA solving |
Units differ and the difference matters: Oxylabs bills per delivered result (a SERP page returns ten organic results, so 1,000 results is roughly 100 pages), while Apify, Bright Data and ScraperAPI bill per request/SERP page. Read every SERP price against what a "unit" contains before comparing.
1. Apify GOOGLE_SERP: cheapest turnkey
Apify Proxy includes a dedicated GOOGLE_SERP group, from $1.9 per 1,000 SERPs on the current pricing page, and the same account runs maintained Google Search Actors that handle parsing, pagination and scheduling. If your SERP data can arrive from a ready-made scraper, this is the shortest path: no CAPTCHA handling of your own, structured output, and the Google Search Results Scraper charges per result, not per failed attempt.
2. Oxylabs SERP API: priced by results
Oxylabs prices SERP delivery per 1,000 results: non-JS Google at $1.00 (Starter volume) down to $0.70 (Enterprise), Google with JS rendering at $1.35 down to $0.90, plus per-result pricing for Amazon and other verticals on the same API. Plans start at the Starter tier ($15/month) with a $5 welcome credit, and self-serve purchases are non-refundable. If you consume SERP data in volume and parse it yourself, the per-result unit is the cheapest structure on this page.
3. Bright Data SERP API: the free monthly allowance
Bright Data gives every account 5,000 free SERP API requests per month, then bills $1.50 per 1,000 requests pay-as-you-go, or $1.30 per 1,000 on the Scale plan ($499/month including 380,000 requests). Structured JSON (organic, paid, local results) arrives parsed. For a monitoring workload under 5,000 monthly checks, the free tier alone does the job.
4. ScraperAPI: SERP inside a general scraping API
ScraperAPI bills SERP requests at 25 credits each (a standard page costs 1, credit costs vary by plan: Startup at $149/month includes 1M credits, which works out to about $3.73 per 1,000 SERP requests; Business improves it). Only successful requests (HTTP 200 and 404) are charged, the free trial carries 5,000 credits for 7 days, and the same credits also scrape ordinary pages, e-commerce (5 credits) and LinkedIn (30). The pick when SERP is one input among several in one pipeline. Full breakdown in our ScraperAPI review.
5. The raw-proxy route: datacenter plus CAPTCHA solving
Rolling your own SERP fetcher is still viable and sometimes cheaper: Google blocks by IP velocity, so the recipe is rotating datacenter proxies at $0.45 to $0.50/GB (Evomi, DataImpulse), conservative per-IP rates, and a CAPTCHA solver ($0.60 to $2 per 1,000 solves) behind a retry queue. A typical SERP page is 30 to 80 KB, so 100,000 pages costs roughly 3 to 8 GB of proxy traffic ($1.50 to $4) plus solves, less than any API at that scale. What you pay instead: parser maintenance (Google's markup moves constantly) and block-rate tuning. Our datacenter proxy comparison covers the IP side and the rotation guide the session design.
Choosing between them
- One-off or under 5,000 SERPs/month: Bright Data's free allowance, or Apify's $5 free credits with a ready Actor.
- Steady keyword monitoring (5K to 100K/month): Apify GOOGLE_SERP at $1.9/1K or Oxylabs per-result pricing; compare against your page depth.
- Mixed scraping pipeline: ScraperAPI, one credit pool for everything.
- Full control or unusual parsing needs: rotating datacenter plus solver.
- Enterprise with compliance paperwork: Bright Data or Oxylabs contracts.
Bing and other engines price differently at every vendor (ScraperAPI charges the same 25 credits for Bing), so check the target engine before committing.
SERP APIs beat raw proxies for Google in most cases. Entry prices verified November 2026: Oxylabs SERP API from $1.00 per 1,000 non-JS Google results, Apify's GOOGLE_SERP proxy group from $1.9 per 1,000 SERPs, Bright Data's SERP API at $1.50 per 1,000 requests after 5,000 free monthly, and ScraperAPI at 25 credits per SERP request. For a custom stack, rotating datacenter proxies at $0.45 to $0.50/GB plus a CAPTCHA solver is the raw route.
Usually no. Google blocks by IP rate and serves CAPTCHAs, and datacenter IPs at conservative per-IP rates, or a SERP API that manages rotation and CAPTCHAs for you, cost a fraction of residential GBs. Residential becomes relevant only for localized, authenticated or especially aggressive monitoring patterns.
Between $0.70 and $3.73 per 1,000 depending on vendor and unit (verified November 2026): Oxylabs $1.00 to $0.70 per 1,000 non-JS Google results, Apify from $1.90 per 1,000 SERPs, Bright Data $1.50 to $1.30 per 1,000 requests, ScraperAPI about $3.73 per 1,000 at Startup credit rates. Self-managed datacenter proxies can land under $1 per 1,000 pages in traffic cost, before solver and maintenance time.
Its SERP API prices per delivered result, and one Google results page carries ten organic results, so 1,000 results is roughly 100 pages. That makes the headline $1.00/1K results substantially cheaper per page than per-request vendors once volume tiers apply, but only if your parser consumes what the API returns; compare units, not stickers.
Bright Data includes 5,000 free SERP API requests every month, ongoing. ScraperAPI's trial grants 5,000 general credits for 7 days (about 200 SERP requests), Apify's free plan carries $5 in platform credits, and Oxylabs offers a one-time $5 welcome credit. For continuous small-scale monitoring, Bright Data's recurring allowance is the only true free tier.
Not reliably at volume with raw IPs; CAPTCHAs are Google's primary rate signal. The managed options absorb them: SERP APIs solve and retry internally and bill only successful requests (ScraperAPI) or results (Oxylabs). If you run your own proxies, keep requests per IP low (single digits per minute), rotate steadily, and keep a solver behind the retry queue; the Cloudflare bypass guide covers the same pattern for other protected targets.