Funding
$100.00k
2017
Valuation
SerpApi has operated as a bootstrapped company since its founding in 2017, with no external funding raised. The company employs approximately 35 people and has maintained profitability without relying on outside capital.
Founder Julien Khaleghy has stated plans to explore an IPO in the future to support the development of an independent search index. This initiative would decrease reliance on Google and other search engines, indicating potential preparation for external funding or entry into public markets to support infrastructure expansion.
Product
SerpApi is a cloud API that converts search engine results pages into structured JSON data for integration into applications. Users send HTTP requests with specified search parameters, such as query terms, location, and target search engine, and receive parsed data instead of raw HTML.
The service supports over 40 search engines and specialized endpoints, including Google, Bing, Amazon, YouTube, and regional engines like Baidu and Yandex. It extracts specific elements such as knowledge graphs, shopping results, local business listings, and AI-generated answer boxes.
Developers access SerpApi through a web-based playground for query testing, official client libraries in more than 10 programming languages, and detailed documentation. The platform manages infrastructure challenges like proxy rotation, CAPTCHA solving, and browser automation, reducing the need for in-house engineering resources.
Features include location-based searching to simulate queries from any global city, speed tiers for varying latency needs, and privacy modes that delete request logs immediately for compliance-sensitive use cases. The company also provides legal liability protection through its US Legal Shield service.
Business Model
SerpApi operates as a B2B SaaS platform with usage-based pricing tied to search volume rather than seat count. Customers purchase monthly or annual subscriptions that include predetermined search quotas, with additional charges applied for exceeding these limits.
About 40% of SerpApi's revenue comes from AI startups (including OpenAI, Cursor, Perplexity, Meta) training models or serving customer queries with live information, ~40% comes from SEO & marketing companies, and ~20% from other use cases like banks doing customer background checks.
Plans range from a free tier offering 250 searches per month to enterprise packages starting at $3,750 per month for 100,000 searches. High-volume customers can access plans supporting up to 54 million searches per month, with overage pricing set at $2.75 per 1,000 additional searches.
The company's cost structure is built around maintaining the technical infrastructure required to scrape search engines at scale. This includes operating distributed proxy networks, solving CAPTCHAs, and running headless browsers across multiple global locations to minimize detection and blocking by search engines.
SerpApi differentiates itself by managing the legal and technical complexities of web scraping, enabling customers to focus on their core applications instead of developing scraping infrastructure. Through its Legal Shield offering, the company assumes legal liability for scraping activities, mitigating compliance risks for enterprise customers.
Competition
Proxy-first providers
Bright Data and Oxylabs combine residential proxy networks with SERP APIs, positioning themselves as broad data infrastructure providers. These companies utilize their proxy scale to offer competitive per-search pricing of approximately $0.50-$0.75 per 1,000 results, alongside additional services such as general web scraping and data collection.
Their integrated model appeals to enterprise customers seeking single-vendor solutions for diverse data requirements. However, their emphasis on proxy infrastructure may constrain their ability to specialize in search result parsing and the detailed handling of varying search engine formats.
Specialized SERP providers
DataForSEO, Serper.dev, and ValueSERP primarily compete on price and simplicity, offering pay-as-you-go models with rates starting at $0.30 per 1,000 queries. These providers concentrate on core Google search functionality, delivering streamlined APIs tailored for high-volume, cost-sensitive use cases.
Serper.dev has gained adoption among AI developers by focusing on Google-only coverage, offering fast response times and minimal JSON payloads. These specialized competitors exert pricing pressure on SerpApi while targeting price-sensitive market segments.
Search engine APIs
Microsoft Bing provides official API access to its search index, offering a compliant alternative to scraping for developers willing to work within Bing's smaller market share. Google does not provide comparable access to its search data, creating an uneven competitive environment.
The possibility of Google introducing its own search API or facing regulatory mandates to enable data sharing presents both risks and opportunities for third-party providers like SerpApi.
TAM Expansion
AI and automation platforms
The growth of AI applications is driving increased demand for real-time search data to support conversational interfaces, retrieval-augmented generation systems, and autonomous agents. SerpApi has acquired AI customers and can further penetrate this segment as more companies develop AI-powered products that rely on up-to-date information.
Integration with no-code platforms such as n8n and workflow automation tools broadens SerpApi's accessibility to non-technical users seeking to incorporate search data into business processes. This expands the customer base beyond traditional developer-focused users.
Vertical search engines
SerpApi can extend its offerings to specialized search platforms in sectors such as e-commerce, social media, job boards, and industry-specific databases. Developing APIs for platforms like TikTok, Instagram, MercadoLibre, and professional networks would utilize existing technical infrastructure while addressing new use cases.
This vertical expansion enables SerpApi to meet the needs of customers requiring specialized data, differentiating its services from competitors that primarily target general web search engines.
Geographic and regulatory markets
Expanding into regions with prominent local search engines offers opportunities for growth. Supporting search engines specific to certain countries or regions can address local market demand and secure government contracts that require domestic data sources.
Privacy-focused features, including ZeroTrace Mode, align SerpApi with the requirements of regulated industries such as healthcare, finance, and government sectors, where strict data handling compliance is essential.
Risks
Regulatory intervention: Antitrust actions against Google could require the company to offer official search APIs, which may reduce or eliminate demand for scraping services such as SerpApi. Increased regulatory scrutiny could also result in stricter enforcement of terms of service violations, raising the legal risks associated with scraping for customers.
Platform countermeasures: Search engines are advancing anti-scraping technologies, including enhanced bot detection, mandatory JavaScript execution, and IP-based blocking. These measures increase SerpApi's operational expenses and may affect service reliability, potentially prompting customers to explore alternative data sources.
Customer concentration: Reliance on a limited number of large AI customers creates revenue concentration risk. For example, if major clients like OpenAI develop proprietary search capabilities or transition to other data providers, SerpApi could experience substantial revenue declines that may be challenging to offset in the short term.
News
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