Citare Tools · Free
Keyword Difficulty Checker
Score any keyword 0-100 for organic ranking difficulty. Plus monthly search volume, CPC, competition level, search intent, and 12-month volume history. Same data shape as Ahrefs KD or Moz Keyword Difficulty, free.
Free. No signup. 10 countries. Cached 24h per (keyword, country).
Frequently asked
What does the Keyword Difficulty score measure?
A 0-100 number estimating how hard it is to rank in the top 10 organic results for the keyword. The score is computed by DataForSEO based on the link strength and on-page signals of the current top 10 SERP for the chosen country. 0-29 = easy (most new sites can rank with focused content + a few quality links), 30-49 = medium (good content + active link-building), 50-69 = hard (established site + sustained effort), 70+ = very hard (major brand or authority site territory).
Why does country matter for KD?
Different SERPs have different competition. "car insurance" in the US is dominated by Geico/Progressive (KD ~75); in India, it's a mix of younger brands (Acko, Digit, Policybazaar — KD ~50). Same keyword, very different ranking difficulty. Always score against the SERP your audience actually sees — i.e. the country they search from.
How does this compare to Ahrefs KD or Moz Keyword Difficulty?
Same concept, different scoring model. Ahrefs KD uses Ahrefs' own backlink graph + a calibrated regression. Moz KD uses Moz's. DataForSEO uses theirs. All three correlate strongly for any given keyword — Ahrefs KD 50 and DataForSEO KD 50 typically mean the same difficulty in practice — but exact numbers can differ by ±10. The bands (easy / medium / hard / very-hard) are more comparable across tools than the raw numbers.
Why is the KD shown as "—" sometimes?
DataForSEO doesn't compute KD for very low-volume keywords (typically <10 searches/mo) because the SERP signal is too noisy. It also returns no value when the keyword hasn't been seeded in their graph for the chosen country yet. You can still target these keywords; they're just not difficulty-quantified. Use the SERP Checker to manually eyeball the top 10 in that case.
What's the difference between Competition and Difficulty?
Competition (0.0-1.0 + level Low/Medium/High) is Google Ads' paid-search competition score — how many advertisers bid on the keyword. Difficulty is the organic ranking score. A keyword can be high-CPC + high-competition for paid (lots of advertisers want it) AND low-KD for organic (no strong organic content yet) — common in newer commercial niches. Look at both to decide between paid + organic strategies.
What does Search Intent mean?
Google's classification of why someone searches for the keyword: "informational" (looking to learn), "commercial" (researching to buy), "transactional" (ready to buy), "navigational" (looking for a specific site). For ranking, intent matters as much as KD — a low-KD informational query and a high-KD transactional query are very different opportunities. Always match content type to intent.