Keyword Research Tool: Keyword Ideas, Volume & Difficulty

Turn a seed keyword into up to 1,000 keyword ideas with search volume, CPC, keyword difficulty, search intent and 12 months of trend for each one. Pick the source: long-tail keyword suggestions, Google "related searches" or same-topic keyword ideas, in 94 countries.

A keyword research tool without a subscription: results in seconds from a commercial SEO data API, no browser, no Google Ads account. You pay per idea returned; ideas removed by your filters and near-duplicate variants are never billed.

Typical uses

• Content plans and topic clusters: hundreds of long-tail questions and phrases around a topic, sorted by volume or by difficulty.
• Low-competition keywords: keep ideas under a difficulty of 30 with at least 100 searches a month.
• PPC research: CPC and top-of-page bid range for every idea, per country.
• Product and market research: see how people search for a product category with the ideas source.
• Automations and AI agents: feed n8n, Make, Zapier, Google Sheets or an MCP client with clean JSON rows.

Three idea sources

mode	What it returns	Example for coffee maker
suggestions (default)	Long-tail phrases that contain your seed	best drip coffee maker, what is the best coffee maker
related	Google's "related searches", followed 1 to 4 levels deep (depth)	coffee maker with grinder, k-cup coffee maker, keurig coffee
ideas	Keywords from the same topic or product category, even without the seed words	espresso machine, coffee grinder, cold brew coffee maker

What you get for each idea

Field	Description
keyword	The keyword idea
seed, mode, rank	The seed that produced it, the source, and its position in the list for that seed
searchVolume	Average monthly Google searches
cpcUsd	Average cost per click, in USD
competition, competitionLevel	Google Ads competition, 0 to 1, and LOW / MEDIUM / HIGH
lowTopOfPageBidUsd, highTopOfPageBidUsd	Typical top-of-page bid range
keywordDifficulty	0 (easy) to 100 (hard) to rank organically
searchIntent, secondaryIntents	informational, navigational, commercial or transactional
trendMonthlyPct, trendQuarterlyPct, trendYearlyPct	Change in search volume, in percent
serpFeatures, searchResultsCount, serpUpdatedAt	Google result types on the idea's results page (e.g. organic, people_also_ask, popular_products), the result count, and when that page was last checked by the data source (often a few weeks or months ago). No extra cost; null when not available
monthlySearches	Last 12 months, most recent first: [{"month": "2026-08", "searchVolume": 18100}]
wordsCount, relatedDepth	Number of words; for related, the level where the idea was found
dataUpdatedAt, observedAt	When the data was last refreshed, and when this run fetched it

Field names are the same as in our Keyword Search Volume, CPC & Difficulty Actor, so you can mix both datasets. Missing values are always null, never guessed. Each idea appears once per run, under the first seed that found it; the seed itself is not returned as an idea.

Input

{
  "seedKeywords": ["coffee maker", "espresso machine"],
  "mode": "suggestions",
  "country": "US",
  "maxIdeasPerSeed": 200,
  "sortBy": "volume",
  "minSearchVolume": 100,
  "maxKeywordDifficulty": 40,
  "includeWords": ["best", "how to"],
  "excludeWords": ["keurig"]
}

• seedKeywords: up to 100 per run, max 80 characters and 10 words each. Duplicates are removed (case-insensitive).
• mode: suggestions, related (with depth 1 to 4, default 2) or ideas.
• country: two-letter code of one of 94 countries (the US, Canada, the UK and most of Europe, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa; full list in the input form). languageCode is optional and defaults to the country's main language (German for Switzerland, French for Belgium).
• maxIdeasPerSeed: 10 to 1,000 (default 100).
• sortBy: volume (highest first), difficulty (easiest first), cpc (highest first) or relevance (ideas source only). It also decides which ideas you get when a seed has more than your maximum.
• Filters, applied at the source so filtered-out ideas are never billed: minSearchVolume, maxSearchVolume, maxKeywordDifficulty, includeWords (keep ideas containing at least one), excludeWords (drop ideas containing any). Words match parts of words (cheap also keeps cheapest). At most 8 filters in total.
• includeSimilarKeywords: off by default, so misspellings and reordered variants of the same search are left out.

Output example

Real row from a run on 2026-10-07 (seed standing desk, mode: "ideas", US, sortBy: "difficulty", minSearchVolume: 1000, maxKeywordDifficulty: 30, excludeWords: ["ikea"]):

{
  "keyword": "corner desk",
  "seed": "standing desk",
  "mode": "ideas",
  "found": true,
  "rank": 1,
  "searchVolume": 49500,
  "cpcUsd": 1.34,
  "competition": 1,
  "competitionLevel": "HIGH",
  "lowTopOfPageBidUsd": 0.36,
  "highTopOfPageBidUsd": 2.34,
  "keywordDifficulty": 0,
  "searchIntent": "transactional",
  "secondaryIntents": [],
  "trendMonthlyPct": 22,
  "trendQuarterlyPct": 49,
  "trendYearlyPct": 0,
  "monthlySearches": [
    {
      "month": "2026-08",
      "searchVolume": 60500
    },
    {
      "month": "2026-07",
      "searchVolume": 49500
    },
    {
      "month": "2026-06",
      "searchVolume": 40500
    },
    {
      "month": "2026-05",
      "searchVolume": 40500
    },
    {
      "month": "2026-04",
      "searchVolume": 40500
    },
    {
      "month": "2026-03",
      "searchVolume": 49500
    },
    {
      "month": "2026-02",
      "searchVolume": 40500
    },
    {
      "month": "2026-01",
      "searchVolume": 60500
    },
    {
      "month": "2025-12",
      "searchVolume": 49500
    },
    {
      "month": "2025-11",
      "searchVolume": 60500
    },
    {
      "month": "2025-10",
      "searchVolume": 49500
    },
    {
      "month": "2025-09",
      "searchVolume": 49500
    }
  ],
  "wordsCount": 2,
  "relatedDepth": null,
  "country": "US",
  "languageCode": "en",
  "dataUpdatedAt": "2026-09-14T08:32:45.000Z",
  "observedAt": "2026-10-07T13:16:54.324Z",
  "schemaVersion": "1.0"
}

Pricing

Pay per use, no subscription, no monthly fee. See the Pricing tab for current prices. Two events:

• Keyword idea: one per idea returned, with all its metrics (volume, CPC, difficulty, intent and 12-month history are all included, no add-on). Cheaper on higher Apify plans.
• Seed keyword searched: a flat $0.01 per seed until October 25, 2026, then $0.016. The data source charges a fixed fee for every search, even one that finds nothing, so this small fee is charged once per seed that was searched. It is not charged when the request is rejected (for example an unsupported language) or when the data source is down.

Example: 1,000 ideas from one seed cost $4.01 on the free Apify plan and $2.01 on GOLD, metrics included ($4.016 and $2.016 from October 25, 2026). The two most used keyword-volume Actors on the Apify Store charge $0.008 to $0.012 per keyword with metrics, i.e. $8 to $12 per 1,000 (checked October 2026).

Ideas removed by your filters, duplicates across seeds, near-duplicate variants and input mistakes cost nothing. A seed with no idea gives a free found: false row with the reason. An idea that comes back without its search volume data at all (the data source changed its format) is neither delivered nor charged, and neither is the fee of a seed where no idea was readable; an idea the source simply has no volume for is delivered with null metrics. The run never spends more than the maximum cost you set: when the budget is short, it returns fewer ideas or skips seeds, and says so in the run summary.

Free Apify plan: each run handles up to 2 seeds and 20 ideas per seed, so you can check the output. A paid Apify plan removes these limits.

Use it from code, automations or AI agents

API (one call, results returned directly):

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/plainrows~keyword-ideas-generator/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"seedKeywords": ["coffee maker"], "mode": "suggestions", "maxIdeasPerSeed": 100, "maxKeywordDifficulty": 30}'

n8n, Make, Zapier: use the Apify integration, pick plainrows/keyword-ideas-generator, and send the dataset items to Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion or your database.

AI agents (MCP): add https://mcp.apify.com?tools=plainrows/keyword-ideas-generator to Claude, Cursor or any MCP client. The agent gets a typed tool and pays per result.

Already have your keyword list? Use Keyword Search Volume, CPC & Difficulty to get the same metrics for up to 10,000 known keywords per run.

What this is not

• Not live Google Autocomplete. Ideas come from a keyword database (its refresh date is in dataUpdatedAt), so searches that appeared in the last few weeks may be missing.
• Search volumes are Google Ads estimates (rounded buckets such as 1,300 or 1,600), not exact counts. Close variants of a search can share the same volume.
• No SERP results, rankings or backlinks per idea.
• Not affiliated with Google.

Run summary

Each run stores a summary in the key-value store (OUTPUT): seeds run, seeds with no idea, ideas billed, seeds charged, ideas skipped as duplicates, ideas dropped because the data source changed its format (ideasWithChangedFormat), duplicate and invalid seeds, and anything skipped because of the free-plan or budget limit.

FAQ

How do I find long-tail keywords for a topic? Enter a seed keyword, pick suggestions (long-tail phrases containing the seed), related (Google's related searches) or ideas (same topic), and run: up to 1,000 ideas per seed with volume, CPC, difficulty and intent.

Can I keep only easy, high-volume keywords? Yes: set minSearchVolume, maxKeywordDifficulty, includeWords or excludeWords. Filters apply at the source, so filtered-out ideas are never billed.

Is this Google Autocomplete? No. Ideas come from a keyword database refreshed regularly (see dataUpdatedAt). For live autocomplete and People Also Ask questions, use Google Autocomplete & People Also Ask.

Which countries? 94 countries (full list in the input form).

Do I need a Semrush or Ahrefs account? No: you pay per idea returned, with no subscription.

More PlainRows tools

Same pay-per-result pricing, same clean JSON, built to chain together in n8n, Make, Zapier or AI agents.

• SEO and keywords: Keyword Search Volume, CPC & Difficulty · Google Autocomplete & People Also Ask · Google Trends Explorer · Website Organic Traffic & Top Keywords · Bulk Domain Authority Checker · Backlink Checker · Broken Link Checker · AI Search Visibility Tracker (ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode) · Google Maps Rank Tracker (Geo-Grid Local SEO)
• Leads and companies: Google Maps Scraper · Website Technology Checker · ATS Jobs Scraper (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby) · Google Jobs Scraper · Google Ads Scraper (Transparency Center) · Company Registry Lookup (SIRENE, LEI, Brreg) · Public Tenders Search (EU TED & UK)
• E-commerce and travel: Amazon Product Search Scraper · Google Shopping Prices Scraper · Google Hotels Prices Scraper · Tripadvisor Reviews Scraper
• Content and media: Google News Scraper · YouTube Search Scraper · YouTube Comments Scraper · Google Images Scraper · Website Screenshot API · Google Maps Reviews Scraper · App Store & Google Play Reviews Scraper

Compared with other APIs: Exact keyword search volume without a Google Ads budget · Search volume and CPC by API

Support

Missing a field or found a bug? Open an issue on this page. Issues are read and answered.