EnsembleData sells social data across eight platforms on a subscription whose quota is per day, not per month. Their own line: "Every day the daily units are reset at 00:00 UTC."
That single design choice is why people look for an alternative, and it is also why some people should not.
We have a full page on EnsembleData. This page answers why you are leaving.
What it costs today
| Plan | Price/month | Units | Monthly equivalent | Per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free trial | $0 | 50 per day | 1,500 | — |
| Wood | $100 | 1,500 per day | 45,000 | $2.2222 |
| Bronze | $200 | 5,000/day | 150,000 | $1.3333 |
| Silver | $400 | 11,000/day | 330,000 | $1.2121 |
| Gold | $800 | 25,000/day | 750,000 | $1.0667 |
| Platinum | $1,400 | 50,000/day | 1,500,000 | $0.9333 |
| Diamond | custom | — | — | — |
The last two columns are our arithmetic, and they assume something big: that you use the same volume every single day.
🔴 The reason people leave: the daily reset prices your shape, not your volume
Take the Wood plan. Two customers, same money:
| Usage | Units bought | What they paid per 1,000 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Even | 1,500 every day | 45,000 | $2.22 |
| Burst | 1,500 on one day, nothing else | 1,500 | $66.67 |
Thirty times, for the same $100. Nothing was wasted by accident — the quota simply does not carry. If your work is a monthly report, a client onboarding, a launch, or anything with a shape, you are paying for the peak and throwing away the trough, every single day instead of every month.
⚠️ This is not a flaw, it is the model, and it serves one case very well: a steady daily crawl. If your volume is genuinely flat, $0.93–$2.22 per thousand for vendor-owned social endpoints is competitive with everything on this page.
What fixes it: credits that do not expire. ScrapeCreators at $1.88 per 1,000 with credits that never expire, our own purchased balance, which also never expires, and Supadata. Or pure pay-as-you-go with no plan at all: Exa and HikerAPI, where an idle month costs nothing.
What does not fix it: Apify, where unused usage credit also expires at the end of every billing cycle — monthly instead of daily, which is less often but the same mechanism.
The options, side by side
| Unit | Expiry | Entry | Platforms | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EnsembleData | unit, per day | resets daily, 00:00 UTC | $100/mo · $2.22/1K even | 8 social |
| ScrapeCreators | credit | never expires | $47 · $1.88/1K | 38+ APIs |
| SocialCrawl | credit | never expires | £15/mo | 67 claimed |
| HikerAPI | request | funds never expire | prepaid, $1.00/1K entry | Instagram only |
| Apify | compute unit | expires monthly | $19/mo | marketplace |
| HonestHook | API call | purchased never expire | free, 1,000 credits/mo | 12, one shape |
Where EnsembleData is better than we are
Reddit, X and Snapchat. They cover eight platforms including three we deliberately do not serve. We do not have them and we are not going to imply otherwise: if Reddit is in your requirements, this comparison ends here and they win it.
Research-grade depth on Instagram and TikTok. Their endpoint catalogue goes deeper per platform than ours does — we cover twelve platforms at the depth the public surface gives us, which is breadth bought with depth.
A flat daily crawl is cheaper with them than with us at Gold or Platinum. $0.93 per thousand on vendor-owned social endpoints is a real number, and our per-call price above the free tier does not beat it at that volume.
Where we are better, stated narrowly
Nothing expires. Purchased balance stays until you spend it, and the free monthly allowance renews — no daily reset, no shape penalty.
One response shape across twelve platforms, with
a published per-field contract: the same field in the
same place, or null with the reason. YouTube returns null when a channel
hides its subscriber count, because the platform ships "0" and publishing
that zero would be a claim about the world.
An hourly archive of what is rising, never deleted. No subscription API on this page sells it, because it cannot be scraped retroactively: the past was not photographed.
Get a free key — 1,000 credits a month, no card. Start here.
EnsembleData plan prices, daily unit counts, the 00:00 UTC reset wording, the 50-unit free trial and the eight-platform coverage read from ensembledata.com/pricing on 3 October 2026 — primary source, read directly from the page. The monthly-equivalent and per-1,000 columns are our arithmetic and assume flat daily use; the burst figure is the same arithmetic on a single day. Prices of the other competitors are on their own pages, each with its own reading date. Verify before deciding.