# SerpApi alternative for AI agents: Clawifi vs SerpApi

> What each product's own pages say, side by side. SerpApi facts were read on 2026-10-23 from SerpApi's own pricing and docs pages; follow each link to check.

Canonical page: https://clawifi.dev/compare/serpapi

## What SerpApi's pages say

| Topic | Fact | Source (read 2026-10-23) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| free tier | The Free plan is $0/month with 250 searches per month and 50 searches per hour throughput. | [serpapi.com/pricing](https://serpapi.com/pricing) |
| paid plans | Listed plans are Starter $25/month (1,000 searches), Developer $75/month (5,000), Production $150/month (15,000) and Big Data $275/month (30,000), billed month-to-month; Enterprise is contact-sales. | [serpapi.com/pricing](https://serpapi.com/pricing) |
| pricing unit | Successful searches count; cached, errored and failed searches do not, and each response counts as one search regardless of result count. | [serpapi.com/pricing](https://serpapi.com/pricing) |
| rate limits | Each plan has a guaranteed hourly throughput, for example 200 successful searches per hour on Starter and 6,000 on Big Data. | [serpapi.com/pricing](https://serpapi.com/pricing) |
| capabilities | Plans include U.S. Legal Shield, described as up to $2 million in coverage for scraping and parsing search engine data. | [serpapi.com/pricing](https://serpapi.com/pricing) |
| capabilities | ZeroTrace Mode prevents storage of search parameters, queries and results. | [serpapi.com/pricing](https://serpapi.com/pricing) |
| paid plans | A full refund is available within 7 days of subscribing unless more than 20% of searches were used. | [serpapi.com/pricing](https://serpapi.com/pricing) |
| MCP server | SerpApi MCP Server is hosted at mcp.serpapi.com and requires an API key. | [serpapi.com/integrations/mcp](https://serpapi.com/integrations/mcp) |
| self-host | The MCP server can be self-hosted from the serpapi/serpapi-mcp GitHub repository. | [serpapi.com/integrations/mcp](https://serpapi.com/integrations/mcp) |
| SDKs | Integrations are listed for Ruby, Python, JavaScript, Golang, PHP, Java, Rust, .NET, Swift, C++ and a CLI. | [serpapi.com/pricing](https://serpapi.com/pricing) |

## What Clawifi's pages say

| Topic | Fact | Source |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free plan | $0 with 1,000 credits a month. | [clawifi.dev/pricing](https://clawifi.dev/pricing) |
| Paid plans | Starter $19 a month (10,000 credits), Pro $99 a month (125,000 credits), Scale $299 a month (500,000 credits), billed monthly, USD excluding taxes. | [clawifi.dev/pricing](https://clawifi.dev/pricing) |
| Credit cost | Most calls cost 1 credit; a browser render 3; cache hits and failures on Clawifi’s side cost 0, while a page whose site answers with an error is charged as usual. | [clawifi.dev/docs/pricing-and-credits](https://clawifi.dev/docs/pricing-and-credits) |
| MCP | A local MCP server (`clawifi-mcp`) and a hosted one at `https://api.clawifi.dev/mcp` with 14 tools; 4 of them work without a key, 50 calls a day per address. | [clawifi.dev/docs/remote-mcp](https://clawifi.dev/docs/remote-mcp) |
| SDK | Python (`pip install clawifi`), plus a CLI and plain HTTP. | [clawifi.dev/sdk](https://clawifi.dev/sdk) |

Prices and limits change; the linked pages are the authority. Something out of date? [Tell us](mailto:clawifisupport@rearclabs.com?subject=Compare%20page)

## Questions

### Is Clawifi an alternative to SerpApi for AI agents?

For some jobs. The tables on this page put what SerpApi's own pages say (read 2026-10-23) about free tier, paid plans, pricing unit, rate limits, capabilities, MCP server, self-host and SDKs beside what Clawifi's pages say. Clawifi searches many engines as one, reads pages and PDFs, and returns the passages that answer a question, with sources, over MCP, a Python SDK and plain HTTP. Which fits depends on what your agent needs to do.

### Does SerpApi have a free tier, and does Clawifi?

According to SerpApi's own pages (read 2026-10-23): The Free plan is $0/month with 250 searches per month and 50 searches per hour throughput. Clawifi's Free plan is $0 with 1,000 credits a month, and 4 tools on the hosted MCP server work without a key, 50 calls a day per address.

### Can I use SerpApi and Clawifi from an MCP client?

According to SerpApi's own pages (read 2026-10-23): SerpApi MCP Server is hosted at mcp.serpapi.com and requires an API key. Clawifi has a local MCP server (`clawifi-mcp`) and a hosted one at `https://api.clawifi.dev/mcp` with 14 tools; see [Remote MCP](https://clawifi.dev/docs/remote-mcp).

### How do SerpApi and Clawifi charge?

According to SerpApi's own pages (read 2026-10-23): Listed plans are Starter $25/month (1,000 searches), Developer $75/month (5,000), Production $150/month (15,000) and Big Data $275/month (30,000), billed month-to-month; Enterprise is contact-sales. Successful searches count; cached, errored and failed searches do not, and each response counts as one search regardless of result count. Clawifi's paid plans are Starter at $19 a month, Pro at $99 a month, Scale at $299 a month; most calls cost 1 credit and a browser render 3; cache hits and failures on Clawifi’s side cost 0, while a page whose site answers with an error is charged as usual. See [Pricing](https://clawifi.dev/pricing).

## Other comparisons

- [Clawifi vs Crawl4AI](https://clawifi.dev/compare/crawl4ai): Sourced, dated facts.
- [Clawifi vs Spider](https://clawifi.dev/compare/spider): Sourced, dated facts.
- [Clawifi vs Brave Search API](https://clawifi.dev/compare/brave-search-api): Sourced, dated facts.
- [All comparisons](https://clawifi.dev/compare): The compare hub.