Head to head
unlob vs Serper
Serper is the cheapest way to get raw Google results into an agent. It is also a Google SERP wrapper, with everything that implies.
Verified 7 October 2026·Figures from vendors' own pages
On the headline rate that is 2.5× — $1 per 1,000 for Serper’s Starter credit pack, its cheapest comparable mode, against $0.40per 1,000 searches. Other modes cost more; the pricing detail below lists them. Both figures are computed from the published plan tables rather than typed into this page, so they follow the vendors rather than drifting from them.
Price
- unlob$0.40
- Serper$1
| Provider | Own index? | $ / 1,000 searches | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
Priced: Starter credit pack. $1 per 1,000 on the Starter credit pack, falling to $0.30 per 1,000 on the largest pack. Prepaid credits, valid for six months. | No Google SERP wrapper | $1 | Serper pricing |
$29 per month for 50,000 credits, and a search is one credit. | Yes Our own crawl and index | $0.58 | This page |
$199 per month for 500,000 credits, and a search is one credit. | Yes Our own crawl and index | $0.40 | This page |
When Serper is the better choice
A comparison page that cannot name a scenario where the competitor wins is an advertisement. Here are the real ones.
Choose Serper
- You specifically need Google’s ranking — SEO tooling, rank tracking, or any product whose output is "what Google shows".
- At very high volume its rate approaches $0.30 per 1,000, below ours.
- Simplest possible integration for a familiar result shape.
Choose unlob
- You want good sources rather than Google’s ordering of them — which is what agent retrieval actually needs.
- No upstream dependency. The Bing Search API retirement in August 2025 is what that risk looks like when it lands.
- Passage-level hits with trust signals, and ground for evidence with provenance and a coverage receipt, instead of SERP entries you must then fetch and clean.
- Graph traversal, corroboration counts and coverage transparency.
The substantive differences
| Serper | unlob | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A Google SERP wrapper. | An independent index built for agent retrieval. |
| After the call | You have links. Fetching and cleaning the pages is your problem, and usually another vendor. | Cleaned passages with snippets, and /doc/:id for the full text when you want it. |
| Dependency | Exists at Google’s tolerance. | Ours. |
Sources
Every figure on this page was read from the vendor's own pricing page or funding announcement on the date shown.
- Serper: Serper pricingread 7 October 2026
Frequently asked questions
Is Serper cheaper than unlob?
At high volume, yes — around $0.30 per 1,000 against our $0.40. The question is what you are buying: Serper gives you Google’s SERP, which you then have to fetch and clean, on a dependency neither of you controls. We give you cleaned passages with trust signals from an index we operate.
Check the claims yourself
The free tier is 10,000 credits a month with no card. That is enough to test coverage, latency and result quality against your own queries — which is a better comparison than this page.