Make vs Serper
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
Still shortlisting? Browse the best in GTM Engineering for every option we track, with award winners called out.
The short answer
Both sides assessedMake compared with Serper
A pairing rather than a contest: Serper is a data source, Make is the engine that calls it. Make's HTTP module drives Serper's search API cleanly (one POST per query, one operation per call), and the combination gives no-code builders programmatic Google results inside visual scenarios, the discovery step of the DIY enrichment stack without touching code.
Serper compared with Make
A pairing rather than a contest: Serper is a data source, Make is the engine that calls it. Make's HTTP module drives Serper's search API cleanly (one POST per query, one operation per call), and the combination gives no-code builders programmatic Google results inside visual scenarios, the discovery step of the DIY enrichment stack without touching code.
Choose Make if
Visually-minded builders and cost-conscious teams who need real workflow logic, branching, iteration, error handling, without writing code, especially agencies and SMBs whose per-month automation budget is closer to $20 than $200.
Choose Serper if
Builders who need programmatic Google results: DIY prospecting pipelines finding people and companies, AI agents that must search the live web, SEO tooling checking ranks at scale, and any workflow where 'what does Google say' is a step, priced casually enough to start free and pay only for volume.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Make | Serper |
|---|---|---|
| Category | GTM Engineering | GTM Engineering |
| Starting price | $9/mo (Core, 10,000 operations, annual billing) (free plan available) | Free for the first 2,500 queries; credit packs from $50 (about $1 per 1,000 queries) (free trial) |
| Pricing model | Freemium with operations-based metering: every module execution consumes one operation from a monthly allowance. Tiers scale the allowance, minimum scheduling interval, and team features; operations can be topped up, and unused allowance policies vary by tier. Prices quoted for annual billing; monthly billing runs higher. | Prepaid pay-as-you-go credits: one credit per query across endpoints, purchased in packs with per-credit price falling at larger volumes. No subscription, no seats, no platform fee; 2,500 free credits on signup with no card required. Credits carry a validity window (published as six months on standard packs). |
| Free plan | 1,000 operations/month, two active scenarios, 15-minute minimum interval | No |
| Free trial | Free plan serves as the trial; paid features preview via plan upgrades | 2,500 free credits on signup, no card required |
| Best for | Visually-minded builders and cost-conscious teams who need real workflow logic, branching, iteration, error handling, without writing code, especially agencies and SMBs whose per-month automation budget is closer to $20 than $200. | Builders who need programmatic Google results: DIY prospecting pipelines finding people and companies, AI agents that must search the live web, SEO tooling checking ranks at scale, and any workflow where 'what does Google say' is a step, priced casually enough to start free and pay only for volume. |
| Setup time | Under an hour to a first live scenario for anyone who has used any automation tool; the template library shortcuts common patterns. Complex scenarios with error handling are a day of iterative building, made faster by per-module test runs. | Minutes: sign up, copy the key, test in the playground, paste a working snippet into an n8n HTTP node or script. There is nothing else to configure. |
| Learning curve | Moderate: the canvas and mapping panel are intuitive within hours, while iterators, aggregators, and error-handler semantics reward a deliberate afternoon with the docs. Sits clearly between Zapier's near-zero curve and n8n's technical one. | Trivial for anyone who has called an API; the real skill is Google's query language itself, site: patterns, quoting, and exclusions, which transfers directly from power searching. |
| Platforms | Web app, REST API, Developer platform (custom apps) | REST API, Web dashboard and playground |
| Compliance | SOC 2, GDPR, ISO 27001 | GDPR (data-processing terms published) |
| Founded | 2016 | 2023 |
| Headquarters | Prague, Czech Republic | Not disclosed (remote) |
| Ownership | Subsidiary of Celonis (acquired 2020) | Bootstrapped, independent |
Strengths and limitations
Make
Strengths
- The best power-per-dollar in mainstream automation: full logic primitives on a $9 tier, and a genuinely usable free plan.
- The visual canvas makes complex flows legible; routers, iterators, aggregators, and error handlers are native drag-and-drop, not workarounds.
- Operations pricing is transparent while you build: the editor shows what each run costs, making optimization a visible activity.
- Deep per-app modules: integrations typically expose many actions and searches, not token connectors.
Limitations
- Per-operation metering still bills every step, so Make loses the long-pipeline economics contest to n8n's per-execution model at scale.
- The ~2,000-app catalog covers the mainstream but concedes the long tail; niche-tool buyers routinely end up on Zapier anyway.
- The canvas intimidates true beginners relative to Zapier's guided linear editor, and error-handler semantics take study to use well.
- No self-hosted option; EU region processing exists but the platform is cloud-only.
Serper
Strengths
- Pay-as-you-go with 2,500 free queries and no subscription; the lowest-commitment tool in the entire GTM stack.
- Fast (one to two seconds) and structured, which is exactly what agent loops and per-row pipeline steps require.
- Full Google operator pass-through makes the LinkedIn people-finding pattern and every power-search idiom programmable.
- Breadth of endpoints (news, places, images, scholar, patents, autocomplete) turns many one-off research chores into API calls.
Limitations
- No data of its own: no contacts, no emails, no firmographics, Serper ends where the results page ends.
- Dependent on Google's results and subject to changes in how Google structures and gates them; the category's ground truth can shift under it.
- SERP-data licensing sits in an industry-wide gray zone; compliance-sensitive buyers must make their own assessment, as with every provider in this space.
- A lean company with minimal public enterprise apparatus: no published SLAs, thin procurement collateral, support by email.
Pricing compared
Make
Freemium with operations-based metering: every module execution consumes one operation from a monthly allowance. Tiers scale the allowance, minimum scheduling interval, and team features; operations can be topped up, and unused allowance policies vary by tier. Prices quoted for annual billing; monthly billing runs higher.
- Free$0
- CoreFrom $9
- ProFrom $16
- TeamsFrom $29
- EnterpriseCustom
Make's claim to Best Value is straightforward arithmetic plus real capability: routers, iterators, and error handlers, the features that gate 'serious' automation elsewhere, are included from the free tier up, and the per-operation price at entry undercuts every comparable rival. For most SMB workloads (moderate volume, moderately complex scenarios) it delivers 90% of what either neighbor offers at clearly the lowest bill. The value case weakens at the two edges: long-tail app coverage (Zapier's game) and very long high-volume pipelines, where per-execution n8n beats any per-step meter, Make's included.
Serper
Prepaid pay-as-you-go credits: one credit per query across endpoints, purchased in packs with per-credit price falling at larger volumes. No subscription, no seats, no platform fee; 2,500 free credits on signup with no card required. Credits carry a validity window (published as six months on standard packs).
- Free credits$0
- Starter pack$50
- Volume packsFalling per-credit rates
At roughly a tenth of a cent per search, Serper prices the discovery step of a pipeline into irrelevance: the search cost of qualifying a thousand leads is about a dollar, before which 2,500 free credits mean most small teams' first month costs zero. Against SERP-API competitors it competes aggressively on price and speed; against not using a search API at all, it replaces either brittle scraping or a human's copy-paste hours. The value boundary is scope: it finds and reads Google for you, and every downstream step, choosing, enriching, verifying, is another tool's spend.
Editorial verdict on each
Make
Best ValueMake is the category's honest bargain: the logic primitives that make automation genuinely programmatic, branching, iteration, aggregation, error handling, delivered visually, included at every tier, and priced beneath everyone. For the typical SMB workload it does 90% of what either neighbor does at clearly the lowest bill, with an EU-residency option nobody else offers self-serve. Its concessions are the catalog's long tail (Zapier's) and long-pipeline unit economics plus AI-agent depth (n8n's), which mark the two exits power users eventually take. Between those edges sits most of the market, and for it, Make is the value pick without much argument.
Read the full Make profileSerper
Serper does one thing, turns Google into a function call, and does it with exactly the properties the job needs: speed, clean JSON, operator pass-through, and pricing so light it rounds out of most budgets. That makes it the discovery primitive of the DIY prospecting stack and the default search tool of the agent ecosystem, with 2,500 free queries lowering the cost of trying it to zero. It is deliberately not a data vendor: no contacts, no enrichment, no enterprise apparatus, and its ground truth belongs to Google, whose changes it inherits. As the first step of a waterfall that hands off to a model for judgment and an enrichment tool for contact data, it is close to unimprovable for the price.
Read the full Serper profileMake profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Serper last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.
The best in GTM Engineering
17 trackedGTM engineering tools are the build-it-yourself layer of the go-to-market stack: the workflow automation engines and search APIs that small teams wire into custom prospecting, enrichment, and reporting pipelines instead of buying another point solution.
Roughly eight thousand app connectors and fifteen years of reliability make it the assumed answer whenever two tools need to talk; the catalog is the moat and the verb.
Routers, iterators, and error handlers on a $9 tier: the logic features rivals gate behind higher plans, at the category's lowest per-operation price.
Per-execution pricing, native AI agent nodes, and a free self-hosted edition made it the engine of the DIY enrichment stack, and a reported $2.5B valuation says the market noticed.
Spun out in 2024 to turn any site into LLM ready markdown, Firecrawl added cached scraping, an MCP server, and research indexes built for AI agents.
A point and click recorder produces a working extraction robot in ten to twenty minutes with no code anywhere, backed by 250 plus prebuilt robots.
Frequently asked questions
6 questionsWhat is the difference between Make and Serper?
A pairing rather than a contest: Serper is a data source, Make is the engine that calls it. Make's HTTP module drives Serper's search API cleanly (one POST per query, one operation per call), and the combination gives no-code builders programmatic Google results inside visual scenarios, the discovery step of the DIY enrichment stack without touching code.
Is Make or Serper cheaper?
Make starts at $9/mo (Core, 10,000 operations, annual billing) (free plan available). Serper starts at Free for the first 2,500 queries; credit packs from $50 (about $1 per 1,000 queries) (free trial). The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole cost. Make pricing model: Freemium with operations-based metering: every module execution consumes one operation from a monthly allowance. Serper pricing model: Prepaid pay-as-you-go credits: one credit per query across endpoints, purchased in packs with per-credit price falling at larger volumes. No subscription, no seats, no platform fee; 2,500 free credits on signup with no card required.
Does Make or Serper have a free plan?
Make has a free plan. 1,000 operations/month, two active scenarios, 15-minute minimum interval. Trial terms: Free plan serves as the trial; paid features preview via plan upgrades. Serper has no free plan. Trial terms: 2,500 free credits on signup, no card required.
Who should choose Make?
Visually-minded builders and cost-conscious teams who need real workflow logic, branching, iteration, error handling, without writing code, especially agencies and SMBs whose per-month automation budget is closer to $20 than $200.
Who should choose Serper?
Builders who need programmatic Google results: DIY prospecting pipelines finding people and companies, AI agents that must search the live web, SEO tooling checking ranks at scale, and any workflow where 'what does Google say' is a step, priced casually enough to start free and pay only for volume.
What are the best alternatives to Make and Serper?
SaaSTracker profiles 17 products in GTM Engineering. The Summer 2026 awards in the category went to Zapier (Category Leader), n8n (Momentum), Firecrawl (Innovation). Every profile is compiled from primary sources, so a shortlist can be built from pricing, limitations, and fit rather than from star ratings.
