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.

Head to head

Two competitors, one page, with us as the third column — and the unit problem named instead of averaged away.

• Apify vs Bright Data: a marketplace against a proxy network, and the unit is the whole storyApify bills compute units — RAM times time. Bright Data bills gigabytes and requests. Neither number converts into the other, which is why every league table comparing them is tidier than the truth. Prices read at each vendor's own page on 3 October 2026.
• Apify vs Oxylabs: exact prices for an unpredictable unit, against "starts from" with no unit at allApify publishes exact plan prices and bills a unit you cannot forecast. Oxylabs publishes a clear unit and prices that only say "starts from" — three of them without a currency. Two opposite kinds of unknown. Prices read at each vendor's own page on 3 October 2026.
• Apify vs ScrapingBee: the same $19 buys 95 compute units or 75,000 fetchesBoth enter at $19 a month. On Apify that is 95 compute units — RAM times hours. On ScrapingBee it is 75,000 credits — one fetch each at the floor. Same sticker, different purchase. Prices read at both sources on 3 October 2026.
• Bright Data vs Oxylabs: the headline rate is a floor on both, and they publish the ceiling differentlyOxylabs enters residential at $6/GB against Bright Data's $8/GB pay-as-you-go, and both publish a per-1,000 rate that is the cheapest target, not the average one. Oxylabs prints its own multiplier; Bright Data's page would not render for us. Read 3 October 2026.
• Bright Data vs ScrapingBee: one bills bytes you cannot predict, the other will not publish the credit tableBright Data charges $8/GB pay-as-you-go with no monthly floor. ScrapingBee charges $19/month for 75,000 credits but does not publish what one request costs in credits. Neither page lets you price a single scrape before you run it. Prices read at each vendor's own page on 3 October 2026.
• EnsembleData vs ScrapeCreators: a daily clock against credits that never expireEnsembleData's allowance is per day and resets at 00:00 UTC, so a burst is impossible at any price. ScrapeCreators sells credits that never expire and charges nothing for cached results. Same market, opposite clocks. Prices read at each vendor's own page on 3 October 2026.
• ScrapeCreators vs SocialCrawl: both sell credits that never expire, and only one prices them in dollarsTwo unified social APIs with the same billing promise — credits that never expire. The differences are currency, endpoint count, and a pricing page that lists two credit amounts for one price. We worked out which one is real from their own discount claim. Prices read at each vendor's own page on 3 October 2026.
• ScrapingBee vs ScraperAPI: 2.5× the credits at the same price, and why that is not the answerAt $49 a month ScrapingBee gives 250,000 credits and ScraperAPI gives 100,000 — 2.5× for the same money. Then a credit stops meaning one thing on both, and that is where the comparison actually happens. Prices read 3 October 2026.

One tool at a time

• Apify pricing in 2026: compute units and the real monthly costsApify 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.
• Ayrshare: priced per profile, which makes every per-call comparison wrongAyrshare starts at $149/month for one social profile. It meters profiles, not calls — so comparing it to a per-credit API is comparing two different purchases. And it posts, which we do not.
• 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.
• Data365: priced in euros, and we are not converting it for youData365 charges €300/month for one social network and 500,000 credits. Why we publish the euro figure unconverted, and what the per-network structure means for a multi-platform product.
• 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.
• Exa: no monthly plan at all, and the free tier refills on the 1stExa has no subscription: $4 per thousand instant searches, $1 per thousand pages of content, $15 per thousand monitors. The only competitor here with no monthly commitment, and what that trades away.
• Firecrawl: every price on their page is the annual oneFirecrawl's pricing page shows $16/month for Hobby — billed annually. What the credits buy, how the per-thousand rate compares, and why a crawler is a different purchase from a social API.
• HikerAPI: cheaper per Instagram request than we are, with a $100 doorHikerAPI sells Instagram-only access at $0.60 to $1.00 per thousand requests, with 100+ endpoints and a $100 minimum top-up. Where it beats us outright, where the entry price matters, and what a twelve-platform key gives you instead.
• HonestHook vs CrawlbaseComparing HonestHook and Crawlbase for social media data extraction. Analyze pricing, scale, and feature sets for your dev projects.
• HonestHook vs SerpApi: Choosing the Right Data APIA direct comparison between HonestHook and SerpApi. Learn how their focus areas in social data and search engine results differ to help you choose the best provider.
• HonestHook vs ZenRowsCompare HonestHook and ZenRows for your web data needs. Analyze features, pricing structures, and developer experience to choose the right API for your scale.
• HonestHook vs. ProxyCrawl (Crawlbase)A direct comparison between HonestHook's social platform APIs and ProxyCrawl's general-purpose web scraping infrastructure.
• HonestHook vs. Rainforest API: Comparison for Social Data ExtractionComparing HonestHook and Rainforest API. See how each service handles public social media and ecommerce data for developers.
• HonestHook vs. ScrapingDogA direct comparison between HonestHook and ScrapingDog for social data extraction. See how our focus on social platforms differs from general-purpose scrapers.
• HonestHook vs. ScrapingRobot: Choosing Your Data ProviderCompare HonestHook and ScrapingRobot to see which platform fits your data extraction needs. Evaluating pricing models, ease of use, and platform support.
• HonestHook vs. Zyte: Choosing Your Social Data APIComparing HonestHook and Zyte for social media data extraction. Discover which API best fits your scraping requirements, pricing model, and scale.
• Outstand: $19 for 3,000 posts, and the pricing page is a 404Outstand meters posts: $19/month for 3,000, then $0.007 each. Twelve platforms, unlimited connected accounts, no seat licences. Where it overlaps with us and where it does not.
• Oxylabs: the plan price hides a 2.7× range, and the range is on their own pageOxylabs starts at $49/month for 98,000 results. But the cost per thousand depends on which site you scrape — $0.50 for Amazon, $1.35 with JavaScript rendering. The comparison most pages skip.
• PhantomBuster: you buy hours, and nobody can tell you how many you needPhantomBuster charges execution time, not calls: $69/month for 20 hours. Their own docs put a profile extraction at ~30 seconds. Why that unit is the hardest to budget in this comparison.
• Proxycurl is gone, and the merits were never decidedProxycurl was a working business with real revenue, and it stopped. The public record and the founder's own account say the case ended without the merits being decided. If you are looking for a drop-in replacement, this page is going to disappoint you on purpose.
• Scrape.do: no feature gates, which is rarer than the priceScrape.do runs $29/month for 250,000 credits, down to $0.070 per thousand at the top. Residential proxies and JS rendering are on every paid plan — no upsell tier. What that changes.
• 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.
• ScraperAPI: the pricing page would not render for us, and that is in the footnoteScraperAPI runs $49/month for 100,000 credits up to $1,975 for 21.5 million. The per-thousand rate, where it beats the field, and the honest note about how we read it.
• Scrapfly: a credit is not a credit, and they say soScrapfly runs $30/month for 200,000 credits. But credits are consumed by feature — JavaScript rendering, proxy type, geo-targeting all change the cost of one request. The honest arithmetic.
• ScrapingBee: a cheap credit buys a fetch, not a fieldScrapingBee sells HTML at $0.075 per thousand credits, the second-lowest rate in this comparison. What that buys, what it does not parse, and when a social-specific API is the cheaper answer anyway.
• 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.
• SocialKit: video intelligence we do not sell, at our exact $29 rateSocialKit turns YouTube, TikTok and Instagram videos into transcripts, summaries and stats from $29 a month. I read all four paid tiers on their page: where they do something we simply do not, where the rate is identical, and the free tier gap.
• SociaVault: cheaper at the entry pack, a tie at the topSociaVault sells one-time credit packs that never expire. I read all four tiers on their pricing page and put them next to mine, so you can divide the numbers yourself. The gap at the entry pack is real; at high volume it almost disappears.
• Supadata: the price we checked twice, 23 days apartSupadata charges $5.67 per thousand credits on its $17 plan — a number we measured in September and re-read in October to see whether it had moved. It had not. What that buys, and where the credit stops being comparable.
• Tavily: their pricing page renders a placeholder where the price should beTavily's free tier and pay-as-you-go rate are public: 1,000 credits free, $0.008 per credit after. The Project plan displays a malformed placeholder instead of a number — measured 2 October 2026.
• Xpoz: Instagram costs six times a Reddit query, on the same planXpoz charges credits per query, not per result — but a query costs 2 credits on Reddit and 12 on Instagram. What $20/month actually buys, and the pricing-page detail that changes the arithmetic.