Comparison
Dataswap vs SerpApi: certification and coverage against provenance and analysis
SerpApi is the reference implementation of a SERP API, and it holds certifications we do not. This page is the comparison we would want to read if we were on your side of it.
SerpApi
A mature, broad SERP API: many engines, an audited compliance posture, and a legal shield published as part of every plan.
Dataswap
A narrower data surface with an analysis layer on top, sourced from licensed upstream providers, with EU-only inference and a signed receipt per response.
Side by side, with sources
| Axis | Dataswap | SerpApi |
|---|---|---|
| Engines and platforms | Google organic, news, maps, images, shopping, autocomplete, People-Also-Ask, AI Overview and AI Mode, plus Bing, Amazon, YouTube, Trends, Google business data, Trustpilot and Tripadvisor. | Around twenty-one engines and platforms. Bing, Amazon, YouTube, Google Trends and Tripadvisor are on their list too — so treat those as parity, not as a difference. Beyond them: Baidu, Yandex, Naver, DuckDuckGo, Brave, Yahoo, eBay, Walmart, Yelp, Home Depot, Apple App Store, OpenTable and Google Flights, Hotels, Jobs and Scholar.source |
| Third-party certification | None. Not SOC 2, not ISO 27001 — the provenance receipt is a signed self-attestation, not an audit. | States it is “SOC 2 Type II, SOC 3, and ISO 27001 certified — Independently audited controls for security, availability, and confidentiality”.source |
| Legal posture published with the plans | Licensed sourcing with no anti-bot evasion, a DPA from Starter upward, and a per-response receipt anyone can verify without a key. | Every plan from Free to Big Data lists “U.S. Legal Shield”.source |
| Free tier | Free plan gives you an account and an API key, with no included credits. | A Free plan with 250 searches per month.source |
| Entry paid tier | Starter $49/month for 24,500 credits. 1 credit = $0.002, and a Google organic search is 1 credit. | Starter $25/month for 1,000 searches; Developer $75 for 5,000; Production $150 for 15,000; Big Data $275 for 30,000.source |
| What happens to your request parameters | Responses are never stored. A usage record per call is kept for the life of the account; truncated request arguments and the originating IP are kept for 30 days, then erased. | A “ZeroTrace Mode” is listed on the Free and Enterprise plans, described as “we don’t store your search parameters, files, or data”.source |
| Where inference runs | Synthesis runs on models we host in the EU. Requests are not sent to third-party model vendors, and the receipt records inference: eu-only. | Not found on the pages we checked (4 August 2026) |
| Grounding, schema extraction and answer-engine analysis routes | Grounding packs, JSON Schema extraction with an evidence guardrail, answer-engine share of answer, entity cards, product matching and digital shelf — all on the same key and the same bill. | Not found on the pages we checked (4 August 2026) |
Both sets of prices above are list prices from each vendor’s public pricing page, read on the date at the bottom of this page. They are not directly comparable per unit: their unit is a search on any of their engines, ours is a credit, and our composed endpoints cost several credits per call. Work it out on your own volumes and your own endpoints.
When SerpApi is the better choice
Your policy requires an audited certification
SerpApi publishes SOC 2 Type II, SOC 3 and ISO 27001. We hold none of them. If the questionnaire has a mandatory certification field, we fail it today, and no amount of copy on this page changes that.
You need an engine we do not read
Baidu, Yandex, Naver, eBay, Walmart, Yelp, Home Depot, Apple App Store, Google Flights, Hotels, Scholar and Jobs are on their list and not on ours. For those queries the comparison is not close — we simply do not have the data.
You want to evaluate before you pay anything
They publish 250 free searches a month. On Dataswap credits are prepaid, so a proof of concept starts at the smallest pack. Everything you need to size the work first is open: the full OpenAPI contract, both SDKs, and GET /v1/pricing returns the exact cost of every call before you make it.
You need your search parameters not to be retained at all
Their ZeroTrace Mode is listed on the Free and Enterprise plans. We keep truncated arguments and the originating IP for 30 days on every plan so that calls can be inspected in the dashboard — useful for debugging, and the wrong answer if your requirement is zero retention.
When Dataswap is the better choice
The sourcing question has to be answerable in writing
We buy from licensed upstream providers and do not build anti-bot evasion, CAPTCHA solving or residential proxy rotation. That is a contractual position, which is why each response can carry a signed manifest asserting it, verifiable by someone with no API key.
Your requests must not reach a model vendor
Analysis runs on models we host inside the EU, so no model vendor is added to your sub-processor chain by using the intelligence layer.
You want the analysis, not just the results
Grounding packs, schema extraction with a server-side evidence guardrail, share of answer across engines, product matching and digital shelf are routes on the same key — not a second vendor and a second contract.
You want the price of a call before you make it
GET /v1/pricing returns the quote per operation, whether it is fixed or variable, and what the variation depends on. Composed calls reserve a ceiling and settle on what actually ran.
Questions about this comparison
- Is Dataswap a drop-in replacement for SerpApi?
- No. The request and response shapes are different, and the engine coverage is different — for Baidu, Yandex, Naver, eBay, Walmart, Yelp or Google Flights there is nothing to migrate to. For Google surfaces, Bing, Amazon, YouTube and business data there is, and the reference documents every route.
- Do you publish latency comparisons?
- We publish something better than a benchmark you would have to trust: every response carries a signed provenance receipt with the timing and the processing region, verifiable without an API key. Latency depends on the engine, the depth and the region you ask for, so measure it on your own queries — the contract and both SDKs are public, and GET /v1/pricing gives you the cost per call up front.
- You are not certified. Why should a regulated buyer take you seriously?
- Because the receipt is checkable and a certificate is not the same claim. SOC 2 attests to a control environment; the receipt attests to how one specific payload was obtained and where it was processed — and your reviewer can verify that themselves, per response, without trusting us and without an API key.
- Where did these numbers come from?
- From the vendor’s own public pages, listed at the bottom of this page with the date they were read. Where we could not find something, the table says so rather than guessing.
How we checked
Every claim about SerpApi on this page was read from their own public pages on 4 August 2026. Where we could not find something, the table says so rather than assuming it does not exist. Vendors change their pricing and their positioning; if you find a row that is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
- SerpApi pricing https://serpapi.com/pricing
- SerpApi search API index https://serpapi.com/search-api
- Dataswap pricing https://dataswap.io/#pricing
We publish no latency or quality benchmarks of our own, for this or any comparison, because we have not run a study we would be willing to defend. Measure both on your own queries.
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