pytrends is archived. The README says so. A modern replacement is a choice, not a rename. Four jobs show up in every migration thread: stay on unofficial Google from the laptop, pay a SERP vendor to reprint Explore, apply for Google's alpha, or call a hosted API that also has other sources. This page is the shopping list. TrendReq versus mode lives on Trends API vs pytrends.
The archived client
TrendReq and interest_over_time were a de-facto standard. They bound a generation of notebooks to Google's undocumented endpoints. After archive, those notebooks fail in two ways: the package is unmaintained, and Google still 429s the IP. Forking the repo does not add steam.
Do not keep pytrends in a lockfile "until it works again." It will not be un-archived by hope.
Official alpha
Google's Trends API is application-gated. Approved callers get consistently scaled interest, not the website's per-request 0-100, across a rolling window Google documents. The stop is the waitlist, Google-only coverage, and no Trending Now in the alpha story this site has already recorded. Shoppers who want that grade of first-party data should apply and ignore the rest of this list.
Maintained scrape libraries
| If the stack is | Start here | Stop when |
|---|---|---|
| Python, notebooks | trendspy or trendspyg | A 429 on the laptop is unacceptable, or a second platform appears |
| R | gtrendsR | The job leaves R or needs Amazon |
| Node | npm google-trends-api | The package goes quiet or the job needs a live Steam board |
Those rows are Google. They are closer to pytrends than any hosted API because they still scrape.
SERP and scrape vendors
SerpApi, DataForSEO, Bright Data, Decodo, ScrapingBee, and Apify reprint Explore or fetch the URL. Pick one only if the company already pays that vendor. Do not pick all of them. Each is a different JSON.
Hosted multi-source POST
Pick this row when the reason for leaving pytrends was not "need a new Python class" but "need a contract." Same key for google search, youtube, tiktok, or get_top_trends. Parse the body string. Official Python is pip install trendsapi on the SDK hub. Official-grade shopping, if first-party Google is the constraint, continues on the official replacement page.