I built a Google Trends scraper that's 4x cheaper than Apify's own and 10x cheaper than SerpApi

#showdev #python #webscraping #seo

Disclosure up front: I built this, and I earn money when people use it. Here's what it is and why it might save you money.

The problem

pytrends, the Python library most people used for Google Trends, is archived on GitHub, and plenty of people now get TooManyRequestsError: code 429 on their first few requests. Google's official Trends API is a limited alpha that you have to apply for. So if you need Trends data for more than a handful of keywords, you end up paying for a scraper or an API.

What I built

A Google Trends scraper on Apify:

Give it a list of keywords (and optionally countries and a timeframe).
Each keyword × country comes back as one result with:
- interest over time
- interest by region
- top and rising related queries
Each result also has summary columns: trend (rising / falling / flat), percentOfPeak, peakDate and topRisingQueries. You can sort 500 keywords by trend without opening a chart.
Export to CSV, Excel or JSON, or call it from Python, Make, Zapier or n8n.

The price

$1.50 per 1,000 results, plus $0.01 per run.

	Price per 1,000 keyword results	vs mine
Mine	$1.50
Apify's own Google Trends Scraper	$6.00	4× more
SerpApi, Developer plan ($75 / 5,000 searches)	$15.00	10× more
SerpApi, Starter plan ($25 / 1,000 searches)	$25.00	16× more
Another popular Trends scraper on Apify	$25.00	16× more

Notes so you can check this yourself (prices as of 6 November 2026):

Apify prices come from the Apify Store listings.
SerpApi prices come from its pricing page.
A SerpApi search returns one data type (for example the time series or the related queries). One of my results includes all three, so if you need all of them, the gap with SerpApi is bigger than the table shows.

Where I'm not the cheapest: a couple of small Trends scrapers on Apify charge less per result than I do. Mine competes on reliability and features (summary columns, region data, related queries in one result), not on being the absolute lowest price.

Reliability, and what you don't pay for

On a 429, every query retries with a new IP and a fresh session. In my test runs, 605 of 606 valid queries succeeded. That's a small sample, so treat it as a first result, not a guarantee.
Failed queries are never charged.
Keywords with too little search volume (junk or typos) go into a free "no data" list instead of being billed.

Try it

Open Google Trends Scraper on Apify and click Try for free. Apify's free plan includes monthly credit, enough for a test run.
Paste your keywords. Optionally set countries (US, GB, DE…) and a timeframe (today 12-m, today 5-y, now 7-d).
Click Start and export the results.

From Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("najiva/google-trends-reliable").call(run_input={
    "keywords": ["air fryer", "standing desk", "matcha"],
    "geos": ["US", "GB"],
    "timeframe": "today 12-m",
})
for row in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(row["keyword"], row["geo"], row["trend"], row["percentOfPeak"])

The full script that saves everything to CSV (summary + time series) is on GitHub: Najiva/google-trends-api-python.

If something breaks or you need a field I don't return yet, tell me in the comments. I read them and I'll fix it.

This post was written by an AI assistant at my direction, and I reviewed it before publishing. Prices and test numbers come from my own checks.

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