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Apify vs SocialKit

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors.

The short answer

Cheaper paid plan
Apify — $19/mo vs $29/mo for SocialKit
Free plan
Both have one
Public API
Both have one
Higher Trust score
Apify — 94 vs 84 for SocialKit
Best fit
Apify: Teams that would rather rent a maintained scraper than babysit their own · SocialKit: Agent and app builders who need social data as JSON without running scrapers

From our own records as of each tool's last check. Anything we have not confirmed is left out rather than guessed. How we verify

ApifyMarketplace and cloud platform of ready-made scrapers ('Actors') plus infrastructure to run your ownSocialKitOne REST API for transcripts, comments, profiles and stats across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, X and LinkedIn

Side by side

FactApifySocialKit
CategoryWeb Scraping & Data ExtractionWeb Scraping & Data Extraction
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$19/mo$29/mo
Public APIYesYes
Trust score94 / 10084 / 100
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, API
CompanyApify Technologies s.r.o.SocialKit
Launched2015—
Last verifiedOct 16, 2026Oct 16, 2026

What our research says

Apify

The Actor marketplace is the draw: for most popular sites someone has already built and maintains the scraper, and agent-facing interfaces (API, MCP) are first-class. Costs need watching, since compute units plus per-Actor fees stack on top of the subscription and are hard to predict before you run at volume.

Pros

  • Huge catalog of maintained scrapers for common targets
  • Real free tier with $5 of usage and no card required
  • SDKs, CLI, proxies and scheduling in one platform
  • Published discounts for startups, universities and nonprofits

Cons

  • Two-layer pricing (subscription plus usage plus Actor fees) complicates forecasting
  • Marketplace Actor quality varies by author
  • Large-scale scraping raises site-terms and legal questions the platform leaves to you

SocialKit

The pitch is accurate: one key, one response shape, and none of the per-platform approval processes that make official APIs painful. Credit pricing is transparent and drops with volume, but you are building on scraped endpoints, which means platform changes and terms-of-service exposure are your risk, not theirs.

Pros

  • 40+ endpoints across seven surfaces behind a single access key
  • Derived endpoints like YouTube summarize return summary, key points and topics directly
  • Per-1,000-credit rate is published for every tier, falling from $2.42 to $1.40
  • Free tier and documented sample request and response before you sign up

Cons

  • Free tier is only 20 credits — enough to test, not to evaluate
  • Scraped access means endpoints can break when a platform changes
  • Rate limits are tied to plan tier, so throughput needs a bigger plan even if credits are spare

Which one fits

Choose Apify if you need

  • Teams that would rather rent a maintained scraper than babysit their own
  • AI builders feeding agents live web data through the API or MCP server
  • Developers monetizing crawlers without running infrastructure

Choose SocialKit if you need

  • Agent and app builders who need social data as JSON without running scrapers
  • Teams blocked by YouTube Data API quotas or TikTok's approval-gated Research API
  • Prototypes that need several platforms behind one authentication key

Apify vs SocialKit: the questions people ask

Is Apify cheaper than SocialKit?

On published entry prices, Apify starts lower — $19/mo against $29/mo for SocialKit. Entry price is the lowest paid plan as we last verified it; what each plan includes differs.

Does Apify or SocialKit have a free tier?

Both: Apify has a free tier, and SocialKit has a free tier.

Which has a public API, Apify or SocialKit?

Both ship a public API, so either can be built on; the fact table above shows the platforms each one runs on.

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