HonestHook

Social data APIs, compared

I measured these while deciding what to build. Real pricing, real sitemap depth, and an honest note on who each one is for.

Disclosure: I’m building a product in this space. I’m not affiliated with any tool below, there are no affiliate links, and nobody paid to be ranked. Where a competitor is better than what I’m building, I say so.

• Apify: 68,000 scrapers, and why that number cuts both waysApify has more ready-made scrapers than every social data API combined. How compute-unit pricing actually works, the fee most comparisons miss, and when a specialist beats it.
• Bright Data: what you're actually paying for, and when you don't need itBright Data is the enterprise default for web scraping. Here's what per-GB pricing really costs at small volumes, the promotion trap, and the cases where a $19 tool does the same job.
• EnsembleData: the expensive one that does no marketing at allThe mature social data API charges $100/month minimum and has no accessible sitemap. Here's what the daily quota actually costs you, with the arithmetic newer competitors don't want you to do.
• ScrapeCreators: the one with 2,581 pages nobody talks aboutThe social data API with more documentation than every competitor combined, and almost no coverage in the write-ups. What it costs, and how its 2,236 tutorials were actually made.
• SocialCrawl: what it costs, what it covers, and who it's forA measured look at SocialCrawl — the real credit tiers from their OpenAPI spec, what the headline price hides, and the two things worth copying even if you never buy it.