SearchAPI pricing on 28 August 2026 starts at $40 per month for 10,000 searches, billed as $4 per 1,000, on the Developer plan. The Enhanced Speed toggle on that same card is $80 and $8 per 1,000. Credits are shared across every engine, so a Google Search scrape and a google_trends Explore call draw from one pool. Only HTTP 200 responses count. The published hourly cap is 20% of the monthly allowance, which is 2,000 successful searches per hour on Developer. SearchAPI is the buy for SERP, flights, maps, and Google Trends geo or related widgets. Trends MCP is the cheaper MCP plus REST path when the job is multi-source trend series and live boards, not a SERP scrape. Public Trends MCP Starter is $19 for 1,000 requests.

What does SearchAPI charge on the public grid?

The live grid at searchapi.io/pricing (accessed 28 August 2026) is eight monthly SKUs. There is no annual toggle on that page. Signup copy promises 100 free requests with no credit card. The priced columns begin at Developer.

PlanMonthly priceSearches$ per 1,000Hourly cap at 20%
Developer$4010,000$42,000
Production$10035,000$37,000
BigData$250100,000$2.5020,000
Scale$500250,000$250,000
Octo 500K$900500,000$1.80100,000
Octo 1M$1,5001,000,000$1.50200,000
Octo 2M$2,8002,000,000$1.40400,000
Octo 5M$5,0005,000,000$11,000,000

Every listed plan prints a 99.9% SLA. Team Management and Legal Protection Guarantee start at Production. BigData adds Medium Throughput. Scale adds High Throughput and Search Analytics. Octo rows add Dedicated Throughput and Priority Support.

Legal Protection is not a marketing extra on Developer. SearchApi's Terms of Service (last updated 11 April 2026) limit the guarantee to active paid subscriptions from Production up, exclude free trials and Developer, and cap payout at 2,000,000 USD aggregate per 12-month period. The same terms credit 100% of the monthly plan price on the next invoice if the 99.9% SLA is missed, on every plan.

Refunds are a full refund within 10 days of subscription if usage stays at or under 25% of allotted searches. Cancel from the dashboard. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the billing cycle. Unused searches in that last cycle are not prorated. Upgrades to a larger search bundle, or to Enhanced Speed on the same plan, bill immediately and convert leftover searches into extra credits.

The hourly math is the part most pricing pages hide in a FAQ. SearchAPI states that an account can use only up to 20% of plan credits each hour. Poll remaining headroom with GET https://www.searchapi.io/api/v1/me and read api_usage.searches_this_hour against api_usage.hourly_rate_limit. That account endpoint is documented separately from search engines.

What does Enhanced Speed add to the bill?

Enhanced Speed is a second Stripe SKU on every card, not a free performance flag. The data-plan-speed-plans-value JSON on the pricing page (28 August 2026) doubles both the monthly price and the per-1,000 rate:

PlanStandardEnhanced Speed
Developer$40 / $4 per 1,000$80 / $8 per 1,000
Production$100 / $3$200 / $6
BigData$250 / $2.50$500 / $5
Scale$500 / $2$1,000 / $4
Octo 500K$900 / $1.80$1,800 / $3.60
Octo 1M$1,500 / $1.50$3,000 / $3
Octo 2M$2,800 / $1.40$5,600 / $2.80
Octo 5M$5,000 / $1$10,000 / $2

The page does not publish a latency multiplier for Enhanced Speed. Do not copy SerpApi's Ludicrous Speed 2.2× / 4.2× p99 figures onto this toggle. Those numbers live on serpapi.com/pricing (accessed the same day) for a different product.

SerpApi's public floor on that fetch is Free 250 searches, then Starter $25 for 1,000, Developer $75 for 5,000, Production $150 for 15,000. Cached SerpApi searches are free. SearchAPI has no cache-is-free line on the pricing FAQ. If a pipeline needs Google organic results plus Trends Explore, run the dollar math on the shared SearchAPI pool rather than assuming a Trends-only rate.

A Google Trends call is one credit when /api/v1/search returns 200. Credits are not ring-fenced for Trends. Mix engine=google_search and engine=google_trends on Developer and the 10,000 cap is the sum of both.

The Explore engine is google_trends. Docs at searchapi.io/docs/google-trends (28 August 2026) require data_type as one of TIMESERIES, GEO_MAP, RELATED_QUERIES, or RELATED_TOPICS. TIMESERIES accepts up to 5 comma-separated queries in q when cat=0. gprop defaults to web search. Other values are images, news, froogle (Shopping), and youtube. Time presets include now 1-H through today 5-y and all (from 2004). Custom ranges use yyyy-mm-dd yyyy-mm-dd. Hourly custom ranges are limited to the previous week. Default timezone offset is 420.

The live board is a different engine: google_trends_trending_now on searchapi.io/docs/google-trends-trending-now-api. Default time is past_24_hours. Other windows are past_4_hours, past_48_hours, and past_7_days. Default geo is the United States country code. Categories on that page include all, autos_and_vehicles, beauty_and_fashion, business_and_finance, entertainment, food_and_drink, games, health, hobbies_and_leisure, jobs_and_education, law_and_government, other, pets_and_animals, politics, science, shopping, sports, technology, travel_and_transportation, and climate. Related articles need a second call: google_trends_trending_now_news with the news_token from the first response. That is two credits for trend-plus-news.

zero_retention=true is marked Enterprise only on both Trends docs. Debugging and support may be limited while it is on.

DataForSEO is the pay-as-you-go contrast, not a SearchAPI SKU. The Google Trends product page on 28 August 2026 still lists Explore Standard Queue at $0.0027 per task (up to 45 minutes) and Live at $0.011 (up to 32 seconds average), with $540 / $2,200 per 1 million keywords on the 200,000 tasks × 5 keywords math, and a $50 minimum payment on the main pricing page. That is a deposit model. SearchAPI is a monthly search bundle.

What does the SearchAPI MCP server actually bill?

Hosted MCP is https://www.searchapi.io/mcp. Integrations docs (28 August 2026) cap an account at 10 MCP integrations. Each tool call counts as one API request against the same monthly searches. Standard API rate limits apply, including the 20% hourly cap.

OAuth is the documented default for Cursor, Claude, VS Code, Codex, and Zed. Token auth uses the X-MCP-Token header, not Authorization (that header is reserved for OAuth) and not a token stuffed into the URL. Cursor OAuth config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "searchapi": {
      "url": "https://www.searchapi.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Cursor token config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "searchapi": {
      "url": "https://www.searchapi.io/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "X-MCP-Token": "YOUR_TOKEN"
      }
    }
  }
}

The MCP page lists tools for Google Flights, Hotels, Amazon, TikTok, YouTube, maps, and other SERP-shaped jobs. Google Trends Explore remains a REST engine (google_trends on /api/v1/search). Do not assume an Explore widget is free inside an MCP bundle. If the assistant calls a SearchAPI tool, that call burns a SearchAPI search credit.

Trends MCP uses a different two-host split, documented on docs.md the same day. Cursor talks to the Bearer host. Claude.ai Connectors talk to the OAuth host. Those URLs are not interchangeable:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "trends-mcp": {
      "url": "https://api.trendsmcp.ai/mcp",
      "transport": "http",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

Three MCP tools: get_trends (REST get_time_series), get_growth, get_top_trends. get_growth defaults percent_growth to ["12M"] and counts one request per source plus keyword no matter how many periods sit in that array. get_top_trends defaults limit 25, max 200, and bills per feed type and per page (limit / offset). Install notes for Cursor live on the Google Trends MCP for Cursor page.

Trends MCP wins the bill when the agent needs keyword growth across Google, TikTok, Reddit, Amazon, Wikipedia, YouTube, and a live board, and does not need a SERP HTML parse, Google Flights, or Maps directions. Public SKUs on pricing.md and the HTML pricing page, both dated 28 August 2026: Free $0 / 100 requests; Starter $19 / 1,000; Pro $49 / 5,000; Business $199 / 25,000. Annual billing saves 20%. Keyword alerts: Pro 50, Business 250.

HTML pricing also markets 35+ data sources on every plan, Free as top 10 trends plus 12 months of history, paid as full history, and a 7-day trial with a card at checkout charged on day 8. The markdown pricing table does not print those Free caps. docs.md lists 15 keyword sources (no python) and 24 live feed names, including TikTok Trending Hashtags by Category. data-sources.md lists the same 15 keyword sources and only 20 live feeds (it omits the four by-Category boards). llms.txt says plus 21 live feeds. The MCP get_growth schema still lists python. The MCP get_top_trends schema lists 23 feeds and omits TikTok Trending Hashtags by Category. Do not flatten those counts. The HTML pricing footer printed 9,399,421 API calls served on this 28 August 2026 fetch.

On cost: 1,000 SearchAPI Developer searches are $40. 1,000 Trends MCP Starter requests are $19, and a get_growth call with ["12M", "3M", "YTD"] is still one request. 10,000 SearchAPI searches are $40 on Developer. Trends MCP has no 10,000-request public SKU; 5,000 Pro requests are $49. SearchAPI stays cheaper per raw HTTP search at Octo rates ($1 per 1,000 on Octo 5M) if the workload is millions of SERP pulls. That is a SERP job. For a Google Trends API pricing comparison that is actually about trend series, compare Explore widgets (SearchAPI / SerpApi / DataForSEO) against Trends MCP's multi-source get_growth and get_top_trends boards, not against Google organic.

SearchAPI still wins geo breakdowns (GEO_MAP with COUNTRY / REGION / DMA / CITY), related topics, related queries, and Trending Now volume estimates by country code. Trends MCP does not sell those Explore widgets. Rank the products by the payload, not by who has an MCP URL.

FAQ

Does SearchAPI charge for failed Google Trends calls?

No. The pricing FAQ (28 August 2026) bills only successful searches with HTTP 200. A 500 or a blocked scrape should not decrement the monthly allowance. Confirm remaining credits on GET /api/v1/me after a burst, because the hourly 20% cap can 429 a run that still has monthly searches left.

Is SearchAPI cheaper than SerpApi at 10,000 searches?

On the public grids fetched 28 August 2026, SearchAPI Developer is $40 for 10,000 searches. SerpApi has no 10,000 row. SerpApi Developer is $75 for 5,000 ($15 per 1,000) and Production is $150 for 15,000 ($10 per 1,000). At 10,000 searches, SearchAPI's $4 per 1,000 beats those two SerpApi rungs. SerpApi Free is 250 searches per month. SearchAPI's signup grant is 100 free requests, not a 250/month column.

Does the SearchAPI MCP server include Google Trends Explore?

The MCP host bills each tool call as one search credit. Google Trends Explore is documented as REST engine=google_trends with required data_type. The MCP integrations page lists travel, shopping, TikTok, and YouTube tools. Treat Explore as a REST engine unless a specific MCP tool card for it is present in the live catalog. A Cursor session that hits SearchAPI for SERP and Trends MCP for get_growth will split the bill across two vendors.

How many SearchAPI MCP integrations can one account create?

Ten. The limits section on the MCP docs states a maximum of 10 MCP integrations per account, standard API rate limits, and one API request per tool call. Creating an 11th integration is not a documented self-serve path. OAuth clients pick which integration to authorize on first connect.

When should a team skip SearchAPI and pay Trends MCP instead?

Skip SearchAPI when the agent never needs a SERP, flight, hotel, or Maps payload, and the work is keyword growth plus live boards across Google, TikTok, Reddit, Amazon, Wikipedia, and YouTube. Trends MCP Starter at $19 / 1,000 undercuts SearchAPI Developer at $40 / 10,000 on a small trend-only quota, and get_growth packs every requested window into one request. Keep SearchAPI when Explore geo, related queries, Trending Now by country code, or a 99.9% SLA with Production legal coverage is the actual requirement.

Sources