Google Custom Search

The Google Custom Search JSON API allows programmatic searches over a website or collection of websites. It returns metadata about the search performed, metadata about the search engine used, and the search results including web pages and images.

Google Custom Search publishes 1 API contract indexed on the APIs.io network: Custom Search API. Tagged areas include Custom Search, Google, Image Search, Search, and Web Search.

The Google Custom Search catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Google Custom Search’s developer surface includes authentication, developer portal, getting-started guide, documentation, pricing, support, and 13 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

51.1/100 developing ▬ flat Agent 22/100 agent aware saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreemiumSelf serve⚡ Free to try

1 published contract

Custom Search Google Image Search Search Web Search

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 51.1/100 · developing

Contract Quality 12.0 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 8.8 / 17

Access Clarity 10.3 / 17

Operational Transparency 3.8 / 11

Contract Governance 1.0 / 10

Discoverability 5.6 / 9

Regulatory Posture 4.6 / 15

Agent readiness — 22/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 6 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 9 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 4 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 0 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics does not apply to this provider. The published contracts declare no write operations, and a read-only API cannot create-or-update. The facet is excluded from this provider's denominator entirely — not scored zero. A reference or data API is not deficient for being unable to upsert.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes
A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0
Request/Response Examples +7 pts — share of operations carrying request/response examples; else an Examples / Code Samples link
Registration Without a Human +6 pts — a `registration_endpoint` in the served RFC 8414 / OIDC discovery document
Delegated User Identity +6 pts — a served discovery document listing authorization_code in grant_types_supported (served), else an oauth2 authorizationCode flow or openIdConnect declared in an OpenAPI (documented)

7 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Contract Quality scores 56.3 — up to +10.9 composite points
Contract Governance scores 9.8 — up to +10.8 composite points
Developer Ergonomics scores 51.9 — up to +9.6 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/google-custom-search/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/google-custom-search to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Standards implemented 1

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

OpenAPI

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

APIs 1

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Google Custom Search Custom Search API

The Custom Search API from Google Custom Search — 2 operation(s) for custom search.

Postman Collections 1

Ready-to-run Postman collections for exercising this provider's APIs.

Google Custom Search JSON Customsearch API

POSTMAN

Open Collections 2

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

Google Custom Search JSON Customsearch API

OPEN COLLECTION

Google Custom Search JSON API

OPEN COLLECTION

Google Custom Search API pricing

Prices published by Google Custom Search, read 2026-10-28 from developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview#pricing.

Plan	Price
Free	100 search queries per day for free Includes: 100 search queries per day
Additional requests	$5 per 1000 queries

Plan details, limits and sources →

Rate limits

Free Tier Default: 10 requests per minute
Free Tier Monthly Quota: 1000 requests per month
Professional Tier Default: 100 requests per minute

Compiled by API Evangelist, not yet checked against Google Custom Search's documentation. All 5 limits →

Billed by: queries per day · FinOps profile →

Pricing Plans 2

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Google Custom Search Plans Pricing

2 plans

PLANS

Google Custom Search Price Estimates

0 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Google Custom Search Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

Service Levels 1

Uptime the provider promises or reports, as SLA4OAI. Read from its own pages; APIs.io runs no monitors.

Google Custom Search

SLA

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Google Custom Search Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

context Context

14 classes · 0 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Google Custom Search — jsonschema rules

5 rules · 3 warnings 2 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 1

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

Google Custom Search Result

14 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Security Posture 3

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Google Custom Search Authentication

apiKey · 1 scheme

SECURITY

Google Custom Search Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Google Custom Search Vulnerability Disclosure

security.txt · contact published

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Google Custom Search Agentic Access

2 operations

2 operations · 0 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Get Started 2

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

Portal

Portal

GettingStarted

GettingStarted

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Design & Contract 1

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

JSONLD

JSONLD

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

PostmanWorkspace

PostmanWorkspace

Access & Security 4

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

VulnerabilityDisclosure

VulnerabilityDisclosure

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Authentication

Authentication

Authentication

Authentication

Operate 3

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

RateLimits

StatusPage

StatusPage

Support

Support

Commercial 5

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

FinOps

Pricing

TermsOfService

PrivacyPolicy

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Source (apis.yml)

aid: google-custom-search
name: Google Custom Search
description: The Google Custom Search JSON API allows programmatic searches over a website or collection of websites. It returns
  metadata about the search performed, metadata about the search engine used, and the search results including web pages and
  images.
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: true
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: high
  source:
  - openapi
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: self-serve
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: false
  gated: none
  gated_source:
  - onboarding
  label: Freemium · Self-serve signup
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  - authentication
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/google-custom-search.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/google-custom-search/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-03-13'
modified: '2026-05-19'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
type: Index
tags:
- Custom Search
- Google
- Image Search
- Search
- Web Search
apis:
- aid: google-custom-search:google-custom-search-custom-search-api
  name: Google Custom Search Custom Search API
  description: The Custom Search API from Google Custom Search — 2 operation(s) for custom search.
  humanURL: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview
  baseURL: https://customsearch.googleapis.com
  tags:
  - Custom Search
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/google-custom-search-custom-search-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/reference/rest
  - type: Authentication
    url: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/introduction
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/SearchResult.json
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/google-custom-search-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/google-custom-search-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/google-custom-search-finops.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://www.google.com/
- type: PostmanWorkspace
  url: https://www.postman.com/kinlaneapi/google-custom-search/overview
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/google-custom-search-agentic-access.yml
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
  url: security/google-custom-search-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/google-custom-search-domain-security.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/google-custom-search-authentication.yml
- type: Portal
  url: https://developers.google.com/custom-search
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview
- type: Documentation
  url: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview
- type: Authentication
  url: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/introduction
- type: Pricing
  url: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview#pricing
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://developers.google.com/terms
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://policies.google.com/privacy
- type: StatusPage
  url: https://status.cloud.google.com/
- type: Support
  url: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview#support
- type: JSONLD
  url: json-ld/context.jsonld
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
x-parent: google
x-relationship: product

Google Custom Search API — frequently asked questions

Does Google Custom Search have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 1 API from Google Custom Search, including Google Custom Search Custom Search API.

Is there an OpenAPI specification for the Google Custom Search API?

Yes. APIs.io indexes 1 OpenAPI specification for Google Custom Search, each linked for download from this page.

How do I authenticate with the Google Custom Search API?

Google Custom Search uses bearer-token authentication (apiKey · 1 scheme). The details are profiled on APIs.io as Google Custom Search Authentication.

How much does the Google Custom Search API cost?

Google Custom Search publishes its prices; its Free plan is 100 search queries per day for free as of 2026-10-28. APIs.io lists 2 pricing plans for Google Custom Search, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the Google Custom Search API ready for AI agents?

Google Custom Search has a Kin Score of 51.1 out of 100 (developing) and an Agent Readiness score of 21.8 (agent-aware), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

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