Keyword Search Volume: Google Ads Volume, CPC & Difficulty

What is Keyword Search Volume?

Keyword Search Volume gives you Google search volume, CPC, competition, keyword difficulty and search intent for a list of keywords, with up to 24 months of history. Paste your keywords, pick a country, and download the results. No Google Ads account needed.

What can this keyword tool do?

• Google Ads data, refreshed every month, for 92 countries.
• Everything in one row per keyword: monthly searches, cost per click, advertiser competition, top-of-page bid range, difficulty score (0-100), search intent, and the monthly trend.
• Bulk friendly. Up to 20,000 keywords per run.
• Pay per keyword. No subscription, and keywords with no data are free.
• No Google Ads account, API key or login needed.

Because it runs on Apify, you also get:

• Scheduling: refresh the figures for your keyword list every month.
• API access: start runs and read results from your own code.
• Integrations: send results to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets and more.
• Monitoring: get alerted when a run fails or returns less than expected.
• Exports: download results as JSON, CSV or Excel.

How to check keyword search volume

1. Paste your keywords into Keywords, one per line.
2. Choose the Country whose searches you want figures for.
3. Optionally set the language, and how many months of history you want.
4. Click Start. When the run finishes, open the Output tab and download the results as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Live lookups need a paid Apify plan. On the free plan, the Actor returns clearly labelled sample rows and charges nothing for your keywords, so you can see the exact output format.

How much does keyword data cost?

You pay per keyword with data, plus $0.02 per lookup, charged once for every 700 keywords in a run. Keywords with no data cost nothing. The price per keyword depends on your Apify Store discount tier:

Store discount tier	Price per keyword
Bronze	$0.0036
Silver	$0.0032
Gold and above	$0.0028

At the Bronze price:

Keywords in a run	Cost
10	$0.056
100	$0.38
1,000	$3.64

Set the run's maximum charge to cap spending: the Actor stops before exceeding it.

Input example

{
    "keywords": [
        "running shoes",
        "trail running shoes",
        "best running shoes for flat feet"
    ],
    "country": "US",
    "monthsOfHistory": 12
}

Field	Meaning
keywords	Your keywords, up to 20,000 per run
country	Two-letter country code
language	Two-letter language code (optional; each country has a default)
monthsOfHistory	Months of past search volume to return, up to 24

Output example

Real results for the input above, captured on 2026-10-05:

Keyword	Monthly searches	Difficulty	CPC	Intent
running shoes	301,000	43	$1.09	transactional
trail running shoes	165,000	3	$1.07	transactional
best running shoes for flat feet	9,900	10	$1.01	commercial

One dataset item per keyword, shortened here:

{
    "keyword": "running shoes",
    "found": true,
    "country": "US",
    "language": "en",
    "searchVolume": 301000,
    "cpc": 1.09,
    "competition": 1,
    "competitionLevel": "HIGH",
    "lowTopOfPageBid": 0.47,
    "highTopOfPageBid": 2.17,
    "keywordDifficulty": 43,
    "searchIntent": "transactional",
    "trend": {
        "monthly": 22,
        "quarterly": 50,
        "yearly": -45
    },
    "monthlySearches": [
        {
            "month": "2026-08",
            "searchVolume": 301000
        },
        {
            "month": "2026-07",
            "searchVolume": 246000
        }
    ],
    "dataUpdatedAt": "2026-09-15"
}

Field	Meaning
searchVolume	Average monthly Google searches in the chosen country
cpc	Average cost per click in Google Ads, in US dollars
competition, competitionLevel	How many advertisers bid on the keyword: 0 to 1, and LOW, MEDIUM or HIGH
lowTopOfPageBid, highTopOfPageBid	The range advertisers pay to appear at the top of the page, in US dollars
keywordDifficulty	How hard it is to rank in the top 10 organic results, from 0 (easy) to 100 (very hard)
searchIntent	informational, navigational, commercial or transactional
trend	Change in search volume, in percent, over the last month, quarter and year
monthlySearches	Search volume for each past month
found	false when there is no data for the keyword. Those keywords are not charged

Use cases

• Size the demand behind a list of content or product ideas.
• Prioritise SEO work by volume against difficulty.
• Estimate Google Ads budgets from CPC and bid ranges.
• Spot seasonal patterns from the monthly history.
• Enrich keyword lists inside Make, Zapier, n8n or your own code.

Tips for better keyword research

• Compare volume with difficulty. A smaller keyword with low difficulty is often the better target: in the example above, "trail running shoes" has half the volume of "running shoes" for a fraction of its difficulty.
• Check the monthly history before planning seasonal content.
• Choose the country your customers are in, since figures differ widely between markets.

FAQ

How do I check the search volume of a keyword?

Paste the keyword, choose a country and start the run. The searchVolume field is the average number of monthly Google searches in that country.

Where does the data come from?

From Google Ads, the same source as Google Keyword Planner, supplied through the data provider DataForSEO and refreshed once a month. Each row shows when its data was last updated.

Why do some keywords come back with "found": false?

Very rare or brand-new search terms have no recorded data. They are returned so you can see which ones are missing, and they are not charged.

Can I get search volume for a city or a region?

Not yet. Figures are for whole countries.

Which languages are supported?

Each country uses its main language by default. For countries with several languages, such as Switzerland, Belgium or Canada, set Language to the two-letter code you want.

How many keywords can I check at once?

Up to 20,000 per run. Each keyword can have up to 10 words and 80 characters.

Can I use it from my own code, Make, Zapier or n8n?

Yes. Call it through the Apify API (see the examples below), or connect it with Apify's integrations for Make, Zapier and n8n.

What happens to my keywords?

They are sent to the data provider (DataForSEO) to be looked up. Results are stored only in your own Apify account.

Limits

• Country-level data only, with no city or region breakdown.
• Google search only. Bing, YouTube and Amazon volumes are not included.
• No keyword suggestions: the Actor returns data for the keywords you provide.
• Figures are monthly averages as reported by Google Ads, which groups close variants of a keyword together.

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Run it from the API

With cURL:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/spokentext~keyword-search-volume/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "keywords": ["running shoes", "trail running shoes"], "country": "US" }'

With Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("spokentext/keyword-search-volume").call(run_input={"keywords": ["running shoes", "trail running shoes"], "country": "US"})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["keyword"], item.get("searchVolume"))

This Actor is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google; the Google Ads figures come through a third-party keyword data provider.

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