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How to Track Google Rankings Without Paying for SerpAPI (Using Apify)

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How to Track Google Rankings Without Paying for SerpAPI (Using Apify)

If you're running SEO for clients — or tracking your own site's keyword rankings — you've probably stared at SerpAPI's pricing page and winced. Their cheapest plan starts at $75/month. Semrush charges $119/month just for rank tracking (and caps you at 500 keywords). Ahrefs? $99/month for 750 tracked keywords.

For a mid-size agency managing 10 clients, those costs compound fast.

Here's what most people don't know: you can pull the exact same Google SERP data — positions, URLs, titles, snippets, featured snippets, ads — using a community-built Apify actor for $3–5 per 1,000 keyword results. No subscription. No monthly minimums. You pay only for what you actually run.

This article shows you how to set it up in 5 steps.

What You're Getting

The actor is lanky_quantifier/google-serp-scraper on Apify.

Here's what it returns for each keyword:

{
  "keyword": "best project management software",
  "position": 1,
  "url": "https://www.example-pm-tool.com/features",
  "title": "Best Project Management Software of 2026 — Reviewed & Ranked",
  "snippet": "We tested 23 project management tools. Here's what actually works for remote teams in 2026.",
  "date": "2026-03-25",
  "domain": "example-pm-tool.com",
  "isAd": false,
  "isFeaturedSnippet": true
}
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Full field list: keyword, position, url, title, snippet, date, domain, isAd, isFeaturedSnippet, pageNumber, totalResults.

That's everything SerpAPI returns. With 98.3% success rate across 172 external runs in the last 30 days — it's reliable enough to build client workflows on.

Step 1: Create a Free Apify Account

Go to apify.com and sign up. Free tier gives you enough credits to test. For production rank tracking, Apify's pay-per-result pricing means you load credits and draw down as you run — no monthly commitment.

Step 2: Open the Actor

Navigate to:
https://apify.com/lanky_quantifier/google-serp-scraper

Click Try for free or Use actor to open it in your Apify console.

Step 3: Configure Your Input

In the actor's Input tab, paste this JSON:

{
  "keywords": ["best project management software", "asana alternative", "trello vs monday"],
  "location": "United States",
  "device": "desktop",
  "resultsPerPage": 10,
  "includeSnippets": true
}
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Key parameters:

Parameter What it does
keywords Array of keywords to track — add as many as you need
location Country or city for localized results (100+ supported)
device desktop, mobile, or tablet
resultsPerPage 10, 20, 50, or 100 results per keyword
includeSnippets Pull meta descriptions/snippets alongside positions

For a typical SEO audit, start with resultsPerPage: 10 and device: desktop. If you're tracking mobile rankings separately (which you should), duplicate the run with device: mobile.

Step 4: Run It and Read the Output

Click Start. For 3 keywords, you'll have results in under 10 seconds. For 1,000 keywords, expect under 2 minutes.

Output lands in the actor's Dataset tab. You can download it as JSON, CSV, or XLSX — or push it directly to Google Sheets via Apify's integration.

Here's what a multi-keyword run looks like:

[
  {
    "keyword": "best project management software",
    "position": 1,
    "url": "https://www.example-pm-tool.com/features",
    "title": "Best Project Management Software of 2026 — Reviewed & Ranked",
    "snippet": "We tested 23 project management tools. Here's what actually works for remote teams in 2026.",
    "date": "2026-03-25",
    "domain": "example-pm-tool.com",
    "isAd": false,
    "isFeaturedSnippet": true
  },
  {
    "keyword": "asana alternative",
    "position": 3,
    "url": "https://www.example-competitor.com/asana-alternative",
    "title": "Top 10 Asana Alternatives — Free & Paid",
    "snippet": "Looking for an Asana alternative? These 10 tools match Asana's features at lower cost.",
    "date": "2026-03-25",
    "domain": "example-competitor.com",
    "isAd": false,
    "isFeaturedSnippet": false
  }
]
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The isAd and isFeaturedSnippet flags are especially useful if you're doing competitive analysis — you can filter out paid results and focus on organic positions only.

Step 5: Automate Weekly Snapshots

The real value of rank tracking isn't a one-time pull — it's the weekly delta. Did your target keyword move from position 11 to position 8? Did a competitor jump from 6 to 2 after they published a new page?

Apify has a built-in Scheduler (under your account settings). Set the actor to run every Monday at 6am, save results to a named dataset, and pipe the output to Google Sheets or a Slack webhook.

For a code-first approach using the JavaScript SDK:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('lanky_quantifier/google-serp-scraper').call({
  keywords: ['seo tools 2026', 'keyword research tool', 'rank tracker free'],
  location: 'United States',
  device: 'desktop',
  resultsPerPage: 10,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items); // Array of SERP result objects
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Schedule this with a cron job or GitHub Actions. Push results to BigQuery, Google Sheets, or Notion for client reporting. The output is clean JSON — it plugs into any BI stack without transformation.

Cost Reality Check

Let's be concrete. You have 5 SEO clients, each with 200 tracked keywords. That's 1,000 keywords/week, 4,000/month.

Tool Monthly cost for 4,000 keywords
SerpAPI (Starter) $75
ScaleSerp $29
Semrush Rank Tracker $119 (only 500 kw)
Ahrefs Rank Tracker $99 (only 750 kw)
This Apify actor ~$16–20

At 4,000 results/month in the mid-volume tier ($0.004/result), you're looking at $16. At the base tier ($0.005/result), $20.

That's not a rounding error — it's a 60–85% cost reduction for the same data.

What This Doesn't Replace

To be honest: if you need real-time rank tracking with historical dashboards, alerting, and a polished UI for non-technical clients, tools like Ahrefs or Semrush have value beyond raw SERP data. You're paying for the interface and the workflow, not the data itself.

But if you're an agency that already has a reporting setup — Google Sheets, Looker Studio, a custom dashboard — and you just need the underlying position data, paying $75–$120/month for data you can get for $5–20 is hard to justify.

Try It

Actor: https://apify.com/lanky_quantifier/google-serp-scraper

Run 3 keywords right now on the free tier. You'll have structured SERP data in your hands in under 30 seconds — and you can decide from there whether it fits your tracking workflow.

If you're running SEO at any scale, this is worth 10 minutes to test.

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