Social Media Scraper API Pricing Compared (2026)

The social media scraper API pricing you will see in 2026 falls into four models: pay per call, monthly subscription, record-based billing and usage on top of a platform fee. The headline rate per 1,000 calls ranges from under a dollar to about $3, but the cheapest number is rarely the cheapest bill. This guide lays out the published prices from sources we opened, shows what 100,000 calls cost at each rate, and lists the billing details that change the real price.

The Four Pricing Models

Almost every social media scraping API uses one of these structures, and the model matters as much as the rate.

• Pay per call (prepaid credits). You add a balance and each call deducts from it. No monthly commitment. Good for uneven or experimental volume.
• Monthly subscription. You buy an allowance of requests each month. Cheaper per call at steady volume, wasteful when you under-use it.
• Record-based. You pay per record or result returned instead of per request, so a call that returns 50 results costs 50 units.
• Platform fee plus usage. A base plan plus charges per run or per unit of compute, typical of marketplace-style tools.

ScrapeCreators, which sells in this space, groups vendors the same way in its August 2026 comparison. Note that article is written by the vendor's founder, who states it is not neutral, so we use it only for the categories, not for rankings.

Published Prices We Could Verify

These figures come from Proxyway's social media scrapers comparison, published December 15, 2025, plus BuyProxy's own live catalog. Competitor prices change, so confirm on each vendor's site before buying.

Two honest observations. First, BuyProxy is not the cheapest list price in this table: Bright Data's record-based rate is lower, and Decodo is close. Second, units differ: a "record" and a "request" are not the same thing, so a lower number is not automatically a lower bill. Price the exact task you plan to run.

What BuyProxy Charges, Scraper by Scraper

BuyProxy's Scraper API lists 116 scrapers across 23 platforms. As of October 2026, 111 of them cost $0.002235 per call. Five cost more:

• Instagram Post and TikTok Video: about $22.35 per 1,000 calls each
• TikTok Video Transcript: about $24.59 per 1,000 calls
• Google Ad Library Company Ads: about $55.88 per 1,000 calls
• TikTok User Audience Demographics: about $58.11 per 1,000 calls

The live list inside your dashboard is the source of truth, because the catalog and prices can change.

The minimum balance is $5, which buys about 2,200 calls at the standard rate, and credits do not expire.

Billing Details That Change the Real Price

Two vendors with the same rate can produce very different invoices. Check these before you compare numbers.

1. Do failed calls cost anything? BuyProxy refunds errors, timeouts and rate-limited requests, so you pay only for successful calls. Ask every vendor the same question.
2. Does pagination multiply the cost? Fetching 1,000 comments may take many calls. Count calls per useful record, not per request.
3. Is there a monthly minimum or expiry? Subscriptions reset each month. Unused allowance is lost. Prepaid balances that never expire suit bursty work.
4. Can you trim or cache? Many BuyProxy scrapers accept a trim option to shrink the response and a cache_max_age option to reuse recent data instead of fetching again. Caching can cut the number of calls you need.
5. Is the data structured? A cheap call that returns raw HTML still leaves you with a parser to write. Compare against the cost of building that yourself, as covered in scraper API vs proxies.

How to Run a Fair Price Test

Headline rates cannot be compared directly, so measure cost per usable record on your own targets. The method is the same for every vendor.

1. Pick a realistic sample. Use 200 to 500 of the real profiles, videos or ads you will collect, including a few that are hard or missing.
2. Run the identical job on each vendor. Use the same inputs and time window.
3. Record total spend and records you keep. A usable record is one with the fields you actually need, not just a response that returned.
4. Divide. Cost per usable record = total spend ÷ usable records.
5. Add the hidden items. Include any monthly minimum you would waste, any extra calls for pagination, and the engineering time to handle a different response shape.

Here is an invented example of why this matters, with round numbers. Vendor A charges $1.00 per 1,000 requests but bills failures and you keep 80% of records, so each usable record costs $1.25 per 1,000. Vendor B charges $2.00 per 1,000 but only for successes and you keep 95% of records, so each usable record costs about $2.11 per 1,000. A's advantage shrinks and may vanish once you add pagination or a monthly minimum you do not fully use. Your numbers will differ, which is the point of testing.

Because BuyProxy only charges for successful calls and balances do not expire, a $5 test costs roughly 2,200 calls with nothing wasted on failures.

Which Model Fits Which Workload

For brand and competitor work, such as watching rival ads, see how teams use data like this for market research and brand protection. For data feeding models, residential proxies for AI data collection covers the legal and practical side.

A Note on Legality

Pricing is only half the decision. What you collect and how you use it carry legal and policy considerations that differ by platform and country. Read whether residential proxies are legal and stick to publicly available data. This is general information, not legal advice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How much does a social media scraper API cost per 1,000 requests?
Published rates we could verify range from about $1 to $3 per 1,000 requests or records, depending on the provider and plan. BuyProxy charges about $2.23 per 1,000 calls for most of its scrapers, with a few specialized ones costing more.

Q: Is pay-per-call or a subscription cheaper?
Subscriptions are usually cheaper per call when you use the whole allowance every month. Pay per call is cheaper when volume is low, irregular or unpredictable, because you never pay for unused capacity.

Q: Do I get charged when a scrape fails?
That depends on the vendor. On BuyProxy, errors, timeouts and rate-limited requests are not charged. Always confirm the failure policy before you compare prices.

Q: Why is "per record" pricing hard to compare?
A record is a unit of returned data, while a request is one API call. One request can return many records, so a low per-record rate does not translate directly into a low cost for your task.

Q: What is the cheapest way to start?
Add a small prepaid balance, run a realistic sample of your own targets, and divide total spend by the number of usable records. That cost per usable record is the only number that matters.

Summary

Social media scraper APIs price by call, by subscription, by record or by platform fee plus usage, with published rates between roughly $1 and $3 per 1,000 requests. BuyProxy sits in that range at about $2.23 per 1,000 calls for most scrapers, with failed calls refunded and no expiry on balances. Compare cost per usable record on your own workload, not headline rates.

Browse the BuyProxy Scraper API catalog and prices →

Sources: Proxyway, Top 6 Social Media Scrapers for 2026 (December 15, 2025); ScrapeCreators, Best Social Media Scraping APIs (vendor-authored, August 2026).