← All rankingsSearch API comparison · 2026

Firecrawl vs Serper: which search API for your agent?

Compared on the same 170-query benchmark (judge κ=0.78). On list price, Firecrawl is ~1.2× cheaper.

Firecrawl
Cost / 1k (list)$0.85
Quality86% (indicative)
Strong classesacademic, news
Serper
Cost / 1k (list)$1.00
Quality81% (indicative)

Pick Firecrawl if… pick Serper if… or route both

Pick Firecrawl when your queries are page content and scraping. Pick Serper when your queries are cheap web and news links. On plain web/news lookups, a cheaper engine usually matches both — so don't hard-code one.

Don't pick one — route to the cheapest that clears your bar.

GroundRoute sends each query to the best-value engine and caches the result. You keep half of what the cache saves you, never more than going direct.