## TL;DR

Budget Serper credits like a finite resource, because on the free tier they are: 2,500 one-time, no refill.

## Fix

1. Budget Serper credits like a finite resource, because on the free tier they are: 2,500 one-time, no refill.
   Expected: you can confirm this matches your situation.

## When to use

- You are dealing with this situation.
- The symptom matches: Serper free credits are 2,500 one-time with no refresh; zero balance rejects queries.

## When NOT to use

- Unrelated issues with a different cause.
- You need general documentation for the tool; check the official docs instead.

## Compatibility

Reported per the linked source.

## Variant phrasings

### Serper free credits are 2,500 one-time with no refresh; zero balance rejects queries

## Why it happens

GitHub skill notes for Serper (omarganai web-search skill, real usage notes): documents the Serper free tier as 2,500 queries with one-time credits and no monthly refresh, plus a free-tier rate limit around 100 requests per second. Credits are deducted per successful query response, so when the balance hits zero, new queries are rejected outright. Agents that loop a polling search on a free key burn the one-time credits fast and then get hard rejections that look like a broken integration.

## Edge cases

- If your error message differs even slightly, this is probably a different issue; search the exact text.
- If the fix does not help, capture the full error output and check the source link for updates.