Apify vs Serper
A side-by-side look at 2 AI & ML tools for 2026 — the verdict, pricing, ratings, features, and what readers think.
apify.com
Best for Developers and AI teams that want ready-made scrapers and automation tools, or a cloud platform to run their own.
A marketplace and platform of ready-to-run web scraping and automation tools for AI agents and apps.
Visit Apify
serper.dev
Best for Developers who want cheap, fast Google results as a search tool for agents, RAG pipelines and SEO scripts.
A fast, low-cost Google Search API that gives AI agents and apps structured SERP data in one to two seconds.
Visit SerperPricing compared
Apify
$19/mo
Serper
$0.3/1k queries
Head to head
| Apify | Serper | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $19/mo | $0.3/1k queries |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Free plan with $5 of monthly usage, no credit card | 2,500 free queries, no credit card required |
| Platforms | Web · API · CLI | API · Web |
| Founded | 2015 | — |
| HQ | Prague, Czechia | — |
Pros & cons
Apify
Pros
- Huge store of ready-made Actors covers many common scraping jobs.
- Free plan with no credit card makes testing easy.
- Includes proxies, anti-blocking tools and scheduling on the platform.
- MCP server and API let AI agents run Actors directly.
- Open-source Crawlee library reduces lock-in for custom scrapers.
Cons
- Costs vary by Actor and pricing model, so budgeting needs test runs.
- Unused prepaid usage expires at the end of each billing cycle.
- Free plan is blocked once monthly usage runs out.
- Store Actor quality depends on the individual developer.
Serper
Pros
- Google-quality results (organic, knowledge graph, answer box, PAA) through a simple JSON API.
- Among the cheapest per-query pricing in the category, from $0.30 per 1,000 queries at volume.
- 2,500 free queries with no credit card make evaluation risk-free.
- Covers Search, Images, News, Maps, Places, Videos, Shopping, Scholar, Patents and Autocomplete.
- Ships as a ready-made tool in LangChain, so wiring it into an agent takes minutes.
Cons
- Returns snippets and links only; you still need a scraper or extraction API for full page content.
- Not an agent-native or semantic index, so results are not pre-chunked or token-optimised for LLMs.
- Depends on Google results, which makes it a wrapper rather than an independent search index.
- The homepage does not publish rate limits, credit expiry or company details such as HQ and founding year.
Features compared
| Apify | Serper | |
|---|---|---|
| Plans & pricing | ||
| Free tier | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Pricing model | Monthly subscription plus pay-as-you-go platform usage | Per usage |
| Platforms & access | ||
| Web app | ✓ Yes | — |
| Integrations & extensibility | ||
| Public API | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Native integrations | Zapier, GitHub, Google Sheets, Google Drive, Slack, n8n | — |
| Automation (Zapier/Make) | ✓ Yes | — |