DataForSEO Alternatives in 2026: Live SERP and Google Shopping APIs Compared

The best DataForSEO alternative depends on what you are replacing:

• Live Google results: Serper and CrawlerData both cost $1.00 → $0.30 per 1,000, against DataForSEO Live’s $2.00. SerpApi and SearchApi cover far more Google verticals.
• Google Shopping without a task queue: SerpApi, SearchApi, Scrapingdog, Oxylabs and CrawlerData all return Shopping product data synchronously.
• Cheap batch SERP data: DataForSEO’s own Standard queue is still the cheapest or close to it at low and mid volume.

What DataForSEO is good at

DataForSEO is a strong product, and for many teams it is the right choice. As of October 2026, per its pricing, FAQ and SERP API page:

• Low per-SERP pricing on the Standard queue. $0.60 per 1,000 SERPs (about 5 minutes on average, 45-minute target), against $1.20 on Priority and $2.00 on Live.
• A balance that never expires. “The balance has no expiry date.” Few competitors offer that.
• A low entry point. Pay as you go, with a $50 minimum payment. No subscription.
• Location and depth. All Google locations, up to 700 results per keyword.
• Breadth. Many Google SERP types (Organic, AI Mode, Maps, News, Images, Jobs, Autocomplete, Ads and more), plus Bing, YouTube, Yahoo, Baidu, Naver and Seznam, and a lot of SEO data beyond SERPs.
• Fair failure billing. “We charge your balance only when you get a result.”

Common reasons to look elsewhere

Reasons teams give for looking elsewhere, based on DataForSEO’s own docs:

• No live Google Shopping. The Merchant API docs list the Standard method only (task POST, then GET) for Google Shopping. Priority can be normal (about 45 minutes) or high (about 1 minute), but you always poll or receive a callback.
• Live SERPs cost more. The Live mode is $2.00 per 1,000 SERPs, more than three times the Standard queue.
• Depth is billed per 10 results. A depth of 100 costs 10× the base price. Search operators such as site: cost 5×.
• Sellers are billed in blocks. Per its Merchant pricing billing note, the Sellers task is billed per block of 10 sellers ($0.001 Standard, $0.002 Priority). We found the price table and the note hard to reconcile, so check with them for your case. The Sellers task returns the top 10 sellers by default, depth goes up to 200, and get_shops_on_google=true doubles the cost.
• An async workflow is more code than one HTTP request, if all you need is a live answer.

Alternatives at a glance

Delivery model

Price per 1,000 live Google searches

CrawlerData’s packs ($50, $375, $1,250 and $3,750 for 50k, 500k, 2.5M and 12.5M credits) and their 6-month validity are identical to Serper’s. We are not cheaper than Serper on search.

Credit expiry

Here DataForSEO is simply better than us.

Alternatives for live Google SERP

Serper

Best for: cheap, simple live Google search with a large free trial. Packs from $50 for 50k credits down to $0.30 per 1,000, valid 6 months, and 2,500 free queries (serper.dev). It publishes rate limits of 50 to 300 queries per second by pack and claims “1-2 seconds” per query. Endpoints include Search, Images, News, Maps, Places, Videos, Shopping, Scholar, Patents and Autocomplete. Location is by country and language. The cost of more than 10 results per query is not stated on its pricing section.

SerpApi

Best for: the widest Google coverage and fine location control. About 40 Google engines, location and uule targeting, desktop, tablet and mobile, and failed or cached searches are free. 100 results count as one search, so deep SERPs don’t cost more (pricing). It is a monthly subscription from $25 for 1,000 searches, falling to about $1.96 per 1,000 at the largest listed plan. Legal Shield is included from the Production plan up.

SearchApi

Best for: SerpApi-style breadth at a lower per-search price. About 40 engines, $4.00 → $1.00 per 1,000, only 200 responses charged, and a 99.9% SLA on all plans (pricing). It is subscription only, and the hourly rate limit is up to 20% of the plan’s credits.

Bright Data

Best for: city and ZIP targeting in 195 countries, with no monthly commitment. $1.50 per 1,000 pay as you go, or $499 a month for 380k requests, then $1.30 per 1,000 (pricing). Geotargeting, device and parsing are included. Failed requests are not billed, except in zones that use custom headers or cookies (billing). The free tier is 5,000 requests a month.

Oxylabs

Best for: teams already using Oxylabs for other scraping, since one subscription covers all its products. Google non-JS results cost $1.00 → $0.50 per 1,000, and JS-rendered results $1.35 → $0.90 (pricing). Note that 2xx and 4xx responses are billed, and unused balance expires at the end of each cycle.

Zenserp

Best for: a mid-size monthly plan with several engines (Google, Bing, Yandex, DuckDuckGo). $2.00 → $0.90 per 1,000, and only successful responses are charged (pricing). AI Overview costs 3 searches per request, and the free plan covers Google Search only.

CrawlerData

Best for: live or webhook delivery at the same price on every queue, across search and Shopping. The Google Search API returns organic results with real destination links, ads, AI Overview, People Also Ask, the local pack, top stories, the knowledge panel and related searches, on desktop or mobile, for pages 1 to 10. Search costs 1 credit per request (the Sellers endpoint is the exception, at 1 credit per 10 sellers returned), failed requests are free, and Fast and Regular queues cost the same as Live.

Alternatives for Google Shopping (Merchant API users)

If you use DataForSEO’s Merchant API for Google Shopping, these alternatives return Shopping data synchronously. For full cost-per-product arithmetic, see Google Shopping API pricing compared.

SerpApi

Google Shopping returns about 40 items per page with filters for price, sort, free shipping, on sale and small business. Immersive Product adds stores, specs, ratings and user reviews. Best for: rich product pages with reviews and fine location targeting.

SearchApi

It has Shopping, Product, Product Offers, Specs, Reviews and more, and an option to resolve Google redirects to merchant URLs. Since 2026-05-15, Product and Product Offers need a product_token from a Shopping call, so stored product IDs no longer work there. Best for: a full set of product sub-pages.

Scrapingdog

/google_shopping costs 10 credits and /google_product costs 5, with switches for offers, specs and reviews. At its larger plans, the product call works out cheaper per call than ours, about $0.00014 against our $0.0003 per 10 sellers, or $0.0009 for a product with 30 sellers (3 credits), by our arithmetic. Best for: high-volume product lookups on a budget. How many sellers one call returns is not stated.

ValueSERP

It offers Shopping with max_page to join several pages into one response, plus online sellers, which its docs say is location-sensitive. Best for: batch jobs of up to 10,000 searches.

Oxylabs

Shopping search must be rendered to return product tokens. The product endpoint returns online sellers, variants, specifications and US reviews. Best for: existing Oxylabs customers.

CrawlerData

Shopping search, Sellers (every seller in one request, sorted by total price, 1 credit per 10 sellers returned) and Product info (title, brand, description, images, rating, specs). You can pass a product_id you already have. Best for: daily price monitoring where you want the full seller list live, without pagination or a task queue. No reviews endpoint.

When DataForSEO is still the better choice

Stay with DataForSEO if:

• Your jobs can wait. At $0.60 per 1,000 on the Standard queue, it is the cheapest list price for organic SERPs up to roughly 300,000 a month by our arithmetic, except at about 150,000–200,000 a month, where Scrapingdog’s Standard plan costs less (see the cheapest SERP API).
• Your volume is irregular. A balance that never expires beats 6-month packs and monthly resets.
• You need non-Google engines, keyword data or other SEO datasets in the same account.
• You need city-level locations or more than 10 pages of results.

Where CrawlerData is weaker

• A newer product, with a shorter track record than DataForSEO.
• Far fewer endpoints. We have 8 Google endpoints and nothing outside Google. SerpApi and SearchApi list about 40 engines each.
• Country level only. We cover 31 countries, with no city or uule targeting.
• Credits last 6 months. DataForSEO’s balance never expires.
• A small trial. 50 credits, valid 30 days, and you need a verified work email.
• Slow Shopping product requests. Sellers and Product requests can take tens of seconds. Shopping search, Images and Autocomplete return page 1 only.
• Lower rate limits: 100 requests per minute and 20 per second per API key.

For a head-to-head of the three biggest names, see Serper vs SerpApi vs DataForSEO.

Try sync or webhook delivery at the same price

Sign up for 50 free credits and send the same query to the Live queue and to the Fast queue with a webhook. Both cost 1 credit. Pack prices are on the pricing page.

Changelog

• 2026-10-12: First published. All prices checked on 2026-10-12.
• 2026-10-12: Updated CrawlerData seller pricing (1 credit per 10 sellers).