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Joffy122
Joffy122

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I replaced SerpAPI with a £9.99/month alternative — here's how

#webdev #api #indiehackers #productivity

As an indie hacker, every dollar (or pound) counts. When you are building a side project, a SaaS MVP, or a simple internal tool, you often need access to search engine results. Whether it's for monitoring brand mentions, gathering training data, or building a custom search interface, web search is a fundamental building block.

For a long time, the default choice for developers has been SerpAPI. It is reliable, well-documented, and widely supported. But as my project began to scale, I hit a major roadblock: the pricing.

The Pricing Pain of SerpAPI

SerpAPI's pricing model is structured around search volume. While they offer a free tier, it is extremely limited (only 100 searches per month). Once you move past that, the costs escalate rapidly:

  • Developer Plan: $50/month for 5,000 searches.
  • Production Plan: $130/month for 15,000 searches.

For a bootstrapped project generating $0 in revenue, paying $50 to $130 every single month just to fetch search results is a massive burden. If your app has a spike in traffic or a rogue loop in your development environment, you can burn through your quota in hours and face hefty overage charges.

I needed a solution that was predictable, affordable, and didn't compromise on speed or reliability. I didn't need complex geo-targeting or highly specialized parsing for every obscure search engine feature; I just needed clean, fast, structured web search results.

Discovering the £9.99/month Alternative

After searching for alternatives, I came across the Search API hosted at https://api.joffstrends.co.uk. It offered a flat-rate subscription of just £9.99/month on Gumroad.

Unlike other services that meter every single request and charge you based on complex tiers, this API provided a straightforward, budget-friendly entry point for indie developers. It was exactly what I was looking for: a predictable monthly cost that allowed me to build and test without constantly checking a usage dashboard.

Making the Switch: Code Changes Required

One of my biggest worries when switching APIs is the refactoring overhead. Fortunately, transitioning from SerpAPI to the Search API at api.joffstrends.co.uk was incredibly straightforward.

Here is how my original integration looked with SerpAPI in Node.js:

const SerpApi = require('google-search-results-node');
const search = new SerpApi.GoogleSearch("YOUR_SERPAPI_API_KEY");

const params = {
  q: "indie hackers alternative search api",
  hl: "en",
  gl: "us"
};

search.json(params, (data) => {
  const results = data.organic_results;
  results.forEach(result => {
    console.log(`${result.title} - ${result.link}`);
  });
});
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And here is the refactored code using the new Search API. Because it uses a standard REST interface, I didn't even need an external SDK—just a simple fetch call:

const apiKey = "YOUR_SEARCH_API_KEY";
const query = encodeURIComponent("indie hackers alternative search api");
const url = `https://api.joffstrends.co.uk/search?q=${query}&key=${apiKey}`;

async function getSearchResults() {
  try {
    const response = await fetch(url);
    if (!response.ok) {
      throw new Error(`HTTP error! status: ${response.status}`);
    }
    const data = await response.json();

    // The API returns a clean array of organic results
    const results = data.results; 
    results.forEach(result => {
      console.log(`${result.title} - ${result.url}`);
    });
  } catch (error) {
    console.error("Failed to fetch search results:", error);
  }
}

getSearchResults();
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The code is actually cleaner. I removed a heavy external dependency (google-search-results-node) and replaced it with native fetch calls, which reduces my bundle size and makes deployment simpler.

The Outcome

The results have been fantastic.

  1. Cost Savings: I went from a potential $50+/month bill to a flat £9.99/month. That is an immediate 80% reduction in my search infrastructure costs.
  2. Predictability: I no longer have anxiety about hitting rate limits or incurring unexpected overage charges during testing.
  3. Performance: Response times are fast and reliable, easily meeting the needs of my application.
  4. Simplicity: The JSON payload returned by api.joffstrends.co.uk is clean and easy to parse, without the unnecessary bloat of dozens of metadata fields I wasn't using anyway.

If you are an indie hacker or a developer building a side project, stop overpaying for search infrastructure. Check out the Search API at api.joffstrends.co.uk and see how much you can save.

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