Keyword Search Volume & Keyword Research API

Get Google search volume, CPC, competition, keyword difficulty, search intent and monthly trend for a list of keywords, in 94 countries. Paste your keywords, pick a country, run. No Google Ads account, no subscription.

Price: $2 per 1,000 keywords + $0.05 per run. Keywords without data are free, and a run that finds no data pays no lookup fee.

What you get for each keyword

Field	What it means
searchVolume	Average monthly Google searches (Google's rounded estimate)
cpcUsd	Average cost per click advertisers paid, in USD
competition, competitionLevel	Advertiser competition, 0-1 and LOW / MEDIUM / HIGH
lowTopOfPageBidUsd, highTopOfPageBidUsd	Range of bids to show an ad at the top of the page
keywordDifficulty	How hard it is to rank in Google's top 10 organic results, 0-100
searchIntent	informational, commercial, transactional or navigational
trend3mPercent	Last 3 months vs the 3 months before, in %
trendYoYPercent	Latest month vs the same month a year earlier, in %
monthlySearches	Monthly volumes, newest first (12 by default, up to 96 months)
dataUpdatedAt	When the metrics for this keyword were last refreshed
hasData	false when there is no data for the keyword (not charged)

Example row:

{
  "keyword": "keyword planner",
  "country": "US",
  "language": "en",
  "hasData": true,
  "searchVolume": 8100,
  "cpcUsd": 18.46,
  "competition": 0.44,
  "competitionLevel": "MEDIUM",
  "lowTopOfPageBidUsd": 5.55,
  "highTopOfPageBidUsd": 57.74,
  "keywordDifficulty": 79,
  "searchIntent": "commercial",
  "trend3mPercent": -7,
  "trendYoYPercent": -33.3,
  "monthlySearches": [{ "month": "2026-09", "searchVolume": 6600 }],
  "dataUpdatedAt": "2026-10-16"
}

Input

{
  "keywords": ["keyword research", "seo tools", "search volume"],
  "country": "US",
  "language": "en",
  "monthsOfHistory": 12
}

• keywords: up to 5,000 per run. Case and extra spaces are ignored; duplicates are removed before anything is charged. Keywords longer than 80 characters or 10 words, or with emojis or symbols Google rejects (! @ % ^ * ( ) = { } ; ~ < > ? | \), are skipped and listed in the run's status message.
• country: two-letter code (US, GB, DE, BR, IN, AR, ...). 94 countries.
• language: optional; defaults to the country's main language. Some countries offer two or three (for example CA: en, fr; CH: de, fr, it; US: en, es).
• monthsOfHistory: 0 to 96. The trend columns are computed either way.
• dryRun: returns clearly fake sample numbers (marked sampleData: true) to test an integration. Free.

Pricing, exactly

Keywords with data in one run	You pay
10	$0.07
100	$0.25
1,000	$2.05

• $0.05 per run ("Keyword lookup"), charged once, only when the first keywords with data arrive. Apify may also bill its small standard Actor start fee.
• $0.002 per keyword with data ("Keyword with data").
• Keywords with no data, skipped keywords and failed requests are never charged.
• Your maximum cost per run is respected before any lookup: if it covers only part of the list, the rest is not looked up and not charged, and the status message tells you.
• Users on the Apify Free plan can look up 20 keywords per run. Any paid Apify plan removes the limit.

Where the data comes from

The metrics come from DataForSEO's keyword database (DataForSEO Labs). Competition and bids are based on Google Ads data. In our own check (6 US keywords, October 2026) volume, CPC and the latest month matched Google Ads Keyword Planner figures exactly. Volumes are rounded estimates, so similar keywords can share a number. Each row shows dataUpdatedAt, so you can see how fresh it is; most keywords we checked were refreshed in the last 2 weeks, some up to 5 weeks earlier.

Use it from code or an AI agent

Call it through the Apify API or the Apify MCP server like any Actor. Results are in the default dataset (view overview for the main columns); a run summary (counts and amount charged) is in the key-value store record OUTPUT.

Limits

• Google does not return data for some sensitive categories (for example weapons, tobacco, drugs).
• Keywords that are not in the database come back with hasData: false and are free.
• Bing data and keyword-idea expansion are not included yet.

Support

Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab.