Ahrefs Keyword Difficulty Scraper

🚀 Ahrefs Keyword Difficulty Scraper: Bulk KD Checker

Check Ahrefs Keyword Difficulty (KD) for a whole keyword list at once. The Ahrefs Keyword Difficulty Scraper is a bulk keyword difficulty checker and SERP checker in one: for each keyword it returns the KD score, how many referring domains you would need to reach the top 10, the monthly search volume, the SERP features (AI Overview, People Also Ask, videos…) and the top organic results, with Domain Rating, URL Rating, backlinks and traffic for the leading pages. Use it to prioritise a content plan, run a quick SERP analysis and find keywords you can actually rank for. No Ahrefs account needed.

🎯 Use Cases for a Keyword Difficulty Checker

• Check keyword difficulty for a whole content plan: paste 500 keyword ideas from your keyword research tool and sort them by KD to find the easy wins.
• SERP analysis before you write: see who ranks, how strong their domains are and which SERP features (AI Overview, People Also Ask, videos) take the space.
• Estimate the link-building effort: referringDomainsToRankTop10 tells you roughly how many linking sites a page needs to reach the top 10.
• Keyword competition checker for clients: score a client's target list by country and turn it into a prioritised roadmap in Google Sheets.
• Track difficulty and SERP changes: rerun the same keywords monthly and watch KD, volume and the ranking pages shift.

✨ Features

• Keyword Difficulty (0–100): Ahrefs' estimate of how hard it is to rank in the top 10.
• Links needed: the number of referring domains you would likely need to rank in the top 10.
• Search volume: monthly searches as Ahrefs reports them for the keyword, when the results page carries it.
• SERP features: AI Overview, People Also Ask, videos and the other blocks on the results page.
• Top organic results: position, title and URL for each organic result in the top 10, plus DR, UR, backlinks, referring domains, organic traffic, ranking keywords and the page's own top keyword for the leading three.
• Any country: pick the search market with a two-letter country code.
• Fair billing: keywords with no data in the chosen country are skipped and not charged, and the run stops cleanly at your maximum charge.

🛠️ How It Works

1. Add your keywords: one per line. Repeated keywords are checked once.
2. Pick a country: us by default.
3. Run the scraper: one row per keyword, downloadable as JSON, CSV or Excel, or through the API.

⚙️ Input

Field	What it does
Keywords	Keywords to check, one per line.
Country	Two-letter country code of the search market (us, gb, de…).
Max results	Stop after this many keywords. Default 50.

With an empty input the scraper checks web scraping, seo tools and keyword research in the US. For a list longer than 50 keywords, raise Max results to the length of the list. To compare markets, run the same list once per country.

{
    "keywords": ["best running shoes", "running shoes for flat feet", "trail running shoes"],
    "country": "gb",
    "maxItems": 200
}

💰 Pricing

Pay only for the keywords you get. No monthly rental.

Event	Price	What you get
Keyword checked	$0.008 per keyword ($8 per 1,000)	Keyword Difficulty, referring domains needed, search volume, SERP features and the top organic results
Actor start	$0.00005 per run	Charged once when the run starts.

Keywords Ahrefs has no data for in that country are skipped and not charged. Examples: 50 keywords = $0.40 · a 500-keyword content plan = $4.00 · 1,000 keywords = $8.00.

📊 Sample Output Data

{
    "id": "web scraping|us",
    "keyword": "web scraping",
    "country": "us",
    "keywordDifficulty": 47,
    "referringDomainsToRankTop10": 74,
    "searchVolume": 9100,
    "serpFeatures": ["ai_overview", "questions", "videos"],
    "serpUpdatedAt": "2026-10-19T09:01:22Z",
    "organicResults": [
        {
            "position": 2,
            "title": "Web scraping",
            "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping",
            "domainRating": 97,
            "urlRating": 23,
            "backlinks": 9440,
            "referringDomains": 2107,
            "organicTraffic": 4009,
            "rankingKeywords": 285,
            "topKeyword": "web scraping",
            "topKeywordVolume": 9100
        },
        {
            "position": 5,
            "title": "Web Scraper Cloud | Enterprise Web Scraping Platform",
            "url": "https://webscraper.io/",
            "domainRating": 65,
            "urlRating": 11,
            "backlinks": 4915,
            "referringDomains": 1953,
            "organicTraffic": 4250,
            "rankingKeywords": 497,
            "topKeyword": "web scraper",
            "topKeywordVolume": 3400
        },
        {
            "position": 7,
            "title": "What is Web Scraping? The Complete Guide for 2025",
            "url": "https://www.scraperapi.com/web-scraping/",
            "domainRating": null,
            "urlRating": null,
            "backlinks": null,
            "referringDomains": null,
            "organicTraffic": null,
            "rankingKeywords": null,
            "topKeyword": null,
            "topKeywordVolume": null
        },
        "…"
    ],
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-21T10:48:18.672Z"
}

organicResults lists the organic results in the top 10 (usually 7–8, since SERP features take the other positions). The first three carry full metrics; the rest have position, title and URL, with the metrics null. backlinks and referringDomains count links to that exact page, organicTraffic is the page's estimated monthly organic visits and topKeyword is the query that brings it the most traffic. serpUpdatedAt is when Ahrefs last refreshed the results page.

🔁 Schedule and Integrate

Keyword difficulty and SERPs move slowly, so to track a content plan run it once a month with the same keyword list and country: each run is a dated snapshot of KD, volume and who ranks. Set it up in Apify Schedules, then send the results to Google Sheets, Zapier, Make, n8n or a webhook with Apify integrations, so your content calendar always shows current difficulty scores.

🤖 Use with AI Agents (MCP)

This Actor works as a tool in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other MCP clients through the Apify MCP server (https://mcp.apify.com), so an agent can check keyword difficulty while it plans content or picks topics. An agent can call it with:

{ "keywords": ["web scraping", "seo tools"], "country": "us", "maxItems": 10 }

❓ FAQ

Does Ahrefs have an official API? Yes. Ahrefs offers an official API as part of its paid subscription plans, billed in API units. This Actor is the practical alternative when you only need Keyword Difficulty and a SERP overview for a keyword list: no Ahrefs subscription, no API key, no rate-limit handling, and you pay per keyword.

How do I check keyword difficulty for many keywords at once? Paste the list into Keywords, pick the country, set Max results to at least the number of keywords and run the Actor. You get one row per keyword with KD, links needed, volume and the SERP, ready to sort in a spreadsheet.

What is a good keyword difficulty score? KD runs from 0 to 100. As a rule of thumb, keywords under about 30 are realistic for newer sites, while 70+ usually needs a strong domain and many referring domains; referringDomainsToRankTop10 gives the concrete number.

Why are metrics null for some organic results? Ahrefs shows full metrics for the top three organic results on its free results page; lower results come with position, title and URL only.

Why is searchVolume sometimes empty? It is filled when one of the ranking pages has this exact keyword as its top keyword, which is usually the case for established keywords. Very niche keywords may have no volume. Pair the Actor with the Google Keyword Volume Scraper for Google volume on every keyword.

Why do positions skip numbers? SERP features (AI Overview, People Also Ask, videos) take positions too; they are listed in serpFeatures and the organic results keep their real positions.

Do I need an Ahrefs account? No. The Actor returns the data Ahrefs shows publicly in its free keyword difficulty checker.

🔗 Related Scrapers

• Google Keyword Volume Scraper: monthly Google search volume, CPC and competition for the same keyword list.
• Google Keyword Suggestions Scraper: related keyword ideas around a seed, to feed into this difficulty check.
• Google Ranked Keywords Scraper: every keyword a competitor ranks for on Google, with position and URL.
• Ahrefs Domain Rating Scraper: Domain Rating, backlink and referring-domain counts for the ranking sites or your own.
• Ahrefs Backlinks Scraper: the top backlinks of a ranking page, to see which links you would need.

This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by Ahrefs. Keyword Difficulty is a metric by Ahrefs.