Who Has the Fastest Google Search API? Benchmarking SerpApi vs. Serper vs. BrightData and more

Disclaimer: I work for SerpApi. I've aimed to be as fair and unbiased as possible. Benchmarks were run in a way you can run them entirely yourself to validate these numbers.

It's been a while since we published a benchmark post. The industry has changed a lot since then. Some major players a few years ago are not around anymore, and a whole new set of companies have come to market. This has been great for competition as the average speed across the industry has improved a lot.

For this round, I tested 6 different Google Search API providers:

1. SerpApi
2. BrightData
3. DataForSEO
4. ScraperAPI
5. Scrapingdog
6. Serper.dev

The tests used the fastest Google Search API offered by each. I ran at least 100 searches for each provider with the exact same search query of google search api. I ran more than 100 searches for anyone that offers more than 100 free searches to get the most representative possible sample.

We encourage you to validate these results yourself. All you need to do is sign up for free trials for any of these companies. You can sign up for ours here and get 250 free searches per month: https://serpapi.com/users/sign_up

Average Response Time

SerpApi wins with an average response time of 0.73 seconds. The second place finisher of Serper at 0.83 seconds was 13.7% slower.

You may notice ScraperAPI missing from the chart above. This is because they threw off the scale of the chart. Here's the full table of results:

p99

p99 is a crucial metric to evaluate an API's performance. This number means that 99% of requests are faster than this time. Or in other words, only the slowest 1% of requests take longer than this time.

This is important for understanding the worst-case performance of an API. An API may have impressive average response times, but slow, outlier response times can have a very negative impact on user experience.

In this category, SerpApi comfortably wins again with a p99 of 1.45 seconds. The second placer finisher of Serper with a time of 2.10 seconds was 44.8% slower than SerpApi.

Here's the p99 table:

For the Absolute Fastest Google Search API Experience

I would be remiss if I didn't mention how to get the absolute fastest response times and p99. This is with our Ludicrous Speed Max option. This is a premium option for those who will accept no compromise

Let's see how this stacks up against what we tested previously. Once again, I ran the exact same test querying for google search api.

When enabling Ludicrous Speed Max, SerpApi's average response time dropped all the way to 0.64 seconds and p99 reached 1.11 seconds!

Ready to try this out yourself? Sign up for a free account to get 250 free searches per month: https://serpapi.com/users/sign_up