Google Programmable Search

license

Proprietary(API-only)

source

closed(no index or serving code published)

managed

cloud SaaS with API keys, 100 free queries a day, then metered per 1,000

Google's index behind an API key. Nothing of the index or the serving path is published.

• https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview recorded 2026-09-16

  "The Custom Search JSON API allows programmatic retrieval of web and image search results from a Programmable Search Engine. Results are returned in JSON format and the API follows the OpenSearch 1.1 Specification." A hosted Google API requiring an API key and a configured engine; no self-hosting or source.

Google publishes no query, customer or developer count for the Custom Search JSON API, and its client libraries are general-purpose Google API clients shared across hundreds of APIs, so their download counts would not measure this one. With no other countable artifact to use as a proxy, the product is left unscored rather than assigned a level inferred from a number that measures something else.

• https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview recorded 2026-09-16

  The vendor's own pricing and product documentation, carrying rates and limits and no request, customer or developer count - which is why no level is recorded.

The API returns search results and nothing behind them, with no extraction step and no composed answer, which puts it level with Serper, which resells the same index in the same shape. Whether the engine is scoped to specific sites or to the whole web doesn't change this, since that affects coverage rather than what the API gives back.

• https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview recorded 2026-09-16

  "The Custom Search JSON API allows programmatic retrieval of web and image search results from a Programmable Search Engine." The reference documents web and image result objects; no content extraction and no answer composition appear anywhere in the JSON API overview.