Top 6 Social Media Scrapers for 2024

What Is a Social Media API?

A social media API, or application programming interface, provides third parties access to data from social media platforms, such as user profiles, posts, comments, and media files. Such APIs usually come with authentication requirements to ensure that only authorized users or applications can access the data.

Can You Scrape Data with Official Social Media APIs?

The short answer is yes. Many social media platforms offer official APIs with different endpoints. For example, Twitter has a Search API that allows you to retrieve old tweets.

However, they don’t always work as hoped. There are limitations like the amount and types of data you can get. Platforms monitor the API usage and control the use cases.

Also, official APIs are often expensive, especially if you need to get large amounts of data. For instance, if you want full access to Twitter API, the pricing can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars per month.

Types of Social Media Scraping Tools

There are multiple ways to go about social media scraping: you can choose 1) no-code tools, 2) unofficial web scraping APIs, or 3) custom-built scrapers.

No-code web scraping services usually come with a collection of pre-made templates for the main social media platforms, or in the form of a browser extension. These scrapers are great for beginners and one-off jobs. However, compared to other options, they’re slower, less customizable, and inefficient once you scale. Alternatively, you can opt for pre-made social media datasets, which don’t require any hands-on scraping.

Unofficial web scraping APIs are remote web scrapers that let you scrape websites by making API calls to the provider’s infrastructure. Such services are financially interested in keeping the infrastructure robust, and they’re bundled with proxies and anti-detection mechanisms. Web scraping APIs are highly customizable but require some programming knowledge. Additionally, you can use proxy APIs – scraping tools that integrate as proxy servers. Typically, they’re less customizable, but can be used for a variety of tarfets.

Custom-built scrapers are usually made using one or several web scraping libraries. They’re very flexible in terms of programming languages – you can build a scraper with Python, NodeJS, or Java, to name a few. Such tools are very customizable, but you’ll have to buy social media proxies, handle bot detection mechanisms, and maintain the scraper yourself.

The list below is based on the Scraping API Research 2024, where we reviewed the most popular scraping APIs in the market.

The Best Social Media Scrapers in 2024

1. Smartproxy

Great value social media scraper.

9.3/10 ★

Try 100 MB for free.

Geolocation: 195 locations with country-level targeting
Pricing model: based on successful requests
Pricing structure: subscription
Support: 24/7 support via chat or email
Free trial: 14-day money-back option or 7-day trial

Pricing: $50 for 25K requests ($2/1K requests)

Smartproxy offers a specialized Social Media Scraper for three popular platforms – Instagram, Reddit, and TikTok. The API bundles a robust parser, and you get award-winning customer service.

The scraper integrates as a proxy server or an API. The latter method lets you receive data instantly or based on a callback function without keeping an open connection. The API takes care of proxy rotation, anti-detection techniques, and offers several parameters like geolocation and content language.

You can build and test requests using Smartproxy’s Postman collections, or use GitHub code examples in popular programming languages like Python, PHP, and Node.js. What’s more, the provider has an API playground for live testing and ready-made templates for social media scraping.

Social Media Scraping API has no concurrency limits, so you can make unlimited requests. But you won’t be able to get data in batches.

In terms of pricing, Smartproxy’s social media scraper API is among the cheapest in the market, though it’s only available with a subscription – there’s no option to pay as you go.

Read the Smartproxy review for more information and performance tests.

2. Bright Data

Feature-rich social media scrapers.

9.3/10 ★

Add up to $500 to your account and get double the amount.

Geolocation: global with country and city level targeting
Pricing model: based on successful requests
Pricing structure: PAYG, subscription
Support: 24/7 support via chat or email
Free trial: 7-day trial for companies

Pricing:
– Web Scraping API: starts from $1 for 1,000 records
– Web Unlocker: starts from $3 for 1,000 results
– Datasets: $500 for 200,000 records ($2.5/1K)

Bright Data has a three tools for social media: Social Media Scraper API, Web Unlocker, and datasets. The choice depends on your programming skills and the size of your project.

The easiest to use are pre-collected datasets for the most popular social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X (Twitter), YouTube, and others. You can request a new one if you need data from other platforms. The provider lets you buy a dataset as-is, or create a subset with different filters.

Bright Data also offers Web Unlocker – an API that integrates as a proxy server. The tool has no concurrency limits, so you can get data in real-time. We’ve tested Web Unlocker on Instagram: it showed a a success rate of 96.61%, but was very slow with an average response time of nearly one minute.

If you’re looking for a more customizable solution, go with Social Media Scraper API. It’s a cloud-based development environment with ready-made scraping functions and code templates for popular social media platforms. The scraper supports parsing using the Cheerio library. You can schedule scraping runs and download your data via API or Webhook, and other delivery options.

As for pricing, Bright Data caters to enterprise-level clients, so the entry price is higher. However, one-time payment (with datasets only), subscription, and pay-as-you-go options make Bright Data really flexible.

Read the Bright Data review for more information and performance tests.

3. Zyte

The fastest social media scraper.

8.8/10 ★

Geolocation: 150+ locations
Pricing model: based on optional features
Pricing structure: PAYG, subscription
Support: available via asynchronous contact method
Free trial: trial for $5 available

Pricing: custom

Zyte offers a general-purpose web scraper that is very fast on social media platforms.

Zyte’s API chooses the best location based on your target URL. If you want, you can also manually choose from 19 locations.

The scraper is able to render JavaScript if needed, and it offers its enterprise clients a TypeScript API in the provider’s cloud IDE. You can use it to script browser actions like hovering on elements or taking screenshots.

During our research, Zyte’s API was the fastest and a very reliable scraper when targeting Instagram – the average response time was just 2.63s while the success rate was above 99%.

Zyte’s pricing depends on factors like the difficulty of a website and the features you choose. You can calculate the cost on the dashboard by entering a target URL. Overall, Zyte API is a cost-efficient scraper unless you need features like JavaScript rendering.

Read the Zyte review for more information and performance tests.

4. SOAX

Performant social media scraper with a range of targets.

9.0/10 ★

Use the code proxyway to get 20% off.

Geolocation: 150+ countries
Pricing model: based on successful requests
Pricing structure: PAYG, subscription
Support: 24/7 via live chat and tickets
Free trial: available
Pricing: custom

SOAX offers a bunch of scrapers, and one of them is a specialized Social media API.

SOAX’s scraper come with many countries, but there are no additional targeting options. The provider’s Social media API can handle most popular social media sites, and is one of the few that offers scraping Snapchat and LinkedIn.

The provider has one of the better customer services and an easy-to-use dashboard. In terms of price, SOAX doesn’t display the cost – you’ll need to contact sales.

Performance-wise, SOAX Social media API was one of the fastest with Instagram – it took 8.96s on average for API to unblock Instagram. The success rate was also excellent, with over 99% successful attempts.

For more information and performance tests, read our SOAX review.

5. Nimbleway

Fast scraper with AI features.

8.7/10 ★

Geolocation: 150+ countries with state & city targeting
Pricing model: based on successful requests
Pricing structure: PAYG, subscription
Support: live chat on the dashboard, email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Discord
Free trial: available
Pricing: $3/1K requests

Nimbleway has a general-purpose scraping API capable of scraping social media websites. The provider is a newcomer in both the proxy and web scraping industries, but its services are noteworthy.

The provider covers over 150 countries and offers state and city targeting. The provider offers residential proxies only, but for the most challenging targets, like social media, it gives mobile IPs.

Nimbleway’s scraping API excels in scraping social media sites. During our tests the provider did especially well with Instagram – on average, it took just over 7 seconds to open Instagram, and the API was successful almost 100% of time.

Nimbleway uses platform-based pricing and focuses on enterprise-level clients, so the API is quite steep. However, the pricing system is flexible – you can choose to pay as you go or commit to a monthly plan.

For more information and performance tests, read our Nimbleway review.

6. ScraperAPI

Social media scraper for small-scale web scraping.

Geolocation: 12 locations in US & EU
Pricing model: based on successful requests and optional features
Pricing structure: subscription
Support: available via email
Free trial: 1,000 free credits/month or 7-day free trial
Pricing: custom

ScraperAPI is another general-purpose scraper for various social media platforms.

The API is very versatile – it supports many programming languages like Python, PHP, NodeJS, Ruby, and Java. You’ll find well-written documentation on how to use and set up the tool with each language. At an extra cost, you can also get functionality like more precise geotargeting (12 countries), JS rendering, and dedicated support.

You can integrate the scraper with any of the five methods: a proxy server, library/SDK, and two APIs (open connection and asynchronous). With asynchronous delivery, you can send requests in batches. However, ScraperAPI doesn’t have a parser, so you won’t be able to get structured results from most platforms.

ScraperAPI has a free plan with 1,000 API credits and a maximum of 5 concurrent connections. If you want to test the tool to its fullest, you can try a 7-day free trial with 5,000 requests.

However, the provider uses a credit-based system, and specific website groups consume different amounts of credits. Rendering JavaScript or using premium proxies costs extra, and you’ll need this functionality for social media. So, expect to pay more than the display price.