SerpApi vs Kagi Search API for AI agents
SerpApi is an API that scrapes and parses Google and other search engines into structured JSON. Kagi Search API is programmatic access to Kagi's premium, ad-free search results for search products and agents.
The short answer
- SerpApi: Structured results from many search engines and verticals, including Google Maps and Shopping, through one API.
- Kagi Search API: High-quality, ad-free results with clear terms that explicitly allow feeding results to an LLM.
Side by side
| SerpApi | Kagi Search API | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches | Google (many verticals) plus Bing, Baidu, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Yandex, Naver, Brave, and sites like Amazon, eBay, YouTube, Walmart, Tripadvisor. | Kagi's search results (web, news, video, podcasts, images per its MCP). |
| Returns | Structured JSON (or Markdown): organic results, maps and local results, shopping, direct answers, knowledge graph, with links, addresses, prices, ratings and reviews. | JSON search results; optionally full Markdown extraction of the top results in the same request. |
| Before the first call | An account and an API key. | A Kagi account, an API key from the API dashboard, and billing set up (pay-per-use, prepaid credit or invoice). |
| Free | 250 searches a month. | Not stated on its pages |
| Paid | $25/month for 1,000 searches (Starter); only successful searches count. | $12 per 1,000 requests; Extract $4 per 1,000 pages. |
| Acting on a result | Through the web page each result links to | Through the web page each result links to |
| Limits on keeping or showing results | Not stated on its pages | No storing, caching or building a database of results beyond transient caching; cached results must be deleted on termination. |
| AI in its terms | Not stated on its pages | Sending results to an AI model to answer your users is allowed; training or fine-tuning models, or harvesting training/evaluation datasets, is not. |
| MCP server | Official MCP server: https://mcp.serpapi.com/mcp (code: https://github.com/serpapi/serpapi-mcp) | Official MCP server: https://mcp.kagi.com/mcp (code: https://github.com/kagisearch/kagimcp) |
Questions people ask
What do I need before I can use SerpApi?
An account and an API key.
Is SerpApi free?
250 searches a month.
What do I need before I can use Kagi Search API?
A Kagi account, an API key from the API dashboard, and billing set up (pay-per-use, prepaid credit or invoice).
Is Kagi Search API free?
Its pages listed no free use when we read them on October 15, 2026.
Sources
Every line about another company comes from its own pages. Prices and terms change, so check the source before you rely on one.
SerpApi, read on October 15, 2026:
- serpapi.com/pricing: “Only successful searches are counted toward your monthly searches. Cached, errored, and failed searches are not.”
- serpapi.com: “Regular organic results are available as well as Maps, Local, Stories, Shopping, Direct Answer, and Knowledge Graph.”
- github.com/serpapi/serpapi-mcp: “A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server implementation that integrates with SerpApi”
- serpapi.com/pricing: “Free $ 0 / month Get Started 250 searches per month”
- serpapi.com/pricing: “Starter $ 25 / month Get Started 1,000 searches per month”
Kagi Search API, read on October 15, 2026:
- kagi.com/api/pricing: “$12 /1k requests”
- kagi.com/api/pricing: “$4 /1k pages”
- kagi.com/api/docs: “The Search API is a feature-rich endpoint for search products and agents.”
- kagi.com/api/docs: “You can also request full markdown extraction of the top results in a single API request.”
- help.kagi.com/kagi/api/overview.html: “The API uses a pay-per-use model”
- kagi.com/privacy/api: “Store, cache, or build a database of Results beyond the transient caching needed to operate your application.”
- kagi.com/privacy/api: “including sending Results to an AI model to answer your users' queries.”
- kagi.com/privacy/api: “Use Results to train or fine-tune a search index, ranking system, translation or summarization model”
- github.com/kagisearch/kagimcp: “The Official Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Kagi Search & other tools.”