# Competitor PPC keywords: the Google Ads keywords a domain bids on, with CPC, from SpyFu or Semrush

Give your agent a competitor's domain and get the Google Ads keywords it bids on back as rows: keyword, search volume, cost per click, estimated monthly spend and who else bids on it. SpyFu and Semrush answer through one treg.to key, from $0.002 at the provider's own rate with no markup, priced per row rather than per seat. Both are estimates built from a crawl of the ads they saw, not Google's own numbers, and the page says so before the comparison does.

## What's the best way to ask ChatGPT?

Setup line (paste into any agent): `set up treg — https://treg.to/llms.txt`

Then ask: "Using treg, get the top 200 Google Ads keywords that competitor.com bids on in the US, show me the price first, then drop their brand terms and give me the twenty highest-volume keywords we are not bidding on, with CPC."

- **Give a domain, and a country** The call takes the advertiser's domain and a country code. A brand that advertises in five markets has five different keyword lists.
- **Cap the rows** SpyFu's page size defaults to 5 and goes to 10,000, and every row is billed. Two hundred rows is a strategy; ten thousand is a bill.
- **Strip their brand** Every advertiser bids on its own name. Ask the agent to drop those rows before it ranks the rest, or the top of the list is noise.
- **Ask for the price first** treg.to returns the rate before the call, so the agent can say what a full pull across ten competitors will spend.

## Why go through treg.to

- **One key, not 9 accounts** treg.to holds the provider keys. Neither you nor the agent sees them.
- **Price before the call** The provider's own rate, $0.000 markup, from a prepaid balance.
- **No subscription, no seats** Charged per call. $1.00 free per new team, no card to start.
- **Your own keys are free** Already pay Hunter? Register it and those calls are never metered.
- **Switch by changing a word** Another provider is a different word in the prompt, not a new integration.
- **Nothing to integrate** No SDK, no OAuth dance per vendor, no seats.

## Behind the scenes: what ChatGPT sees before it calls

treg.to does not choose for you. It hands ChatGPT this comparison and it picks, or you tell it how.

### Which competitor PPC keywords API is cheapest per row?

- Cheapest per result: SpyFu at $0.002 (`spyfu.google.domain.paid_keywords`)

### Which one is the most reliable?

- SpyFu: 100% over 53 calls, 207ms median

Measured on treg.to traffic; not a controlled benchmark.

### How do SpyFu and Semrush compare?

| Provider | Price | Accepts | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| SpyFu | $0.002 per result | query, pageSize, startingRow, sortBy, sortOrder, countryCode | unverified |
| Semrush | no dollar rate published | type, domain, database, display_limit, display_offset, display_sort | unverified |

Endpoints:

- `semrush.google.domain.paid_keywords`: treg call semrush.google.domain.paid_keywords
- `spyfu.google.domain.paid_keywords`: treg call spyfu.google.domain.paid_keywords

## What people actually struggle with

PPC tool threads are heavily seeded: of the ~95 distinct Reddit and X posts read in August 2026, one vendor's cluster ran to seven posts across three subreddits and two listicles were posted twice each. These five are advertisers and SEOs asking on their own behalf.

**Google's own report does not answer the question**

> "Auction Insights only provides a campaign summary, which lacks detail." (r/PPC: https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/1gdyefi/see_if_competitor_is_bidding_on_a_specific/)

What this page can do about it: It names the overlapping advertisers and stops. The per-domain rows here are the detail it lacks: which keywords, at what estimated CPC, against how many other bidders, one call per competitor.

**The estimate missed the other bidders**

> "I tried Spyfu, and it was a little inaccurate. It showed me that only my brand was bidding on a specific keyword" (r/PPC: https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/1gdyefi/see_if_competitor_is_bidding_on_a_specific/)

What this page can do about it: A crawl only records the ads it saw, and small or local advertisers fall through. No table fixes that. Pull the same keyword from both providers and treat a bidder both report as real; treat one nobody reports as unknown, not absent.

**Do you have to buy both tools?**

> "Given Spyfu is only $9/month, do you think there is a case to be made to just purchase both?" (r/PPC, 35 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/wmvyd4/spyfu_vs_semrush_for_ppc/)

What this page can do about it: Through treg.to nobody buys either seat. SpyFu is metered per row on treg.to's key; Semrush runs on a plan you already hold. Calling both for one domain costs rows, not subscriptions.

**The two tools do not agree with each other**

> "one site I put into SEMrush shows 12.6k in traffic while Spyfu shows 3.2k" (r/bigseo, 8 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/bigseo/comments/4b4gwi/could_someone_explain_to_me_semrush_numbers_vs/)

What this page can do about it: Different crawls, different models, different numbers, and neither is Google's. The page shows the two side by side and leaves the choice to you; it does not average them or pick a winner.

**The subscriptions are priced for agencies, not for one question**

> "I wanted to do some keyword research yesterday and was surprised by how expensive Ahrefs / Semrush were." (r/TechSEO, 40 points: https://www.reddit.com/r/TechSEO/comments/1r7qifp/open_source_seo_tool_that_uses_your_own/)

What this page can do about it: One competitor's keyword list is a per-row call, a fraction of a cent for the first page, with the rate printed before the agent spends it. The seat-priced tools stay on their own sites, linked, not restated.


## What actually differs

- SpyFu bills per row and defaults to five. At $2.00 per 1,000 rows, a first look at a domain is a fraction of a cent and a ten-thousand-row dump is $20, so the page size is the cost dial. Rows carry the keyword, search volume, ranking difficulty, monthly clicks, broad and exact CPC, estimated monthly cost and the count of competing advertisers, and the endpoint has answered every call treg.to has measured so far.
- Semrush prices in API units bought up front, 20 per line on the current view and 100 per line for a past date, and publishes no dollar rate for a unit, so the page prints no price for it. Its rows add the position and the live ad copy, which SpyFu does not carry. Send a display limit: the default is 10,000 lines, and an agent that loops without one spends real units. It has not been called live through treg.to yet.
- Both are crawl estimates, and the research is full of the consequences: a local advertiser missing entirely, a tool showing one bidder on a keyword that had several, two tools disagreeing on a domain's traffic by a factor of four. No comparison table settles which is right for your niche. The cheap test is to pull the same domain from both and treat the overlap as the confident set.

## How do you find the keywords a competitor bids on?

Google will not tell you. Auction Insights shows which advertisers overlapped with your campaign, not which keywords they bought, and Keyword Planner's competition index counts your own ads. The third-party answer is a crawl: SpyFu and Semrush sample Google results, record which domains' ads appear against which queries, and estimate volume, CPC and spend from there. That is what a competitor PPC keywords API returns, one domain at a time, and why two tools will not agree with each other or with the advertiser's own account.

## Questions

**Is this Google's own data?** No. Google publishes no per-keyword view of another advertiser's account. SpyFu and Semrush estimate it from the ads their crawls observed, which is why the monthly cost column is an estimate and a competitor's max bid is not on the page at all.

**Do I need a SpyFu or Semrush subscription?** Not for SpyFu: treg.to serves it on its own key, metered per row from your team's balance at SpyFu's rate with $0.000 added. Semrush's API units come with a Semrush plan, so that row runs on your own Semrush key, never metered by treg.to.

**Can I see a competitor's budget or impression share?** No. The rows carry an estimated monthly spend per keyword, built from volume, CPC and observed position. Impression share, bids and search terms Google does not disclose are not in any third-party tool, and this page will not imply they are.

**Which provider should my agent use?** SpyFu for a priced, verified per-row pull; Semrush when you hold a plan and want the ad copy. treg.to shows both side by side with the rate and the measured success; it compares, it does not route or fail over for you.

HTML version: https://treg.to/use-cases/keywords-a-domain-bids-on