Google Autocomplete Scraper — Bulk Suggest API

We do the dirty work so your dataset stays clean. 😈

$1.05 / 1,000 suggestions — Export real Google autocomplete suggestions for hundreds of seeds across many languages and countries in a single run. Optional A–Z alphabet expansion turns every seed into 26 long-tail variants. No SerpApi key. No Google account required.

Google's autocomplete dropdown is the canonical signal of what people are actually typing into the search box. Keyword-research SaaS tools like KeywordTool.io, AnswerThePublic, Ubersuggest, and SE Ranking all wrap the same public Suggest endpoint, mark it up 10–100×, and resell it. This Actor queries the endpoint directly, fans out across seeds × languages × countries, optionally expands each seed alphabetically, and emits one denormalised dataset row per (seed × suggestion × locale) tuple — ready for SEO, PPC, content-gap, or product-research workflows.

🎯 What this scrapes

For every (seed × language × country) combination you submit, this google autocomplete scraper queries Google's Suggest endpoint (suggestqueries.google.com/complete/search) and emits one row per returned suggestion. The default client=chrome mode returns up to 15 suggestions per call plus relevance scores and subtype tags; the lean client=firefox mode returns up to 10 suggestions without relevance scores. Each row carries the seed, the suggestion, its 0-indexed position, the locale used, and an is_expansion flag so alphabet-expanded long-tail suggestions are easy to filter or aggregate.

Field	Type	Description
seed	string	The query string the suggestion was generated for
suggestion	string	One Google autocomplete suggestion
position	integer	0-indexed position in the suggestion list
relevance	integer | null	google:suggestrelevance score (chrome client only)
subtype	string	First google:suggesttype tag (QUERY, NAV, …) or UNKNOWN
language	string	hl parameter used (ISO-639-1)
country	string	gl parameter used (ISO-3166-1 alpha-2)
client	string	chrome or firefox
is_expansion	boolean	True if the seed was produced by alphabet expansion
parent_seed	string | null	Original user seed when is_expansion is true
scraped_at	string	ISO 8601 UTC datetime

🔥 Features

• Bulk seeds — submit up to 500 seed queries in a single run; the Actor fans out across every language × country combination you specify.
• Multi-locale — query the same seed across many languages (hl) and many countries (gl) in one run. The Suggest endpoint serves locale-specific results: "bestes auto" in de-de returns German automotive suggestions; "best laptop" in en-us returns US tech suggestions.
• A–Z alphabet expansion — toggle enableAlphabetExpansion to also query <seed> a, <seed> b, …, <seed> z for every seed. This is the canonical long-tail discovery technique: one seed × 26 letters reveals every common Google query that starts with your seed.
• Two client variants — chrome (default) returns up to 15 suggestions with relevance scores and subtype tags; firefox returns up to 10 suggestions in a leaner payload.
• Denormalised output — every row carries the seed, locale, and provenance fields so a flat CSV is self-contained for SQL / BI / spreadsheet workflows without joins.
• We rotate browser fingerprints — curl-cffi replays a real Chrome TLS+H2 fingerprint so requests look indistinguishable from a real browser, not a Python script.
• We retry with exponential backoff — 408 / 429 / 5xx responses trigger automatic retries (up to 5 attempts, honours Retry-After). You get results; we handle the turbulence.
• We rotate proxies on block — Apify Proxy is wired in; on any block a fresh session ID and fresh exit IP take over automatically.
• Conservative concurrency — 2 in-flight requests per run by default; the Actor backs off gracefully when the target rate-limits and surfaces partial results with a clear status message rather than returning an empty dataset.
• Pydantic v2 input validation — locale codes are normalised to lowercase, length-validated, and rejected up-front if invalid before any network call.

💡 Use cases

• Long-tail SEO keyword discovery — enable alphabet expansion to enumerate every common Google query that starts with your seed; pipe into a search-volume tool to prioritise content briefs.
• AnswerThePublic alternative — get the same autocomplete suggestions direct from Google for a fraction of the cost. 1,000 suggestions = $1.05 here vs $89–199/mo for a SaaS dashboard that wraps the same endpoint.
• PPC negative-keyword mining — pull alphabet-expanded suggestions across the seed for your category, then filter for adjacent products or intents you want to exclude from broad-match campaigns.
• Content gap analysis — query your brand + competitor names across en-us, en-gb, en-au to find geo-specific concerns and product comparisons real users are searching for.
• Multi-market localisation research — query the same product seed across 5–10 locales to see how local users phrase the same intent in their language; informs product copy, landing pages, and marketplace listings.
• Trend monitoring — schedule a recurring run on a fixed seed list and diff the suggestion list day-over-day to detect emerging interest spikes before they hit the SERP.
• AI training-data curation — bulk-export real human search phrasings for fine-tuning intent classifiers or query-understanding models; the suggestions are post-processed real queries, free from PII.
• Free keyword research API replacement — developers who were paying per-call for a keyword research API can replace that spend with a single Apify Actor at $1.05 per 1,000 results.

⚙️ How to use it

1. Open the Actor input form.
2. Enter your Seed queries — one per line (e.g. best laptop, best espresso machine, learn python).
3. Optionally set Language codes and Country codes. Both default to ["en"] / ["us"]. Use 2-letter lowercase codes (ISO-639-1 for languages, ISO-3166-1 alpha-2 for countries). For multi-locale runs, add several to each list.
4. Pick a Suggest client. chrome (default) is recommended — it returns up to 15 suggestions with relevance scores. firefox is leaner (up to 10 suggestions, no scores).
5. Set Max suggestions per seed if you want fewer than the API maximum (default 10, max 15).
6. Toggle Enable A–Z alphabet expansion if you want long-tail discovery — each seed will generate 26 extra queries (<seed> a through <seed> z).
7. Leave Use Apify Proxy off for most runs; enable it for large jobs (>2,000 tuples) if you encounter rate limits — the Actor will use a fresh session and exit IP automatically.
8. Click Start. Results stream into the default dataset and can be exported as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML.

Single-seed example

{
  "seeds": ["best laptop"],
  "languages": ["en"],
  "countries": ["us"],
  "client": "chrome",
  "maxSuggestionsPerSeed": 10,
  "enableAlphabetExpansion": false,
  "useProxy": false
}

Multi-locale + alphabet expansion example

{
  "seeds": ["best laptop", "best espresso machine"],
  "languages": ["en", "de"],
  "countries": ["us", "de"],
  "client": "chrome",
  "maxSuggestionsPerSeed": 15,
  "enableAlphabetExpansion": true,
  "useProxy": false
}

This produces 2 seeds × 2 languages × 2 countries × (1 + 26) variants × 15 rows = up to 3,240 rows.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
seeds	array	yes	—	1–500 seed queries
languages	array	no	["en"]	ISO-639-1 lowercase language codes
countries	array	no	["us"]	ISO-3166-1 alpha-2 lowercase country codes
client	string (enum)	no	chrome	chrome (up to 15 suggestions + scores) or firefox (up to 10)
maxSuggestionsPerSeed	integer	no	10	1–15
enableAlphabetExpansion	boolean	no	false	If true, also query <seed> a through <seed> z
useProxy	boolean	no	false	Route through Apify Proxy (BUYPROXIES94952)

📤 Output

One row per suggestion. All seed / locale / provenance fields denormalised onto every row so a flat CSV is self-contained.

{
  "seed": "best laptop",
  "suggestion": "best laptop 2026",
  "position": 1,
  "relevance": 900,
  "subtype": "QUERY",
  "language": "en",
  "country": "us",
  "client": "chrome",
  "is_expansion": false,
  "parent_seed": null,
  "scraped_at": "2026-05-16T12:00:00.000Z"
}

When alphabet expansion is enabled, expanded rows carry is_expansion=true and parent_seed set to the original seed:

{
  "seed": "best laptop a",
  "suggestion": "best laptop accessories",
  "position": 0,
  "relevance": 1250,
  "subtype": "QUERY",
  "language": "en",
  "country": "us",
  "client": "chrome",
  "is_expansion": true,
  "parent_seed": "best laptop",
  "scraped_at": "2026-05-16T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Export formats

• JSON — full fidelity, all fields, newline-delimited
• CSV — flat, one row per suggestion, all columns
• Excel — .xlsx via the Apify dataset converter
• XML — structured per-item

All formats are available via the Apify API: GET /datasets/{id}/items?format=csv&clean=true.

💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event (PPE) — you pay only for what you use:

Event	Price (USD)	When
actor-start	$0.05	Once per run, at boot
result-row	$0.001	Per suggestion row written to the dataset

Example costs

Run	Suggestions	Cost
1 seed × 1 locale × 10 suggestions	10	$0.06
10 seeds × 1 locale × 10 suggestions	100	$0.15
50 seeds × 2 langs × 1 country × 10	1,000	$1.05
100 seeds × 1 locale × 15 suggestions	1,500	$1.55
10 seeds × 1 locale × A–Z expansion (27×10)	2,700	$2.75
100 seeds × 1 locale × A–Z expansion × 15	40,500	$40.55

That's about $1 per 1,000 long-tail keywords, on pay-per-result pricing with no monthly subscription for the keyword-research the SaaS tools wrap.

🚧 Limitations

• Suggest endpoint, not SERP. This Actor returns autocomplete suggestions — the dropdown under the search box. It does not scrape the actual Google search results page. For SERP scraping use a dedicated SERP Actor.
• No search-volume data. Google Suggest does not return monthly search-volume estimates — only the suggestions themselves. Pair with a keyword-volume Actor or Google Keyword Planner for volume.
• Locale is a request hint, not a guarantee. Google may return general suggestions when locale-specific signal is sparse; obscure seeds in long-tail locales may return small or empty suggestion lists.
• A–Z expansion only. This Actor expands seeds with a..z suffixes. Number suffixes (0..9), question modifiers (why, how, when), or comparison modifiers (vs, or) are not built-in — they can be passed as explicit seeds.
• Concurrency capped at 2. The Actor deliberately limits in-flight requests to stay well within the Suggest endpoint's tolerances. Very large runs (10k+ tuples) will take time; budget accordingly.
• 7-day default storage retention on the Apify FREE tier. Export your dataset immediately after the run or upgrade for longer retention.
• No private / signed-in suggestions. Personalised suggestions tied to a Google account are out of scope — this Actor reflects the unauthenticated public Suggest endpoint.

❓ FAQ

Where do these suggestions come from?

Directly from Google's public Suggest endpoint at suggestqueries.google.com/complete/search — the same endpoint Chrome and Firefox call when you type in the address bar. The response is a JSON array of up to 15 suggestions per query (chrome client) or 10 (firefox client).

Is this a google suggest scraper or does it use an official API?

The endpoint is a public, browser-facing API — not a signed Google Cloud product. It has no API key requirement and is designed for browser clients. We treat it like what it is: a well-known endpoint that can throttle heavy callers. That is why we run conservative concurrency, rotate fingerprints, and retry with backoff so you get reliable bulk output.

What is alphabet expansion and why does it matter?

Alphabet expansion is the canonical long-tail discovery technique used by every major keyword-research tool. For each seed, the Actor also queries <seed> a, <seed> b, …, <seed> z — 26 extra calls. This surfaces the most common queries that start with your seed plus any next letter. For example, best laptop returns 15 generic suggestions; best laptop a returns suggestions like "best laptop accessories", "best laptop antivirus"; best laptop b returns "best laptop brands", "best laptop bag", and so on. One seed × 26 letters × 15 suggestions = up to 390 long-tail keywords per locale.

Should I pick chrome or firefox?

chrome (default) is the better choice for most use cases — it returns up to 15 suggestions (50% more than firefox), plus the google:suggestrelevance score (which loosely correlates with search-volume signal) and google:suggesttype tags. Pick firefox only when you specifically want the leaner 10-result payload without scores.

Do I need Apify Proxy for every run?

Not for typical runs. The Actor runs at conservative concurrency (2 in-flight requests) with automatic retry on rate-limit responses. Enable useProxy for very large alphabet-expansion jobs (>2,000 tuples) — the Actor will route through Apify Proxy, rotating the session on any block so the job keeps running.

How many requests does one run make?

len(seeds) × len(languages) × len(countries) × (1 + 26 if alphabet expansion else 1) API calls. Each call returns up to 15 rows. So 10 seeds × 1 locale × A–Z = 270 calls → up to 4,050 rows.

Is this an AnswerThePublic alternative?

Yes, it hits the same underlying Google Suggest data source that powers AnswerThePublic, KeywordTool.io, and Ubersuggest. The difference: you get raw bulk export across any locale or seed list at $1.05 per 1,000 suggestions instead of a fixed SaaS monthly seat. No dashboard, no limit on seed volume.

Is this legal?

The Google Suggest endpoint is a public, unauthenticated HTTP API designed for browsers and developer tools to embed Google autocomplete in their UIs. Always verify your jurisdiction's data-protection rules and Google's Terms of Service before reselling raw suggestion data — most commercial keyword-research products use this same endpoint under the same conditions.

💬 Your feedback

Found a bug, hit a rate limit, or need a new field on the output row? Open an issue on the Actor's Apify Store page or contact the Devil Scrapes team at apify.com/DevilScrapes. We ship updates within days of validated reports.