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 5 August 2026·Figures from vendors' own pages

On the headline rate that is 2.5× — $1 per 1,000 against $0.40. 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

Per 1,000 comparable web searches — about ten results, no extraction, no summarisation.

Provider	Own index?	$ / 1,000 queries	Source
Serper $1 per 1,000 on the Starter plan, falling to about $0.30 per 1,000 at high volume.	No Google SERP wrapper	$1	Serper pricing
unlob — Build $29 per month for 50,000 requests.	Yes Our own crawl and index	$0.58	This page
unlob — Scale $199 per month for 500,000 requests.	Yes Our own crawl and index	$0.40	This page

Rates are the cheapest directly comparable web search call — roughly ten results, no extraction and no summarisation — because that is the only way a table across credit systems, token pricing and per-request pricing means anything. Where a vendor does not publish a flat per-1,000 rate they are omitted from this table and covered in full on the landscape page. Figures read from each vendor’s own pricing page on 5 August 2026.

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.
Metadata-only hits with trust signals, 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 5 August 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 requests 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.

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