How does SocialCrawl compare to Bright Data?

Bright Data is enterprise scraping infrastructure (proxy networks, datasets, custom collectors) priced for procurement cycles: annual contracts, six-figure quotes, long onboarding. SocialCrawl is the developer-flavored equivalent for social media: self-serve signup, 100 free credits, credits that never expire, no minimum spend. Bright Data fits if you need a six-figure annual contract. SocialCrawl fits if you want to ship today.

Why not just build it yourself?

Every platform has its own auth flow, rate limits, response shape, anti-bot defenses, and breaking changes you'd otherwise need to chase. SocialCrawl absorbs all of that: one schema, one API key, and endpoint-specific computed fields where the endpoint supports them and the required source inputs are present. We maintain 65 platforms' worth of upstream churn for you. If you'd still rather build, our docs spell out which upstream signal each field comes from so you can copy our shape.

Most endpoints cost 1 credit per request. Some advanced endpoints (demographics, AI transcripts) cost 5 or 10 credits. Your credit balance is shown in every API response. Credits never expire.

Are there rate limits?

Yes, and they are the same on every plan including the free one: 600 requests per minute and 50 simultaneous requests, both per API key. A rate-limited request is never billed, and every response carries X-RateLimit-* and X-Concurrency-* headers so you can see your remaining headroom. Beyond those two, your credit balance is the only throttle.

Can I get the raw response?

Yes. Add ?format=raw to any request and data comes back as the unprocessed upstream body instead of the unified schema. Same envelope, same price, same cache entry.

How fresh is the data?

Profiles use a 15-minute cache, posts 10 minutes, comments 5 minutes, search 2 minutes, and analytics 30 minutes. An exact cache hit costs 0 credits. Send Cache-Control: no-cache for a billed refresh.

What about AI agents?

SocialCrawl is built for AI agents. The unified schema means agents can process data from any platform with zero platform-specific logic. Computed fields reduce processing steps. We offer Skill install, MCP config, and Agent Onboarding.

Never. Credits you buy stay in your balance until you spend them, no 30-day clock, no monthly reset, no rollover caps. Buy 150,000 credits today and use the last one a year from now; it's still there. We don't reclaim unused credits.

Is there a free tier?

Yes. Every new account starts with 100 free credits the moment you sign up, no card required. That's enough to hit real endpoints across all 65 platforms and run the Explorer before you spend anything. When you're ready for production volume, buy a credit pack from £15.

What happens when I run out of credits?

The API returns a 402 with INSUFFICIENT_CREDITS and the call is never made, so you're never charged for a request we didn't run, and your balance can't go negative. Your account isn't suspended; it simply waits. Buy another pack (or turn on auto-recharge) and your next call goes through immediately.

Do I pay for failed or empty results?

No. If an upstream source errors out, times out, or returns nothing, we automatically refund the credits for that call back to your balance. You only pay for calls that return data. Partial composite results are refunded proportionally, except on the batch-by-id endpoints, where the upstream bills per 50-id chunk however many ids resolve.

How much does each API call cost?

Standard endpoints cost 1 credit per call. Heavier ones cost 5 or 10, and composite endpoints carry their own price. Universal search is a flat 20 credits, and the Prism composites go higher still. The cost calculator above maps your monthly call volume to the right pack, and the exact figure for every endpoint is listed in the docs.

Can I get a refund on a credit pack?

Credits for failed or empty API calls are refunded to your balance automatically. For a money-back refund on an unused pack, reach out to our team and we'll sort it out. There's no automated self-serve refund, so just message us.

New: Prism turns ten API calls into one

One scraper API for every social platform

The social media scraping API. 65 platforms, one auth token, one unified schema.

Get API key View the docs

572 endpoints · 65 platforms · 100 free credits

Build with AI

Ask about endpoints, pricing, or how to integrate, and get copy-paste code that runs on your own API key.

Try

import requests

response = requests.get(
    'https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/tiktok/profile',
    params={'handle': 'charlidamelio'},
    headers={'x-api-key': 'sc_YOUR_API_KEY'}
)
data = response.json()

[ .JSON ]

{
  "success": true,
  "platform": "tiktok",
  "data": {
    "author": {
      "username": "charlidamelio",
      "followers": 152400000
    },
    "engagement": {
      "likes": 12400000000,
      "engagement_rate": 0.087
    },
    "metadata": {
      "language": "en",
      "content_category": "lifestyle"
    }
  }
}

+ 65 platforms

Crawling data from the world's biggest platforms

TikTok

Instagram

YouTube

The unified social media scraping API for developers

Fast, unified, agent-ready. Three reasons developers and AI agents pick SocialCrawl over rolling their own

Built-in universal search

One query across every platform. Try Universal Search, the same scrape, search, and stream stack you'd build on top of our API, running in production.

Try Universal Search

Unified schema, every platform

Every platform returns the same response shape: author, engagement, metadata. No platform-specific glue code. Same auth, same pagination across 572 endpoints.

View the schema

Agent-ready by design

MCP-native, skill-installable, and SDKs in six languages. Your agents can scrape, search, and stream on day one, with typed responses, retries, and rate limits handled.

See AI integrations

Loved by users from

What you can build with social data

Brand monitoring, sentiment analysis, trend detection, competitive intel: all from one query against 65 platforms.

Brand monitoring

See every mention, the moment it lands

Track your brand, products, execs, and campaigns across all 65 platforms on a schedule. Stream newly detected mentions to a webhook, or pull them in batches.

TikTok"finally a brand that gets it…"+2.4M

Redditr/saas · launch thread, 412 cmts+412

X@yourbrand mentioned by @creator+89

Sentiment analysis

Quantify what people feel about you

Aggregate public sentiment around launches, campaigns, and competitor moves. Sentiment scores ship in the response. Bring your own model or use ours.

Positive72%

Neutral21%

Negative7%

Trend detection

Catch the topic before the algorithm does

Surface emerging conversations in your space before they hit the mainstream feed. Spike alerts, velocity scores, related-topic graphs, out of the box.

"vibe coding" · last 24h+312% velocity

Competitive intelligence

Watch competitors across every public surface

What competitors ship, who they hire, what their customers say. Pull profiles, posts, and comments side-by-side and feed them straight into your analyst workflow.

@competitor+ launched v3 · 1.1k upvotes

@competitorreplied to 47 customer threads

@competitor− paused TikTok 9d ago

Explore more use cases

65 platforms, one schema

572 endpoints, every major social network. Click any platform to explore its endpoints, run a sample request, and grab the code.

TikTokNew endpoints34 endpoints InstagramNew endpoints37 endpoints YouTube29 endpoints Facebook24 endpoints XNew endpoints15 endpoints LinkedIn45 endpoints RedditNew endpoints14 endpoints ThreadsNew endpoints6 endpoints Pinterest5 endpoints Snapchat2 endpoints Kwai3 endpoints Twitch4 endpoints Kick1 endpoint Rumble5 endpoints Bluesky3 endpoints Truth Social3 endpoints Hacker News4 endpoints QuoraNew endpoints7 endpoints TelegramNew endpoints3 endpoints DouyinNew endpoints8 endpoints

E-commerce

TikTok Shop5 endpoints Google Shopping5 endpoints

TikTok API34 endpoints supported

View docs

Returns a TikTok account's public profile: display name, bio, follower count on author.followers (or the rounded figure with author.ext.followers_approximate), likes, verification, and user id.

Use it when you have a handle and want a quick snapshot of an account before pulling its videos or followers.

1 credit

GET/v1/tiktok/profile?handle=charlidamelio

handleuser_id

$ curl https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/tiktok/profile?handle=charlidamelio \
    -H "x-api-key: sc_YOUR_API_KEY"

idle

// Edit the params above and hit "Try it" to run a live request against the API

Connect with AI agents

Plug SocialCrawl into any MCP-compatible client (Claude, Cursor, Codex, Windsurf) in seconds. Or fetch the skill, and your agent self-onboards.

MCPDrop-in for any MCP client

Native tools for every MCP-compatible agent

One JSON block, your agent gets every SocialCrawl endpoint as a first-class tool. Typed responses, retries, and rate limits handled for you.

Claude Desktop
Cursor
Windsurf
Codex
Claude Code
OpenClaw

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "socialcrawl": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "socialcrawl-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "SOCIALCRAWL_API_KEY": "sc_your_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

See the MCP server page

SkillClaude Code · Codex · Cursor

Install the skill in one command

Your agent gets scrape, search, and stream as known capabilities. Auth, endpoints, schemas, and examples loaded in turn one.

npx skills add socialcrawl/skills

OnboardingFor autonomous agents

Agents can sign themselves up

Point your agent at our onboarding skill. It handles signup, key generation, and gets your agent shipping with zero copy-paste.

curl -s https://www.socialcrawl.dev/agent-onboarding/SKILL.md

Built to replace your scraper stack

65Platforms coveredincl. TikTok, X, Reddit, YouTube

572API endpointsOne schema · one auth

1API key neededReplaces a dozen scrapers

100Free credits on signupNo card. No commitment.

We replaced six scrapers, three vendors, and a Slack channel of broken cron jobs with one SocialCrawl endpoint.

−6Vendors retired
+30hEng / week freed
1Schema, every platform

Jamie LiuStaff Engineer, Northbeam

No subscriptions. Credits never expire

Start free with 100 credits. Pay per call, never per month. Credits never expire. Buy more credits only when you need them.

Which pack fits your usage?

Tell us how many calls you make a month. We'll point you to the pack that fits, and what a call costs on it.

API calls per month

01,000,000+

What do your calls hit?Standard endpoints1 cr / callA mix of endpoint tiers3 cr / callUniversal search20 cr / call

These cover the 1/5/10 tier ladder. Composite and metered endpoints (Prism, batch, and the async web jobs) cost more, some of them a lot more. See endpoint pricing before you size a pack around them.

Your pack

Growth

20,000 credits · £49 · never expire

Per call: £0.0074
One pack lasts: 1.3 mo
You save vs Starter: £0.0107 / call

Get Growth

Free

Try every endpoint, free

100 credits(one-time)

Get started

One unified schema, every platform
572 APIs, 65 platforms
Community support

Starter

Side projects and steady API calls

2,500 credits

£15

One unified schema, every platform
572 APIs, 65 platforms
Universal search across 65 platforms
Email support

Growth

Production apps and daily pipelines

8,000 credits20,000 credits

£49

One unified schema, every platform
572 APIs, 65 platforms
Universal search across 65 platforms
Native MCP server for AI agents
Priority support
60% cheaper per credit

Pro

High-volume scraping at scale

50,000 credits150,000 credits

£299

One unified schema, every platform
572 APIs, 65 platforms
Universal search across 65 platforms
Native MCP server for AI agents
Priority support
67% cheaper per credit

Enterprise

Dedicated support, SLAs, and volume pricing

Custom

Contact sales

One unified schema, every platform
572 APIs, 65 platforms
Universal search across 65 platforms
Native MCP server for AI agents
Custom credits
Priority support

100 free credits to start, no card required
One-time credits that never expire, no subscription
1 credit for a standard call, more for composite endpoints. See endpoint pricing

Your integration won't break on our schedule: our API stability policy is enforced in CI on every pull request.

A standard API call costs 1 credit. Heavier and composite endpoints cost more. Check the docs for the figure per endpoint.

Questions about pricing

Can't find what you're looking for? Talk to our team or ask the AI agent below

No. SocialCrawl is one-time credit packs, not a subscription. You buy a pack of credits once, spend them when you make API calls, and top up only when you choose to. There's no monthly fee, no auto-renewal, and nothing to cancel. The only recurring charge that exists is auto-recharge, and that's opt-in. You turn it on yourself and switch it off any time.

Ship the social layer before lunch

65 platforms. One auth token. One schema. Five lines of code to your first response.

Get API key Read the docs

curl https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/search/everywhere \
  -H "x-api-key: $SC_KEY" \
  -d '{"query":"launch week","platforms":["*"]}'

Latest from SocialCrawl

View all posts

Google Trends API: Empty Searches Cost 0 Credits

product

Sep 8, 2026 · 11 min read

Google Trends API: Empty Searches Cost 0 Credits

Empty Google Trends API searches now return 404 with 0 credits charged. Live production curls cover Trends empties, News ranks, and app filter refusals.

Read article

Google Trends API Python: ~4.6s Typical (Was ~9s)

product

Sep 8, 2026 · 14 min read

Google Trends API Python: ~4.6s Typical (Was ~9s)

A Google Trends API Python GET is ~4.6s typical (was ~9s on 22 billed calls). Live interest-over-time and related queries, same 5 credits, 2026-09-08 UTC.

Read article

Instagram API: About is back, 1 credit, named 404s

product

Sep 8, 2026 · 15 min read

Instagram API: About is back, 1 credit, named 404s

/v1/instagram/profile/about is back: United States, February 2012, 1 credit. Wrong Instagram API paths return did_you_mean at 0 credits. Checked 2026-09-08.

Read article

Frequently asked questions

Can't find what you're looking for? Talk to our team or ask the AI agent below

Apify is a general-purpose scraping platform where you write or buy actors and pay for the compute minutes they run on Apify's infrastructure. SocialCrawl ships pre-built, pre-tested endpoints across 65 platforms spanning social, commerce, app stores, and review sites. Each is a single HTTP call, every response lands on one shared schema, and billing is per call, not per compute minute. Apify wins for scraping arbitrary sites you define yourself. SocialCrawl wins when the data lives on a platform we already cover: no actor to build, no compute to tune.

One scraper API for every social platform

Build with AI

The unified social media scraping API for developers

Built-in universal search

Unified schema, every platform

Agent-ready by design

See every mention, the moment it lands

Quantify what people feel about you

Catch the topic before the algorithm does

Watch competitors across every public surface

Social media

E-commerce

Native tools for every MCP-compatible agent

Install the skill in one command

Agents can sign themselves up

Which pack fits your usage?

Free

Starter

Growth

Pro

Enterprise

Questions about pricing

Does SocialCrawl charge a subscription?+

Do credits expire?+

Is there a free tier?+

What happens when I run out of credits?+

Do I pay for failed or empty results?+

How much does each API call cost?+

Can I get a refund on a credit pack?+

Ship the social layer before lunch

Google Trends API: Empty Searches Cost 0 Credits

Google Trends API Python: ~4.6s Typical (Was ~9s)

Instagram API: About is back, 1 credit, named 404s

Frequently asked questions

How does SocialCrawl compare to Apify?+

How does SocialCrawl compare to Bright Data?+

Why not just build it yourself?+

How do credits work?+

Are there rate limits?+

Can I get the raw response?+

How fresh is the data?+

What about AI agents?+

Which pack fits your usage?

Free

Starter

Growth

Pro

Enterprise

Free

Starter

Growth

Pro

Enterprise

Questions about pricing

Does SocialCrawl charge a subscription?+

Do credits expire?+

Is there a free tier?+

What happens when I run out of credits?+

Do I pay for failed or empty results?+

How much does each API call cost?+

Can I get a refund on a credit pack?+

Free

Starter

Growth

Pro

Enterprise