Conductor API review
API over your own tracked data
Conductor is an enterprise AEO and SEO platform, and its API is best understood as a way to read your own account from outside it. The Data API returns rankings for the keywords you track, plus brand mentions, citations, sentiment and full responses for the AI prompts you track. Beyond the Content API's topic SERP lookups, nothing in it researches keywords or domains you have not configured.
People still search for the Searchlight API, and the name needs untangling. Archived copies of Conductor's developer portal carried that title in 2015 and read simply Conductor API by 2022. Its v3 endpoints for accounts, web properties, tracked searches and rank reports survive as the Legacy Reporting API, which the Data API, launched on 17 February 2026, replaces. No shutdown date is published.
Two published numbers shape any integration. Each API key is limited to 2 calls a second and 5,000 a day across every endpoint, and polling an asynchronous query counts against both. The pricing page lists Essentials, Growth and Enterprise with allowances but no prices, and includes the Data API only on Enterprise. The MCP server comes with all three.
Our scorecard
Our editorial read across six dimensions, scored 1 to 5. This is our own assessment, not an aggregate of user reviews, and it is deliberately kept out of the page's structured data.
- Data coverage3/5
Deep AI search data and ranking history, but only for what your account tracks. No open keyword or domain research by API.
- Pricing2/5
Allowances are published and prices are not, and the Data API is an extra below Enterprise.
- Documentation4/5
Public OpenAPI spec, playgrounds and a dated changelog. Marked down because the rate-limit page and the spec disagree.
- Ease of integration3/5
Bearer tokens help, but every Data API call is async, pages come one at a time and weekly windows must run Sunday to Saturday.
- Reliability3/5
No uptime figure published. Breaking changes arrive with migration notes, and the legacy host and auth are kept alive.
- Support3/5
Access and allocations run through a CSM or account manager, and practitioners describe the sales approach as aggressive.
An editorial read, not an aggregate of user reviews, and deliberately kept out of this page's structured data.
Conductor API in their own words
From Conductor API's own YouTube channel. Vendor marketing rather than an independent review, included because it is the quickest way to see the product before you sign up.
What you can pull
AI Search: Brands
Included on Enterprise, add-on below
Mention and visibility metrics for your brand and competitors in AI answers to the prompts you track, sliceable by engine, topic, intent, persona and prompt group
AI Search: Citations
Included on Enterprise, add-on below
The URLs and domains AI engines cite when answering your tracked prompts, with citation ownership and URL filters
AI Search: Sentiments and Response
Included on Enterprise, add-on below
Each sentiment mention with its snippet and source, and the full response text each engine returned for a tracked prompt
AI Search: Fan Out
Included on Enterprise, add-on below
The sub-searches an AI engine ran before answering a tracked prompt
Keyword Rankings
Included on Enterprise, add-on below
Positions, result types and optional monthly search volume for tracked keywords, daily or weekly, in windows of up to seven days
Highest Ranking URL per Keyword
Included on Enterprise, add-on below
The best-ranking page on your site for each tracked keyword
Configuration endpoints
Shared by the Data and Content APIs
Accounts, web properties, comparison sets, keyword groups, prompts, topics and page groups, so requests use real IDs instead of hardcoded ones
Content API
Needs Creator; drafts use your allotment
Drafts, content insights, generated outlines and metadata, content scores, internal link suggestions and ranking URLs for topics
Who Conductor API is for
Enterprise teams already running Conductor who want its AI search and ranking data in a warehouse, BI tool or agent. If leadership asks how often ChatGPT cites your pages and those prompts are tracked in Conductor, the citations and response endpoints answer it directly, and the MCP server lets non-technical colleagues ask the same thing inside Claude or Copilot.
Skip it if you need data about things you have not set up to track. No endpoint researches open keywords or competitor domains, 5,000 calls a day per key rules out high-volume collection, and no price is published, so a team that only wants an API ends up buying a platform first.
Strengths and limits
What it does well
- A more complete public reference than seoClarity offers: an OpenAPI spec, interactive playgrounds and a dated changelog with migration notes.
- AI search data with depth, returning citations, sentiment snippets, full engine responses and fan-out sub-searches rather than one share-of-voice score.
- Published rate limits, so a pipeline can be sized before a contract is signed.
- An official remote MCP server on every plan, with documented setups for ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and Perplexity, and overages that pause rather than bill.
- Bearer-token authentication since July 2026, with the old key-and-signature scheme and the api-universal host still honoured.
- Configuration endpoints expose account, web property, keyword group and prompt IDs, so integrations stop hardcoding them.
- A Content API that brings drafting, scoring and internal link suggestions into a CMS or workflow tool.
Where it falls short
- The Data API only reads what your account tracks. Research on new keywords, prompts or competitor domains happens in the platform or with another provider.
- No price is published for any plan, and the Data API is an add-on on Essentials and Growth.
- Each key is capped at 2 calls a second and 5,000 a day across all endpoints, and every poll counts toward both.
- The docs disagree: the rate-limit page sets that global cap, while the spec lists per-endpoint ceilings of up to 5,000 polls a minute that the cap makes unreachable.
- Everything is asynchronous with sequential pagination, and keyword ranking queries are limited to seven-day windows.
- MCP use is capped at 30 requests an hour per user, against a yearly tool-call allocation visible only inside the app.
- Data API access requires an Intelligence subscription and the Content API requires Creator, whatever the AgentStack FAQ says about data-only options to come.
Conductor API pricing
Conductor publishes a pricing page and no prices. Essentials, Growth and Enterprise are defined by allowances instead: 500, 5,000 and 60,000 or more tracked keywords, 5, 25 and 75 or more competitors, and rising allowances of drafts, analysed pages, monitored pages and AI search credits. Essentials is the only card with a Try for Free button, and Conductor advertises the trial as three weeks with no card.
The API sits on top of those plans. The comparison table marks the Data API as available on Essentials and Growth, which reads as an extra line item, and included on Enterprise. The docs add that Data API access needs a Conductor Intelligence subscription and the Content API needs Creator. The MCP server, LLM apps and developer tooling are included on all three.
Usage is metered in three places. AI search tracking consumes credits, which the platform forecasts before you add prompts. MCP tool calls draw on a yearly allocation that pauses when exhausted instead of billing overages. And every API call, polls included, comes out of a 5,000-a-day key budget, which caps what one integration can move whatever the plan.
Without a rate card, compare structure instead. seoClarity publishes a $2,500 monthly entry price and charges for research queries; Conductor publishes neither a price nor any research queries to charge for. Ask for the Data API add-on price, the size of your MCP allocation and whether a data-only plan exists yet, since the AgentStack FAQ says one is coming.
Essentials
Quote only
Try for Free button, no card
- 500 tracked keywords and 5 tracked competitors
- MCP server and LLM apps included
- Data API marked available, not included
- The only plan with a Try for Free button
Growth
Quote only
Starts with a demo
- 5,000 tracked keywords and 25 competitors
- 2,500 AI search credits a year
- Data API still an add-on
- Adds SSO and Adobe Analytics
Enterprise
Quote only
Through sales
- 60,000+ tracked keywords listed on the card
- Data API included
- Custom AI search credits and draft allowance
- Role-based enterprise permissions
Request example
A minimal call against the live endpoint, with credentials read from the environment rather than pasted inline.
# Submit an async query. WEEKLY windows run Sunday to Saturday, and
# account_id comes from the accounts_config endpoint.
curl -s -X POST "https://api.conductor.com/data-api/v1/async/ai_search_citations" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $CONDUCTOR_API_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"account_id": 101,
"start_date": "2026-08-30",
"end_date": "2026-09-05",
"collection_frequency": "WEEKLY",
"ai_search_engines": ["chatgptsearch", "perplexity"]
}'
# A 202 returns an executionId. Poll the same endpoint with only that ID
# until executionState is COMPLETED, then fetch pages with nextPageId,
# one page at a time.
curl -s -X POST "https://api.conductor.com/data-api/v1/async/ai_search_citations" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $CONDUCTOR_API_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"executionId": "'"$EXECUTION_ID"'"}'
# Submits and polls both count against 2 calls a second and 5,000 a
# day per key, so space the polling out. Integrations built on the
# older api-universal.conductor.com host still work.Rate limits and quotas
- 2 API calls per second per key, shared across all endpoints.
- 5,000 API calls per day per key.
- Spec ceilings per endpoint: 40 submits a minute (5 recommended), 5,000 polls a minute (1,000 recommended).
- Keyword ranking queries cover at most 7 days; weekly windows start on a Sunday and end on a Saturday.
- Pagination is sequential; parallel paging is not supported.
- Legacy request signatures are valid for 5 minutes.
- MCP: 30 requests an hour per user and 120 a minute system-wide.
- MCP tool calls are allocated per contract year and pause, without overage charges, when used up.
- Drafts generated through the Content API consume the plan's draft allotment.
Third-party reviews
Scores read from each source on 2026-09-13. We report them as-is and publish no rating of our own.
This score rates the Conductor platform as a whole, not its API. The listing also predates the rebrand and still carries reviews written about Conductor Searchlight and the acquired ContentKing monitor.
What practitioners say on Reddit
Reddit discusses Conductor the platform, never the API. Across r/bigseo and r/SEO since 2021 the recurring themes are cost against Ahrefs or Semrush, whether a small team needs an enterprise suite at all, and sales outreach that several buyers call aggressive.
Opinions on the product split. One agency practitioner says every client who adopted it ended contracts early, while an in-house team that ran a formal evaluation ranked it second only to Semrush. A 2024 thread from a Searchmetrics customer says a long-term licence was switched off after the acquisition; that is one unverified account, and the fullest reply came from a former Searchmetrics employee.
In 2026 the conversation moved to AEO, where one practitioner argues Conductor, like Semrush and BrightEdge, measures AI answers through a keyword rank-tracking lens. The only head-to-head with seoClarity we found, a 2022 r/bigseo RFP, went to seoClarity and is quoted on that page.
“Every client I've had adopt it, has moved away from it and ended contracts early.”
r/SEO on Reddit“Functionality-wise, Conductor would have been our next choice after SEMrush. Their sales tactics are definitely aggressive though, just as someone else has commented.”
r/bigseo on Reddit“Conductor is ultimately using the same methodology as Semrush and Brightedge. They are all approaching AIO/GEO from a keyword centric rank tracking perspective, because that's their pedigree.”
r/DigitalMarketing on Reddit“Conductor is more like Brightedge. Very focused on reporting and tailored towards Enterprise customers.”
r/bigseo on Reddit
Verdict
Buy the Data API to get Conductor's AI search tracking out of Conductor. Citations, sentiment snippets, full responses and fan-out sub-searches for the prompts you track are richer than a visibility score, the reference is public, and the MCP server puts the same data in front of people who will never write a query.
For data about anything you have not configured, this is the wrong tool. There is no research endpoint, 5,000 calls a day per key is modest, and below Enterprise the Data API costs extra at a price nobody publishes. Teams that want open keyword or SERP data should pair a platform with DataForSEO or SE Ranking.
If you came looking for the Searchlight API, an old integration probably still runs: the v3 endpoints and key-and-signature auth are documented as legacy, with no shutdown date. Plan the move to the Data API anyway, because every endpoint Conductor added in 2026 went there.
Conductor API FAQ
How much does Conductor cost?
Conductor does not publish a price for any plan. Its pricing page defines Essentials, Growth and Enterprise by allowance instead, from 500 tracked keywords and 5 competitors on Essentials to 60,000 or more keywords on Enterprise. Essentials carries the free trial button, advertised as three weeks with no card; Growth starts with a demo and Enterprise with a sales call.What happened to the Conductor Searchlight API?
The name went; the endpoints stayed. Conductor's developer portal was titled Searchlight API in 2015 archives and Conductor API by 2022. Its v3 endpoints for accounts, web properties, tracked searches and rank reports are now documented as the Legacy Reporting API, still authenticated by key and MD5 signature. The docs say the Data API replaces it, with no shutdown date published.Which Conductor plans include API access?
Enterprise includes the Data API. On Essentials and Growth the pricing table marks it as available rather than included, which means an extra purchase. Either way it needs a Conductor Intelligence subscription, and the Content API needs Creator. The MCP server is the exception, included on all three plans and drawing on a yearly tool-call allocation.What are the Conductor API rate limits?
Each key gets 2 calls a second and 5,000 a day, shared across every endpoint, and each poll of an async query counts. The OpenAPI spec also lists per-endpoint ceilings of 40 submits and 5,000 polls a minute, but the global per-key cap is the one you will hit. The MCP server runs separately at 30 requests an hour per user.Can the Data API research keywords or competitors I do not track?
No. Rankings, top URLs, brand mentions, citations, sentiment and responses all come from keywords and prompts already configured in your account. Keyword research and competitor discovery happen in the platform. The nearest exception is the Content API, which returns ranking URLs for topics while you work on a draft.How do I authenticate with the Conductor API?
Generate a token in the app under Integrations, then API, and send it as a Bearer token, a method added in July 2026. Integrations built on an API key plus an MD5 signature of key, secret and timestamp still work, with each signature valid for five minutes. Conductor Monitoring issues its own keys, separate from Intelligence.Does Conductor have an MCP server?
An official remote one, open to all customers since 7 July 2026. Setup guides cover ChatGPT and Codex, Claude, Copilot and Perplexity, and any other MCP client can connect with a bearer token. Its tools return AI brand, citation and fan-out insights, keyword rankings and account configuration. Used-up allocations pause requests rather than adding charges.Conductor or SE Ranking for an SEO API?
They solve different problems. SE Ranking sells research data by the credit, with a Wallet plan that needs no platform subscription and credits that never expire. Conductor sells a platform plus an API over what that platform tracks, at prices it does not publish. Choose SE Ranking for open keyword and backlink research, Conductor for exporting enterprise AI search tracking you already run.
Other providers worth a look
This is an independent review. We have no affiliate relationship with Conductor API, earn nothing if you sign up, and no provider pays for placement in the directory. Prices were read from the vendor's own pages in September 2026 and change without notice.