SEO Data Bench/Guides/free-seo-data-apis
What SEO data you can actually get for free, and where free runs out
Free tiers, one-off grants and trials for Google results, keyword volume and backlinks, read from each provider's own pricing page on one day: how many calls, for how long, and the first paid step.
Written for people asking: Can I use SERP API for free?What are some free alternatives to SerpApi?Is there a free API for Google search?How to get keyword search volume for free?Where do you get Semrush API access and what does it cost?
Google itself sells no public API for organic results, and the closest official product is shutting: the Custom Search JSON API overview now says it is closed to new customers, with existing customers given until 1 January 2027 to move. What remains genuinely free and recurring is small: SerpApi's 250 searches a month, Scrape.do's 1,000 successful calls a month, Bright Data's 5,000 credits a month, and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools plus Search Console for your own verified sites only. Serper's 2,500 queries and ScrapingDog's 200 credits are one-off grants, not monthly. DataForSEO gives a $1 test credit and then wants a $50 minimum top-up. For keyword volume the only free source of Google's own numbers is Google Ads Keyword Planner, which needs a billing-complete Ads account. At a few hundred queries a month a free tier covers you; past that the cheapest paid route we measured is $0.002 a query.
Why this page exists
Every provider’s pricing page says “free” somewhere, and the word covers three different things: a recurring monthly allowance, a one-time grant when you sign up, and a time-limited trial. The difference decides whether you can run a weekly job forever or only once. Everything below was read from the providers’ own pages on 17 September 2026, with the URL beside each claim.
Genuinely free and recurring
| Provider | What you get free | Card? | Limits | First paid step |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SerpApi | 250 searches a month | unknown | 50 searches an hour; only successful searches count | $25/month for 1,000 |
| Scrape.do | 1,000 successful calls a month | no | 5 concurrent | paid tiers by volume |
| Bright Data SERP | 5,000 credits a month, reset on the 1st, unused forfeited | no | 1,000 requests a minute while unfunded | pay as you go |
| Ahrefs Webmaster Tools | Free forever on your own verified sites: 1,000 backlinks and 1,000 keywords visible, 5,000 crawl credits a project a month | unknown | UI only, no API | Ahrefs plans |
| Google Search Console | Free, your own verified sites: links report, queries, index status, and an API | no | link tables capped at 1,000 rows and described as a sample | — |
| Keyword Surfer | Volume and CPC in the browser, “100% Free. Forever.” | no | no API | — |
One-off grants, not tiers
- Serper: 2,500 free queries on signup, no card. Its public pricing page returns a 404, so the paid step could not be read.
- ScrapingDog: 200 credits, one concurrent connection, no card. Then $40 a month for 200,000 credits.
- DataForSEO: “upon registration free $1 credit for API testing will be added to your account balance”, roughly 833 priority SERP calls or 20,000 keyword rows, plus a free sandbox. The minimum top-up after that is $50, and funds do not expire.
- SE Ranking: a 14-day trial with 100,000 API credits, no card; the credits die with the trial. Then a $50 a month wallet for 250,000.
- Serpstat: a 7-day trial. No freemium on the current pricing page; API access starts at $100 a month with 200,000 to 400,000 credits and a 1 request a second cap.
What Google itself offers, and what is closing
There is no official Google API that returns Google’s organic web results to the public. The nearest official product is the Custom Search JSON API, and two things about it matter:
- It queries a Programmable Search Engine you configure, not Google’s results page. The whole-web configuration is marked as no longer supported for new creation.
- Its overview page now carries the banner “The Custom Search JSON API is closed to new customers”, and “Existing Custom Search JSON API customers have until January 1, 2027 to transition to an alternative solution.” For existing customers the free quota remains 100 queries a day, then $5 per 1,000 up to a 10,000 a day ceiling.
- For what comes next, the same page (read again on 28 September 2026) says “Vertex AI Search is a favorable alternative for searching up to 50 domains”, and asks anyone whose use case “necessitates full web search” to contact Google about its full web search solution. Neither is a self-serve replacement for querying the whole web; Vertex AI Search’s price was not readable from Google’s pricing page when we fetched it and is recorded as unknown.
Google Trends has no open API either: its alpha is application-only, and the public interface returns a 0 to 100 interest index rather than absolute volume.
For keyword volume, Google Ads Keyword Planner is the free source of Google’s own numbers, and Google’s help pages require a billing-complete account for the keyword-ideas features. Note what is not stated on any Google page we could fetch: the widely repeated claim that you must run an active campaign to see exact volumes rather than ranges appears only in community threads, so we record it as unverified rather than as fact. Our keyword coverage benchmark found that DataForSEO’s search-volume endpoint matched Keyword Planner to the digit on all thirty shared keywords, so the paid route and the free one return the same numbers.
Backlinks
There is no free backlink API for sites you do not own. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools and Search Console both give you your own site’s links at no cost, in the browser and, for Search Console, through an API. For third-party domains the cheapest route we measured was $0.0025 a domain summary on Serpstat, against $0.013 on Moz and $0.018 on SE Ranking; Moz’s own API pricing page could not be fetched, so its free allowance is recorded as unknown. See the backlink agreement benchmark for what those counts are worth.
Semrush and Ahrefs: what API access costs before the first call
Neither sells API calls on their own; both attach the API to a subscription. Read from the providers’ pages on 26 October 2026, which is why they are absent from the paid-route benchmarks on this site.
| Semrush | Ahrefs | |
|---|---|---|
| Plan needed | The Standard API (Analytics and Projects) “is available to users of the SEO Toolkit who have a Business subscription” (API access, knowledge base). The pricing page on the same day listed SEO ($139 a month), Starter ($199), Pro+ ($299) and Advanced (on request), with “Advanced API data integration” on Advanced only and “MCP access” from Starter, and no plan called Business; confirm which tier carries the Standard API before paying. | Lite and above. The pricing page lists “API and MCP access” on Lite ($129 a month), Standard ($249) and Advanced ($449); Enterprise ($1,499 a month, annual commitment) has “uncapped API access”. |
| Calls included | None. After upgrading “the number of units will still be zero”; units are bought separately in packages of 2,000,000, 5,000,000, 10,000,000 or 20,000,000, renew on the plan’s billing day, and unused units expire. The price of a package is not on any Semrush page we could read; it appears inside the account’s API Units tab. | A monthly pool of API units shared by API v3, MCP and Ahrefs Connect: 200,000 on Lite, 800,000 on Standard, 2,000,000 on Advanced, custom on Enterprise (About API v3, Getting started with Ahrefs MCP). Ahrefs’ September 2026 roundup (Japanese edition, 30 September 2026) says these are double the previous 100,000, 400,000, 1,000,000 and 2,000,000, raised as MCP usage grew 22 times since the start of the year. |
| What a call costs | Per response line: 10 units a line for live Domain Organic Search Keywords, 50 for historical data; a Backlinks call is quoted at 40 units a line. | At least 50 units a request, more with rows and fields; at most 100 rows a request on Lite, 250 on Standard, 500 on Advanced. Extra units are sold only on Enterprise. |
So the first Ahrefs call costs one $129 Lite month, and the 200,000 units it brings are 4,000 minimum-cost requests. The first Semrush call costs a Business-tier subscription plus a 2,000,000-unit package at a price you learn after upgrading; those units are 200,000 lines of live organic keyword data. Neither pool is pay-per-call: unused Semrush units expire, and an Ahrefs plan is billed whether or not the agent runs that month.
When free is enough
A weekly rank check on 50 queries is 200 searches a month, inside SerpApi’s free plan. A daily check on the same 50 is 1,500, which is not. The switch points, at the prices measured on cohort v1:
| Monthly volume | Cheapest route |
|---|---|
| Under 250 Google searches | SerpApi free plan |
| Under 1,000 | Scrape.do free plan, or SerpApi at $25 |
| 1,000 to 50,000 | pay per call: $0.002 a query on a live route, so 10,000 queries is $20 with no subscription |
| Keyword volume, any size | Google Ads Keyword Planner free, or $0.09 per bulk call of up to 1,000 keywords |
| Backlinks, own site | Search Console and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, free |
| Backlinks, other domains | $0.0025 a domain |
What this page cannot tell you
Prices and allowances as published on 17 September 2026; several providers had moved their pricing pages since our last check, and Moz blocked automated reads entirely. Free-tier terms change more often than paid ones. Whether a free tier permits commercial use is in each provider’s terms, not on its pricing page, and we did not read those.
Next step
- What the paid routes actually return: SERP completeness, keyword coverage, backlink agreement, latency and cost.
- Whether the AI Overview is available at all: is there an API for Google AI Overviews.
Questions this page answers
Can I use a SERP API for free?
Yes, at small volume. SerpApi's free plan is 250 searches a month at 50 an hour, Scrape.do allows 1,000 successful calls a month, and Bright Data grants 5,000 credits a month that reset on the 1st and do not roll over. Serper's 2,500 queries and ScrapingDog's 200 credits are one-time signup grants rather than monthly allowances.
Is there a free API for Google search?
Not from Google, for organic results. Its Custom Search JSON API queries a Programmable Search Engine you configure rather than Google's own results page, and its overview page now states it is closed to new customers, with existing users given until 1 January 2027 to transition. Every other route is a third party fetching the results page.
How do I get keyword search volume for free?
Google Ads Keyword Planner is the only free source of Google's own numbers, and it needs an Ads account with billing details entered. Chrome extensions such as Keyword Surfer show volume free in the browser but have no API. DataForSEO resells the same Google Ads numbers, and on our cohort it matched Keyword Planner exactly, but it needs a $50 minimum top-up after the $1 test credit.
What replaces the Google Custom Search JSON API for broad web search: Vertex AI Search or a SERP API?
For broad web search, a third-party SERP API. Google's own overview names Vertex AI Search as the alternative for searching up to 50 domains, and tells anyone who needs full web search to contact Google about a separate solution, so there is no self-serve Google replacement for whole-web queries. Existing customers have until 1 January 2027 to move.
How do you get Semrush or Ahrefs API access, and what does it cost before the first call?
Ahrefs: any paid plan from Lite at $129 a month includes API and MCP access, with a shared pool of 200,000 API units a month (800,000 on Standard, 2,000,000 on Advanced), figures Ahrefs doubled on every plan in September 2026; a request costs at least 50 units. Semrush: the Standard API needs the SEO Toolkit Business subscription, comes with zero units, and units are bought separately in packages from 2,000,000 at a price Semrush does not publish; one response line of live organic keywords costs 10 units, historical 50. Read from both providers' pages on 26 October 2026.
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