# DataForSEO API, or a product on top of it

> netweft's own data provider, and the honest case for skipping netweft and calling it directly. What the layer adds, and when it adds nothing.

Source: https://netweft.com/compare/dataforseo

netweft runs on DataForSEO's data: it is the product around the API, for teams that do not want to build one. DataForSEO is where netweft's real data comes from — that is documented on the pricing page, not buried. So this comparison is not netweft against a competitor; it is netweft against calling the provider yourself, which is a legitimate thing to do and the right thing to do for some teams.

Nothing below states DataForSEO's price, counts its features or rates its data.

## What the pricing tells you

**netweft.** One credit is $0.0001 of raw vendor cost, and the rate card names the credits for every operation before it runs. The markup is therefore a number you can compute, not one you have to infer from an invoice.

**DataForSEO.** You are billed by the provider at the provider's rate, per call, in arrears. There is no ceiling, no reservation and no refusal — a loop with a bug is a loop that bills.

## What happens to a response

**netweft.** Every result is written as a row with the moment it was taken. A second request for the same week reads the stored observation rather than paying for the lookup again, and the history that builds up is the product.

**DataForSEO.** A response is a response. Storing it, dating it, deduplicating it, and making twelve weeks of it into a series is work that belongs to whatever you build on top.

## What runs on a schedule

**netweft.** Scheduled rank checks run on a worker, per project, against the tracked keyword set, and settle credits per check. Search Console and GA4 sit beside the results, connected per project.

**DataForSEO.** Scheduling, retries, rate limiting and back-off are yours to write, as is anything that joins vendor data to first-party Google data.

## What a machine can read

**netweft.** The whole HTTP API is described by an OpenAPI 3.1 document, and there is an MCP server at POST /mcp under a scoped API key, so an agent can read a workspace's audits, keywords, rankings and project overview without a person in the loop.

**DataForSEO.** An HTTP API is normally available on the higher tiers, priced in its own units. An MCP surface, where one exists, is a separate product decision from the API.

## What netweft does not do

- Raw access to every endpoint the provider offers — netweft exposes the subset it stores against
- Your own choice of provider, or several at once
- Per-call pricing at the provider's own rate, with no markup

## Pick DataForSEO when

If the plan is to build the storage, the scheduler, the cache, the deduplication and the cost controls yourself, call the provider directly. That is the honest answer: netweft is those things, and if you are going to write them anyway, the layer is not worth paying for.