How to get search volume and keyword difficulty for 1,000 keywords for $4.09 (no Ahrefs subscription)

Zander Erwin — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 01:54:55 +0000

If you only need search volume, CPC and keyword difficulty for a list of keywords, a full SEO subscription can be more than you need. Suites such as Ahrefs and Semrush also include tools for backlinks, rank tracking and site audits. Those are useful, but sometimes the job is simply to enrich a spreadsheet.

I built the Keyword Search Volume, Difficulty & Intent Actor on Apify. This post shows how to use it as a pay-per-use alternative. You paste a list of keywords, press Start, and download a spreadsheet with Google search volume, CPC, competition, a 0–100 keyword difficulty score and the search intent where available. One thousand keywords with data cost about $4.09 at the default run memory. There is no Actor subscription.

What you need

A free Apify account. Apify is a cloud platform where developers publish small tools called Actors; this Actor uses pay-per-event pricing.
A list of keywords. A text column from Google Sheets, an export from Search Console, the output of a keyword-ideas tool, or a brainstorm in a notes app all work.

For the manual steps below, there are no API keys, no Google Ads account and nothing to install. The optional n8n workflow later in this post uses your Apify API token.

Step 1: Open the Actor

Go to the Keyword Search Volume, Difficulty & Intent (Bulk) page on the Apify Store and click Try for free. Apify asks you to sign in or create an account.

Step 2: Paste your keywords

The input form opens with a few example keywords already filled in, so you can press Start right away to see what the output looks like. To use your own list, clear the box and paste your keywords, one per line.

The eight-keyword sample used here, shown in the completed run’s read-only Input tab.

Two other fields matter:

Location: the country whose search volume you want, as a plain name such as United States, United Kingdom or Germany. City-level locations work too (London,England,United Kingdom).
Language code: en, de, es, fr and so on.

Leave Include 12-month trend on if you want month-by-month volume for each keyword; it costs nothing extra.

Duplicates and blank lines are removed automatically, and you are never charged for them.

Step 3: Press Start

Click Start. Small lists typically finish in seconds. At 400 valid, unique keywords or more, the Actor uses Google Ads batches of up to 1,000; large lists and busy queues can take longer. The threshold is applied after input cleanup and the run’s spending limit.

This owner test run returned all eight sample keywords in five seconds. The $0.000 usage badge is from the owner’s test; use the pricing calculation below for customer runs.

Step 4: Download the results

Open the Output tab. You get one row per keyword:

Keyword	Monthly searches	CPC (USD)	Competition	Difficulty	Intent
running shoes	301,000	1.09	HIGH	43	transactional
project management software	201,000	40.32	LOW	51	commercial
best crm for small business	2,900	44.02	LOW	29	commercial
how to start a podcast	18,100	2.44	MEDIUM	15	informational

(Four rows from the eight-keyword test run, US / English, October 21, 2026. Keyword metrics change over time.)

Click Export, choose the Keywords view for the displayed columns or All fields for the full data, then choose CSV, Excel or JSON and click Download. Keywords Google has no data for come back with an error column instead of numbers, and those rows are free.

What the columns mean

Monthly searches is Google's average monthly search volume for the keyword in your chosen country. Small lists are served from a database of Google Ads figures refreshed about monthly; lists of 400 or more are looked up live in Google Ads.
CPC is the average cost per click advertisers pay for that keyword, in US dollars. High CPC with modest volume often marks a keyword that converts.
Competition is Google Ads' advertiser competition, as LOW / MEDIUM / HIGH and as a 0–1 score. It is about ads, not organic ranking.
Difficulty is an estimate from 0 to 100 of how hard it is to rank on page one organically, based on the strength of the pages that already rank. Use it to compare opportunities, then inspect the actual search results; a low score does not guarantee that a new site can rank.
Intent is what the searcher wants: informational (an answer), navigational (a specific site), commercial (comparing before buying) or transactional (ready to buy). It tells you what kind of page to build.
Trend is month-by-month search volume: 12 months for lists of 400 or more, and often several years for smaller lists. Use it to check seasonality.

Difficulty and intent are included when the provider has them. A blank value means unavailable data, not zero difficulty.

A quick way to turn this into a content plan

Sort by Difficulty ascending, then by Monthly searches descending.
Filter to difficulty under 35 and volume over 300.
Group by Intent: informational keywords become guides, commercial ones become comparison posts, transactional ones become product or landing pages.

Treat the top rows as a shortlist. Check relevance, the current search results and your ability to create a useful page before turning them into a content calendar.

What it costs, honestly

Keywords with data in one run	Estimated Actor charge
100	$0.405 (about $0.41)
1,000	$4.085 (about $4.09)
10,000	$40.805 (about $40.81)

Estimates use the default 256 MB memory, all keywords returning data, and the pricing shown on the Actor’s Store page on October 21, 2026.

The Actor charges $0.004 per keyword that returns data, half a cent per run, and $0.08 per batch of up to 1,000 keywords on runs of 400 or more. Keywords with no data have no keyword-result charge; the run-start and any Google Ads batch fees still apply. Twelve monthly runs of 1,000 keywords at these rates total about $49.02.

For a broader toolset, compare the current Ahrefs plans and Semrush plans. They offer different features and usage limits, including lower-tier or free options; a keyword lookup is not a replacement for a full SEO suite.

Going further

Automate it. Download the tested n8n workflow, setup guide and ten-keyword test sheet. It reads Google Sheets, runs the Actor once, and writes metrics back to the original rows. The October 22 test enriched all ten rows with no errors. Add your Google Sheets credential and Apify token; the template starts with a ten-keyword limit and a $0.10 run cap. Make and Zapier can use the same read → run → update pattern.
Use it from code or an AI agent. Apify exposes every Actor through a REST API and through its MCP server, so an agent can ask for keyword data on the fly.
Other countries. Change the location and language fields; the same list can be checked for the US, UK, Germany and Spain in four runs.

Try it

Paste your keyword list into Keyword Search Volume, Difficulty & Intent (Bulk) and press Start. The first run with the sample keywords costs a few cents, and Apify's free plan credit covers it.

If you find it useful, a short review on the Store page helps other people find it.

DEV Community: Zander Erwin