I got tired of paying $1,200/mo for SERP data, so I built a $1/mo alternative.

If you've ever tried building an SEO tool, a rank tracker, or an AI workflow, you know that scraping search engines without getting blocked is a nightmare. The incumbent APIs out there (like SerpApi and DataForSEO) solve this, but their pricing models act like a tax on indie developers.

I was burning through API credits just trying to test my MVPs. So, I built Serpent API.

My goal was simple: provide the exact same deep JSON data, but strip out the enterprise bloat.

• The Pricing: It starts at $0.03 per 10,000 pages on our Scale tier.

• The DX: No SDKs, no weird auth dances. Just one simple cURL request that returns clean JSON in ~1.8 seconds.

• The Unfair Advantage: We are the first SERP API to offer AI Ranking as a first-class endpoint. You can track where your brand is cited inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude in a single API call.

I put together a few slides showing exactly how you can use this to build a ChatGPT brand tracker, an AI Overview monitor, or a content gap finder in under 50 lines of Python for about $1 a month.

I’d love for the IH community to tear down the API. I’ve set up a free tier (10 searches, no credit card) so you can test the latency and JSON shape yourself: https://apiserpent.com/

Let me know what endpoints I should build next!