Pricing, limits, and integration
The API is not priced separately, it comes with the subscription, and access is on every paid tier: $125/mo Pro, $400/mo Scale and $999/mo Enterprise, each about 20% cheaper billed annually ($100, $320 and $799 a month). Agencies have their own ladder from $250/mo. There is no free plan, and API keys cannot be created on the free tier, so the 14-day trial on Pro or Scale is the only way to exercise the API before paying.
The practical ceiling is not the API, it is your plan's data. Tracked prompts (100 on Pro, 500 on Scale, 1,250 on Enterprise), AI answers analysed a month (9,000, 45,000 and 112,500) and audits (200, 1,000 and 3,000) determine how much there is to read. Data retention matters too, 12 months on Pro against unlimited on Scale and above, so a scripted archive is worth building if you are on the entry plan. Rate limiting, idempotency and error handling are all documented, and the ingest API for AI-bot traffic is separate from the read API, with edge recipes for Vercel, Cloudflare, Netlify, Fastly, Akamai, CloudFront and Google Cloud, plus a Node middleware package.
How much does the Searchable API actually cost?
Searchable publishes an API, but per-tier gating wasn't extracted automatically.
- Most likely scenario: API access is either included in all paid plans, or it's gated to higher tiers and we need to verify on the live docs page.
- Until verified, treat the question "which plan unlocks the API" as open. Don't budget on the assumption it's free with the cheapest paid plan.
API at a glance
Which AI clients can read Searchable data?
Not every AI assistant supports MCP natively. Here's the per-client picture for Searchable specifically.
| Client | Support | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Claude (Desktop/Web) | Via connectors | Added as a connector on Claude.ai (web and mobile) and Claude Desktop; OAuth sign-in, no key pasting. |
| Claude Code | Native MCP | Documented client for the mcp.searchable.com/mcp streamable HTTP server. |
| ChatGPT | Via connectors | Supported through ChatGPT developer-mode connectors. |
| Cursor | Native MCP | Standard MCP config against the same server URL. |
| Windsurf | Native MCP | Listed as supported alongside any other MCP-compatible client. |
Searchable also has an MCP server
If you're wiring Searchable into Claude / Cursor / Codex, the MCP server is usually less code than the REST API.
See Searchable MCP pageWhat you can build with the Searchable API
Three personas, three different shapes of build. Pick the row that matches how you actually ship.
Glue Searchable into your daily workflow
- Pull a digest of ranking changes into your morning Slack
- Trigger a one-off backfill when something looks off
- Pipe data into your own SQLite for ad-hoc queries
Sell Searchable reporting at scale
- White-label Searchable data into client-branded dashboards
- Run scheduled multi-account reports without logging into the Searchable UI
- Cross-reference with the rest of the client's stack (CRM, analytics, ad spend)
Production pipelines for Searchable
- Real-time sync into your warehouse on a cron
- Custom alerts the dashboard's built-in alerting can't express
- Backfill + idempotency handling for Searchable data older than the dashboard exposes
Quickstart template
# Starter template — endpoint paths and SDK package names come from # the Searchable API docs: https://docs.searchable.com/advanced/api-usage curl -X GET "https://api.searchable.com/<your-endpoint>" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \ -H "Accept: application/json" | jq .
Template only. Endpoint paths, exact base URL, and auth header format come from docs.searchable.com/advanced/api-usage.
Limits and gotchas
- No OpenAPI spec — you write typed clients by hand or use a third-party generator on the docs HTML.
- No official SDK detected. Plan on hitting the API directly with your HTTP client of choice.
- Rate limits: always read the docs page before scaling — the published limit is usually lower than the practical one and overages can be expensive.
Agent-readiness verdict
An 8: scoped keys, project binding, idempotency, a documented error reference and a playground add up to an API built by people who expected it to be used in production. The gaps are specific rather than structural. There is no first-party API client SDK (the one Node package is middleware for the traffic ingest pipeline, not an API client), no webhooks, so anything event-driven is a polling loop you own, and API keys need a paid plan, so there is no free tier to prototype against.
One of the widest MCP surfaces in AI search, and it sits on the entry plan rather than behind an enterprise upsell. Searchable's official server at mcp.searchable.com/mcp exposes 52 read-only tools covering visibility (get_visibility_by_prompt, get_visibility_by_topic, get_share_of_voice, get_competitors), sources and citations (search_sources, get_source_domain, get_source_page_content), sentiment history, query fanout, prompts and raw AI answers, site health and page audits, content and opportunities, plus the traffic joins most rivals skip (get_ga4_traffic, get_gsc_performance, get_ai_traffic) and get_shopping_visibility and get_ads. Writes are scope-gated to three low-risk actions (generate_report, trigger_audit, refresh_sitemap). Auth is OAuth 2.1 with PKCE and Dynamic Client Registration, so nothing is pasted into a config file. The REST API at app.searchable.com uses sea_-prefixed Bearer keys with read/write/admin scopes and optional project binding, documented with an interactive playground, idempotency and an error reference, alongside a separate ingest API for AI-bot traffic with edge recipes for Vercel, Cloudflare, Netlify, Fastly, Akamai, CloudFront and GCP. Short of a 10 because there are no webhooks (alerting means polling), no first-party API client SDK, and MCP and API keys both require a paid plan, so there is no free way to prototype.
Searchable API FAQ
Does Searchable have a public API?+
What auth does the Searchable API use?+
Should I use the API or the MCP server for Claude / Cursor / Codex?+
Sources
- Searchable official site: https://www.searchable.com
- API docs: https://docs.searchable.com/advanced/api-usage
- MCP server: https://mcp.searchable.com/mcp
10+ years in digital marketing. I review marketing software for AI-stack fit: real pricing, MCP and API support, and how cleanly each tool drops into an AI agent workflow, cross-checked against verified data and real user feedback.