How to check keyword search volume in bulk without a Google Ads account

If you've ever tried to get search volume for a list of keywords, you'll know the options aren't great:

• Google Keyword Planner wants a Google Ads account. Unless you're spending on ads, it shows ranges like "1K–10K", which is useless for comparing keywords.
• SEO suites (Ahrefs, Semrush and the rest) are brilliant, but they cost $100+ a month. That's a lot when you only need volumes a few times a month.
• Free volume checkers cap you at a handful of keywords, or bury the numbers behind sign-ups.

I wanted something in between: paste a list, get the numbers, pay for what I use. So I built a small tool for it on Apify, and this post shows how to use it, with or without code.

Disclosure: I made the tool, and I get paid when people use it. The examples work as described and the prices are the real ones.

What you get back

For each keyword:

• monthly Google search volume, plus 12 months of history
• CPC and the top-of-page bid range
• competition (LOW / MEDIUM / HIGH)
• keyword difficulty (0–100, how hard it is to rank organically)
• search intent (informational, commercial, transactional, navigational)
• 3- and 12-month trend, to spot rising and falling topics

Here's a real run for "standing desk" in the UK:

That second row is the kind of thing you're hunting for: 3,600 searches a month, buyer intent, and a difficulty of 0.

Option 1: no code (2 minutes)

1. Open Bulk Keyword Search Volume, CPC, Difficulty & Intent on the Apify Store and click Try for free. A free Apify account comes with monthly credit, which covers plenty of test runs at these prices.
2. Paste your keywords, one per line (up to 10,000).
3. Pick a country (26 are supported, including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Spain and India).
4. Optional: switch on Find keyword ideas. It expands your seed keywords with real Google autocomplete searches and gets metrics for all of them.
5. Click Start, then download the results as CSV or Excel, or send them to Google Sheets.

Option 2: from code

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient  # pip install apify-client

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run = client.actor("reliable-feeds/keyword-search-volume").call(
    run_input={"keywords": ["standing desk", "standing desk converter"], "country": "gb"}
)
for row in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(row["keyword"], row["searchVolume"], row["cpc"], row["keywordDifficulty"], row["intent"])

Or plain HTTP, from anything that can make a POST request:

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/reliable-feeds~keyword-search-volume/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"keywords": ["standing desk", "standing desk converter"], "country": "us"}'

There are more examples (JavaScript, n8n, and a script that turns one seed keyword into a full CSV of ideas with volumes) in this GitHub repo.

Option 3: ask your AI agent

If you use Claude, Cursor or another MCP-capable assistant, add the Apify MCP server with the tool preloaded:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=reliable-feeds/keyword-search-volume

Then just ask: "Find UK keywords about standing desks with over 500 searches a month and difficulty under 30."

What it costs

You pay per keyword that comes back with data: $3 per 1,000, plus $0.02 per run. Keywords with no data are free, and so are duplicates.

"Expected" assumes about 90% of keywords have data, which is what I saw in testing for normal keywords. You can also set a maximum cost per run, and the tool only looks up as many keywords as that budget covers.

Where the data comes from, and the limits

The metrics come from DataForSEO, whose keyword database is built on Google Ads Keyword Planner data and updated monthly. A few honest caveats:

• Search volumes are estimates. Treat them as relative demand, not exact counts.
• Very new or very rare searches often have no data. That's especially true of long question phrases: only about half of those had data in my tests. You aren't charged for those.
• 26 countries for now. Open an issue on the tool's page if you need another.

Bonus: finding the keywords in the first place

If you'd rather start from what people actually type, I also made Keyword Suggestions. It pulls autocomplete suggestions from Google, YouTube, Bing and Amazon in one run, including the "how / what / why…" questions. It's billed per lookup rather than per suggestion: a test with one seed keyword returned 527 ideas for $0.025. Run the ideas through the volume tool, and you've got a free-ish AnswerThePublic plus Keyword Planner in two steps.

If you try it, I'd genuinely like to hear what's missing. Leave a comment here or open an issue on Apify.