What should I migrate to now that Google's Custom Search JSON API is retiring?

Migrate to a SERP API if you used Google's Custom Search JSON API to search the open web. DataForSEO, cloro and SerpApi each return the live Google results page as JSON, and Brave Search API returns results from an independent index. If you searched your own site or a fixed list of up to 50 domains, migrate to Vertex AI Search or Agent Search, which are the two products Google recommends.

The deadline is January 1, 2027. Google's documentation states that the API is closed to new customers and that existing customers have until that date to move. Both of Google's replacements are site-restricted, so neither one searches the open web.

• Site search: follow Google's migration guide to Agent Search.
• Open-web search: move to a SERP API. The request changes in four places: the endpoint, the authentication, the query parameter and the results array.
• Price: Custom Search charges $5 per 1,000 queries. At ten results, DataForSEO Live lists $2.00 per 1,000 and cloro's Hobby plan works out to $1.20 per 1,000.

What is the deadline for the Custom Search JSON API?

The Custom Search JSON API stops being available to existing customers on January 1, 2027. It is already closed to new customers. Until the deadline, the published terms apply: 100 free queries a day, $5 per 1,000 queries above that, and a limit of 10,000 queries a day.

The change also covers Programmable Search Engine. According to Brave's summary of the announcement, each engine created since January 20, 2026 must use the "Sites to search" setting, which has a limit of 50 domains. An existing engine set to "Search the entire web" keeps that setting until January 1, 2027.

A new API key fails today. A developer reported on r/googlecloud in January 2026 that a new key returned 403 Forbidden, although the engine ID worked in the console.

What does Google recommend as a replacement?

Google names two products, and both are site-restricted.

• The API overview recommends Vertex AI Search for search across up to 50 domains. For anything larger it refers you to a full web search solution, and you must contact Google to get it.
• The migration guide recommends Agent Search, which it describes as Google-quality site-restricted search. You deploy it as a widget or through an API.

The migration guide describes these steps:

1. Enable Agent Search in the Google Cloud Console.
2. Create an app configured for site search with AI mode.
3. Turn on Enterprise edition features. The guide makes them mandatory for website search.
4. Create a data store and populate it with website content.
5. Specify the URL patterns to index.

Authentication changes too. Custom Search used an API key. Agent Search primarily expects OAuth 2.0, and its searchLite method still accepts an API key. The guide also notes that summaries and domain verification can carry additional indexing costs.

Google plans a paid open-web service for large customers. An email from Google's Programmable Search Engine team, posted on Hacker News, describes an enterprise Web Search Service at $15 per 1,000 requests with a minimum monthly fee of $30,000. The email says more details are due later in 2026. That minimum equals 2,000,000 requests a month.

Which replacement fits your workload?

What you used Custom Search for	Migrate to	Reason
Search on your own site, or on a fixed list of up to 50 domains	Vertex AI Search or Agent Search	Google built both for site-restricted search
Google results from the open web, billed pay as you go	DataForSEO (Live)	$2.00 per 1,000 queries with no monthly minimum
Google results with the AI Overview in the same call	cloro	The AI Overview and its cited sources are in the response
Google plus other engines	SerpApi	It covers more than 80 engines, with Bing, Baidu and Yandex among them
Bing results	SerpApi or DataForSEO	Both return Bing results directly
A non-Google index	Brave Search API	It runs an independent index
Context for an LLM agent, where rank position is not needed	A retrieval API such as Tavily or Exa	These return relevance-ranked content and not the Google results page

Two limits apply to cloro. Its plans are monthly, so a workload with low or irregular volume can cost less on a pay-as-you-go provider. It does not return Bing results.

A SERP API has no cx parameter and no site restriction. If the site restriction was the reason you used Custom Search, the first row is your case.

What does each open-web replacement cost per 1,000 queries?

Each rate is for 1,000 queries at ten results, which is the shape Custom Search returned. Each rate is the vendor's published real-time list price.

Option	Rate per 1,000 queries	Index	AI Overview
Custom Search JSON API (until 2027)	$5.00, with a limit of 10,000 a day	Programmable Search Engine	No
DataForSEO (Live)	$2.00, or $4.00 with AI Overview	Google	Yes, behind a flag
cloro (Hobby plan)	$1.20, or $2.00 with AI Overview	Google	Yes
SerpApi (Big Data plan)	$9.17	Google plus more than 80 engines	Yes
Brave Search API	$5.00	Independent index	No
ScraperAPI	About $12.00 through its structured Google endpoint	Google	No
Google Web Search Service (planned)	$15.00, with a $30,000 monthly minimum	Google	Not stated

The plan sets the rate on the two subscription vendors.

• A cloro Google call costs 3 credits, or 5 credits with the AI Overview. These are the prices of an async request. A synchronous request to /v1/monitor/google adds 2 credits.
• The Hobby plan is $100 a month for 250,000 credits. The two calls cost $1.20 and $2.00 per 1,000.
• The Growth plan is $500 a month for 1,350,000 credits. The same calls cost $1.11 and $1.85 per 1,000.
• The Lite plan is $30 a month for 37,500 credits. The same calls cost $2.40 and $4.00 per 1,000.
• SerpApi's Big Data plan is $275 a month for 30,000 searches.

The daily limit also goes away. Custom Search stops at 10,000 queries a day at any price, and the per-call vendors have no equivalent limit.

The results page has changed since most Custom Search integrations were written. In cloro's SERP feature census, we scored 65,945 results and found an AI Overview on 87.2% of US results and People Also Ask on 90.6%. Custom Search returned neither block. A port that keeps only the ten organic links omits both.

How do Custom Search JSON fields map to a SERP API response?

The Custom Search request and response:

GET https://www.googleapis.com/customsearch/v1
  ?key=<key>&cx=<engine id>&q=serp+api
  Results: items[] → { title, link, snippet, displayLink }

The same query on a SERP API, with cloro's Google endpoint as the worked example:

POST https://api.cloro.dev/v1/monitor/google
  Authorization: Bearer <key>
  { "query": "serp api", "country": "US",
    "include": { "aioverview": { "markdown": true } } }
  Results: result.organicResults[] → { position, title, link, snippet, displayedLink }

Custom Search	SERP API (worked example)
q	query
key query parameter	Authorization: Bearer header
cx (search engine ID)	Not needed. There is no engine to configure.
items[]	result.organicResults[]
title	title
link	link
snippet	snippet
displayLink	displayedLink
No equivalent	position
No equivalent	result.aioverview, with cited sources

Three of the four result fields keep their names. Other vendors use different paths, so check the array name in the vendor's documentation before you write the parser.

How do you migrate from Custom Search to a SERP API?

Steps 3 to 8 use the field names from the worked example above.

1. Find out which half of Custom Search you used. If your engine was restricted to your own sites, follow Google's migration guide and stop here.
2. Select a vendor from the workload table.
3. Replace the GET https://www.googleapis.com/customsearch/v1 request with a POST to the vendor's endpoint.
4. Move the API key from the key query parameter to the Authorization: Bearer header.
5. Remove the cx parameter.
6. Rename q to query and send it in the JSON body.
7. Read the results from result.organicResults[] and not from items[].
8. Rename displayLink to displayedLink in your parser. Keep title, link and snippet as they are.
9. Decide whether to store position and result.aioverview. Custom Search returned neither.
10. Send a real query set to the new API on its free tier. The free tier in the worked example is 500 credits a month, and SerpApi's is 250 searches a month.
11. Compare the new results with your current Custom Search results for the same queries.
12. Run both APIs in parallel for one month before January 1, 2027.

Should you wait for a first-party replacement from Google?

No like-for-like replacement arrived the last time a first-party search API was retired. Microsoft retired the Bing Search API v7 on August 11, 2025, and the endpoints now return HTTP 410 Gone. The official replacement was Grounding with Bing Search in Azure AI Agents, which is an agent product and not a SERP API. Teams that waited for a like-for-like successor then migrated under time pressure.

Google has given more notice. The first-party path again leads to a product with a different shape: site search for most customers, and a $30,000 monthly minimum for the open web.

How these figures were collected

The dates, limits and migration steps come from Google's Custom Search JSON API overview and Google's migration guide, as read on September 2, 2026. The Programmable Search Engine change is from Brave's summary. The Web Search Service price is from an email posted on Hacker News and Google has not published it on a pricing page. Each vendor rate is that vendor's published list price for its real-time mode, and prices in this category change often.

This guide is published by cloro, which is one of the providers in it. Its own figures are self-reported. The census figures come from 65,945 results that we scored.

The full guide

The full shutdown guide with the cost chart is here: Google Custom Search API shutdown: what to use instead. The comparison of 9 SERP APIs at depth 10 and depth 100 is here: Best SERP APIs 2026. The Bing retirement is covered here: Bing Search API key in 2026.