Keyword research API
A keyword research API that returns what people actually type. One seed is expanded into dozens of Google autocomplete probes — the a–z alphabet soup, question words, prepositions and comparison modifiers — and every distinct suggestion comes back with the probe that surfaced it and Google's own relevance score.
$0.0002 per delivered keyword · $2 free every month · Failed runs never billed
$ curl $QD/keyword_ideas/run \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $QD_API_KEY" \
-d '{"seed": "residential proxy", "modes": ["seed", "alphabet"], "country": "us", "lang": "en", "max_results": 100}'
{ "status": "done", "count": 100,
"results": [
{
"keyword": "…",
"seed": "…",
"probe": "…",
"mode": "…" } ],
"cost": 0.02 }
# 100 keywords × $0.0002 · nothing delivered, nothing charged
What a keyword research API does
Keyword tools sell you a volume estimate modelled from a clickstream panel. Autocomplete is different: it is Google telling you, live, which continuations it considers likely for a prefix. It has no volume number attached, and it is not a guess either — it is the query space as the engine sees it today.
The product here is the expansion. A single seed becomes the seed itself, fourteen question forms, ten comparison modifiers, ten prepositions and twenty-six alphabet probes; suggestions are de-duplicated across all of them, so you get distinct ideas rather than the same phrase twenty times. Probes run in small parallel batches and stop the moment your max_results is met, so an exhausted seed costs less, never more.
What one keyword looks like
Every delivered keyword carries these fields. Nullable means the source did not publish it — the field stays empty instead of being guessed.
| Field | Type | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
rank | integer | 1-based delivery order. |
keyword | string | The suggested query. |
seed | string | The seed it was expanded from. |
probe | string | The exact autocomplete probe that surfaced it. |
mode | string | Probe family: seed, alphabet, questions, prepositions, comparisons. |
relevance | number · nullable | Google's relevance score for the suggestion. |
type | string · nullable | Suggestion type as returned (QUERY, NAVIGATION…). |
Inputs
The whole request. Anything you leave out falls back to the default shown in the catalog.
| Input | Type | Required | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
seed | string | yes | The keyword to expand, e.g. "residential proxy". |
modes | array | no | Which probe families to run (default seed + questions + alphabet). |
country | string | no | ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code — proxy exit geo and Google locale (gl). Omit for the default pool. |
lang | string | no | Interface language (hl), e.g. en, it, de. |
max_results | integer | no | How many keywords to deliver at most (1–500). You pay only for delivered keywords. |
Pricing
Keyword research API pricing
$0.0002 per delivered keyword. A run that delivers nothing costs nothing: blocked pages, challenges and retries are on us, and the $2 monthly allowance covers about 10,000 keywords before you spend anything.
Pay as you go
- $2 free credit / month
- 60 requests / min
- List unit prices
Starter
- $15 free credit / month
- 300 requests / min
- 10% off unit prices
Growth
- $50 free credit / month
- 600 requests / min
- 20% off unit prices
Scale
- $250 free credit / month
- 1,200 requests / min
- 30% off unit prices
Same wallet, same key and same $2 monthly allowance as every other Data API. Prices are launch pricing read live from the billing config — GET /v1/scraper/collectors returns the price your key actually pays.
Integration
One POST, typed rows
Base URL https://api.quanticdata.io/v1, Bearer auth, the same key as every other Data API. Endpoint: POST /v1/.
curl -X POST https://api.quanticdata.io/v1/scraper/collectors/keyword_ideas/run \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $QD_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"seed":"residential proxy","modes":["seed","alphabet"],"country":"us","lang":"en","max_results":100}'
What people build with the keyword research API
Three shapes of work this endpoint was designed around.
Content briefs
Take the question probes for a topic and turn them straight into H2s and an FAQ block.
Long-tail discovery
Run the alphabet expansion on a head term to find the modifiers nobody bid on yet.
Commercial intent mapping
The comparison modifiers (best, cheap, alternative, pricing) separate research queries from buying ones.
Keyword research API versus rolling your own
The differences that actually cost time when you build this in-house.
| DIY scraper | This collector | |
|---|---|---|
| Source | Modelled volume from a panel | Google's own live suggestions |
| Duplicates | Same phrase across every probe | De-duplicated: you pay per distinct keyword |
| Cost per 1,000 | Seat licence | $0.20, no subscription |
Real phrasing, not modelled volume
Keyword Planner is the official source and it gives you something this cannot: volume estimates from Google's own ad auction. It also requires a Google Ads account, returns bucketed ranges rather than numbers to accounts without meaningful spend, and is reached programmatically only through the Google Ads API with its developer token and approval flow.
The two datasets answer different questions and the difference matters more than it used to. Volume tools tell you how big a term is. Autocomplete tells you how people phrase it — including the long-tail questions whose individual volume rounds to zero and which are exactly what earns featured snippets and gets quoted by AI assistants. A page written against the real phrasing wins surfaces that a page written against a volume list never sees.
Because every row keeps the probe that produced it, the output is a map rather than a list: group by probe and the informational, comparative and commercial clusters separate themselves without a classification model.
Limits, locality and the legal bit
Up to 500 distinct keywords per run — a full multi-mode expansion of one seed. One run fires many autocomplete probes internally; that is the collector's concern and does not consume your rate limit per probe. Throughput is your plan's rate limit rather than anything about the collector: 60 requests/minute on pay-as-you-go, up to 1,200 on the top tier.
Autocomplete is heavily localised. Running an English seed and translating the output produces a keyword list for a market that does not exist; run the seed per country and language instead, and expect the results to differ in substance rather than in wording.
Collecting publicly visible data is generally lawful in most jurisdictions, and courts have repeatedly declined to treat reading a public page as unauthorised access. Suggestions occasionally contain personal names, because people search for people — filter before storing anything that identifies an individual. Google's terms restrict automated access. None of this is legal advice — get some for your actual use case.
Do I get search volume?
No, and nothing here pretends to. Autocomplete has no volume attached: it gives you the phrasing and Google's relevance ordering. Pair it with your own click data or an ads account when you need absolute numbers.
How many keywords does one seed produce?
Between a handful and a few hundred, depending on the seed and the expansions you enable. Each probe returns up to fifteen suggestions and duplicates are removed across probes, so the count is distinct ideas — the number you are billed for.
Can I run it for a specific country and language?
Yes. country and lang are passed to the autocomplete endpoint, so an Italian seed returns the Italian suggestion set, not a translation of the US one.
Is there a free keyword research API?
Every account gets $2 of credit every month with no card, which is about 10,000 delivered keywords on this endpoint at $0.0002 each. It renews monthly, and a run that delivers nothing is never billed — so a failed or blocked attempt does not eat the allowance.
How much does one run cost?
Multiply the rows you actually receive by $0.0002. A run capped at 500 keywords — the maximum for this collector — costs $0.1 if every row comes back, and less when the source has fewer. Volume tiers take up to 30% off, and GET /v1/scraper/collectors returns the price your key actually pays.
Does it give search volume?
No. It returns the suggestions Google actually serves, with Google's own relevance score for ordering. Volume estimates come from ad auction data, which only Keyword Planner and tools licensing similar data have. The two are complements: one tells you size, this tells you phrasing.
Why does the probe field matter?
It records which query surfaced each suggestion, which turns a flat list into an intent map. A term that only ever appears behind "how to" is an informational cluster; the same term behind "best" or "vs" is a commercial one. Grouping by probe separates them with no model involved.
Run the keyword research API now
$2 of free credit every month, no card. Your key returns its own prices from GET /v1/scraper/collectors.