Pick Scrapingdog if you want one account that scrapes more than Google — other engines plus general-purpose scraping endpoints. Pick serp.cheap if Google organic results are all you need, because the same data costs roughly a third as much: $0.75/1,000 pay-as-you-go vs ~$2.00/1,000. serp.cheap credits are valid for 12 months and there’s no monthly minimum; on Scrapingdog pay-as-you-go credits don’t expire, while subscription-plan credits reset each cycle — so the deciding factor is scope vs price.
serp.cheap vs Scrapingdog at a glance
| serp.cheap | Scrapingdog | |
|---|---|---|
| Price / 1,000 Google searches | $0.75 PAYG, $0.60–0.70 volume | ~$2.00 |
| Cached repeat queries | $0.0003/req | No cached tier |
| Billing model | Pay-as-you-go credits | Credits |
| Credits expire | After 12 months | Subscription: monthly · PAYG: never |
| Free tier | 100 searches, no card | 1,000 trial |
| Search engines | Google only | Google + others |
| Real google.com | ✅ Live, residential proxies | ✅ Live |
| Knowledge Graph | ✅ | Some |
| Countries | 12 | Many |
| Min. spend / contract | None | None |
| Response | Synchronous, avg <3s | Synchronous |
Prices last reviewed June 2026 — always check the provider’s pricing page.
Where serp.cheap wins
- Per-request price. $0.75/1,000 pay-as-you-go, sliding to $0.60–0.70/1,000 at volume — against ~$2.00/1,000 at Scrapingdog for the same live Google results.
- A cached tier Scrapingdog doesn’t have. Repeat queries served from cache bill at $0.0003 per request and return in milliseconds. If your workload re-checks the same keywords (rank tracking, monitoring), a chunk of your traffic drops to that rate automatically.
- Knowledge Graph in every response. The
knowledgeGraphobject ships alongsideorganic[]whenever Google shows a panel — no extra parameter, no extra charge. - Payment flexibility. Direct top-ups take card (Stripe) or crypto with no KYC; the same API is also on RapidAPI (
$0.90/1k) and Apify ($1.50/1k) — still at or under Scrapingdog’s direct rate.
Where Scrapingdog wins
- Breadth. Scrapingdog is a scraping platform, not just a SERP endpoint — it covers search engines beyond Google and general-purpose scraping in the same account. serp.cheap does exactly one thing: Google organic + Knowledge Graph.
- Geo coverage. Scrapingdog supports many countries; serp.cheap currently supports 12 (US, GB, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, BR, MX, CA, AU, JP).
- More SERP features. serp.cheap returns organic results, sitelinks and the Knowledge Graph — no Google Maps, Images or Shopping verticals. If you need those verticals, Scrapingdog’s broader feature set matters.
What switching looks like
The main mechanical change: Scrapingdog’s Google endpoint takes a GET request with your key and query as URL parameters, while serp.cheap takes a POST with a JSON body and the key in an X-API-Key header.
curl https://api.serp.cheap/v1/search \
-H 'X-API-Key: KEY' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"q":"coffee grinder","gl":"us"}'Parameter mapping is direct: your search term becomes q, the country code becomes gl (e.g. us, de), the interface language is hl, pagination is page (1-indexed), and time-range filters use Google’s tbs syntax (qdr:h, qdr:d, qdr:w).
In the response, each entry in organic[] carries position, title, link, snippet, an optional date, and sitelinks where Google shows them. Knowledge Graph data, when present, lives in a top-level knowledgeGraph object. If your Scrapingdog parser reads organic results as an array of title/link/snippet objects, the rewrite is renaming field paths — the underlying data is the same live google.com page.
Two things to check before you cut over: that all your target markets are in serp.cheap’s 12 countries, and that your plan’s rate limit (1–60 req/s depending on tier) fits your burst pattern.
The cost math on a real workload
Say you track 500 keywords once a day — 500 × 30 = 15,000 fresh searches a month.
- serp.cheap, pay-as-you-go: 15 × $0.75 = $11.25/mo (at the $0.60 volume rate: $9.00)
- Scrapingdog at ~$2.00/1,000: 15 × $2.00 = ~$30.00/mo
Same Google data, ~$19/month difference at this volume — and the gap scales linearly. At 100k searches a month it’s ~$75 vs ~$200. If any of those keywords get queried more than once a day (multiple users, retries, dashboards), the cached $0.0003 rate pulls serp.cheap’s effective number lower still.
When Scrapingdog is the right choice
- You scrape more than Google SERPs — other engines or general web pages — and want one vendor and one credit balance for all of it.
- You need countries outside serp.cheap’s 12.
- You need SERP verticals serp.cheap doesn’t parse: Maps, Images or Shopping.
For honest-broker context, Scrapingdog’s site lists its full endpoint catalog. And for the wider market, see our Google Search API pricing comparison and the price-ranked cheapest SERP API 2026.
Verdict
Both keep credits well beyond a monthly cycle — serp.cheap’s are valid 12 months, Scrapingdog’s pay-as-you-go credits don’t expire — with no monthly minimum and no contract. So the choice is clean. Multi-engine or general scraping needs → Scrapingdog. Google organic only → serp.cheap, at roughly a third of the per-request cost, with a cache tier underneath it.
Try serp.cheap
If Google organic data is the only thing you’re paying Scrapingdog ~$2/1,000 for, run the same queries here for $0.75. 100 free searches on signup — no card required; pay-as-you-go from $0.75/1k after that, and credits stay valid for 12 months.
- Get your free API key →
- Prefer paying by card? serp.cheap is also on RapidAPI (
$0.90/1k) and Apify ($1.50/1k).