Google Trends data

pytrends is dead. Here's the replacement that works.

If your pytrends scripts started returning 429s and empty responses, it's not you — Google broke the endpoints the library depended on, and the project is unmaintained. This is a drop-in replacement for the data, not the library: the same interest-over-time, related-queries, related-topics, and region breakdowns, served as JSON from a maintained scraper that gets fixed when Google changes things.

pytrends vs. this, honestly

pytrends was free; this costs money ($0.004/result — a heavy research session costs cents). What you get for that: it works today, it returns the same surfaces pytrends did, nobody has to babysit proxies or rotate user agents, and breakage is someone else's same-day problem. If you only need one manual lookup, use trends.google.com — it's free. This is for people who need Trends data in a pipeline: SEO tooling, content research, market monitoring, academic work.

From Python, in six lines

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("4l3c/google-trends-scraper").call(
    run_input={"searchTerms": ["ai agents"], "timeframe": "today 12-m"})
items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items

FAQ

Why did pytrends stop working?

Google changed the private endpoints pytrends relied on, and the library is no longer maintained — requests now return 429s and empty payloads regardless of rate limiting. It isn't your code.

What does this return that pytrends returned?

The same four core surfaces: interest over time, interest by region, related queries, and related topics — as clean JSON, with multi-keyword comparison, timeframe and geo parameters.

How do I call it from Python?

Via the Apify Python client: pip install apify-client, then call the actor with your keywords and read results from the dataset — about 6 lines of code. Example on the store page.

What does it cost?

$0.004 per result row. A typical interest-over-time query for one keyword costs about half a cent. No subscription, no proxy fees.

Why does this keep working when pytrends broke?

It's maintained commercially — when Google changes something, fixing it the same day is the product. Runs on Apify's infrastructure with managed proxies, so there are no datacenter-IP blocks to fight.