Free Keyword Research Tool for SEO — Volume + CPC + Difficulty

The free keyword research tool for SEO. Discover keywords related to any seed term with monthly search volume, CPC, SEO difficulty, paid difficulty, competition score, and search intent classification — for any of 50+ countries and languages.

Combines free Google Autocomplete (a-z + 0-9 alphabet expansion) with a managed keyword-info backend to give you a complete picture of demand around any keyword in seconds.

What you get

Per keyword variant:

• Monthly search volume (12-month trend included)
• Average CPC in local currency + USD
• SEO difficulty (0-100, lower = easier to rank)
• Paid difficulty (0-100)
• Competition score (0-1)
• Search intent: Info / Nav / Commercial / Transactional
• Global volume breakdown by country

Why use this keyword research tool for SEO

Ahrefs Keywords Explorer costs $99-$399/month. Semrush Keyword Magic Tool costs $129-$449/month. Both gate volume + difficulty data behind a subscription. This Actor:

• Returns the same fields — volume, CPC, SD, PD, intent
• Pulls autocomplete-expanded keyword variants automatically
• Works across 50+ countries with localized volume data
• Has no subscription — pay only for the keywords you research

Input

Field	Default	Description
keyword	required	Seed keyword to research (e.g. running shoes)
country	us	ISO 2-letter country code
language	en	ISO 2-letter language code
limit	100	Max keyword variants to return (1-500)
max_suggestions	0 (all)	Cap autocomplete expansions before volume lookup
min_volume	10	Drop keywords below this monthly volume
concurrency	10	Concurrent API requests (lower if rate-limited)

Output (sample)

{
  "keyword": "running shoes for women",
  "volume": 33100,
  "cpc": 1.88,
  "cpc_usd": 1.88,
  "sd": 64,
  "pd": 38,
  "competition": 0.65,
  "intent": "Commercial, Transactional",
  "monthly": {"2025-04": 27100, "2025-05": 33100},
  "global_breakdown": {"US": 33100, "UK": 8100},
  "seed_keyword": "running shoes",
  "country": "US",
  "language": "en"
}

Use cases

• SEO content strategy — find low-difficulty / high-volume opportunities
• Paid search planning — get CPC + competition before launching campaigns
• Content ideation — discover questions and modifiers around any topic
• Market entry research — compare keyword demand across countries
• Competitor briefs — pull a comprehensive keyword cluster around any brand
• Niche site research — quickly score the SEO opportunity in any vertical

Limits

• Some long-tail terms have no data — silently dropped (not errored)
• Volume figures are estimates from third-party data, not Google Ads Keyword Planner exact-match volumes — use for relative comparisons
• A country=us, limit=500 run can take 60-90 seconds end-to-end

Related Actors — Free SEO Suite

This actor pairs with two other free tools for a complete SEO research workflow:

• Free Backlink Checker for Website — domain authority + full backlink list for any domain
• Free URL to Markdown API — bulk-extract competitor pages as clean markdown for LLM-driven analysis

Use this actor to find ranking opportunities, the backlink checker to score competitor authority, and the markdown converter to bulk-pull their ranking pages for content gap analysis.