Social Fetch vs Crawlbase
Crawlbase is a crawling and proxy platform: send a URL, get a page, pay by success and domain complexity. Social Fetch is a social data API. LinkedIn is where the comparison gets noisy — Crawlbase sells LinkedIn crawls as HTML; Social Fetch returns structured LinkedIn profile and company JSON among 25 platforms.
- Product shape
- Social REST APICrawling API + Smart AI Proxy + storage
- Billing unit
- Credits per completed social lookupPer successful crawl; tiered by domain complexity
- Structured profile/company routes (1 credit typical)Flat $15 per 1,000 successful LinkedIn crawls
Teams running monitoring, research, and enrichment pipelines
Why Social Fetch
Why teams switch from Crawlbase.
What changes when your social lookups move to one REST API.
One API for 25 platforms
TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, X and more behind one key and one schema — no separate Crawlbase setup per network.
Pricing you can reason about
One completed lookup, one price. Failed lookups aren't billed, so you know how far a balance goes.
JSON in the same request
Fetched live when you ask and returned in the response — ~3.2s on average, no job to poll.
No scraper maintenance
We handle proxies, browser changes, and platform breakages.
Built for production jobs
Run concurrent workloads with explicit statuses and request IDs.
Pay as you go, or save monthly
Start with 100 free credits and no subscription. Pay-as-you-go credits never expire; running lookups every month? A monthly plan gets you lower per-credit rates.
What teams build with Social Fetch
Monitoring, enrichment, research and content workflows — the jobs teams run on Crawlbase, as plain API calls.
Monitor brands and competitors
Watch accounts on a schedule and get a signed webhook when something new posts.
Find and vet creators
Check reach and engagement before you reach out.
Turn video into searchable text
Transcribe and index video and audio content so you can find the exact moment you need.
Track public communities
Follow the subreddits, groups, and channels where your audience talks.
Complexity-priced crawls vs flat social credits
Crawlbase Crawling API: ~$3/$4.50/$6 per 1k at lowest volume (Standard/Moderate/Complex), declining with volume. LinkedIn ~$15/1k successful crawls. Social Fetch Scale: $379/230k ($1.64/1k) including structured LinkedIn routes.
Free start
- Social Fetch
- 100 credits, no card
- Crawlbase
- 1,000 free crawl requests (more with payment on file)
1,000 standard-complexity pages
- Social Fetch
- N/A
- Crawlbase
- ~$3.00 at lowest volume band (declines with volume)
1,000 LinkedIn page crawls
- Social Fetch
- N/A (use structured routes instead)
- Crawlbase
- ~$15 (flat LinkedIn rate)
1,000 structured LinkedIn profiles
- Social Fetch
- ~$1.64
- Crawlbase
- Crawl cost + your HTML parsers
Failed crawls
- Social Fetch
- lookup_failed / 503 not charged
- Crawlbase
- Documented as free on unsuccessful crawls
Multi-platform social schema
- Social Fetch
- 264 ops / 25 platforms
- Crawlbase
- Any URL; no social schema included
| Scenario | Social Fetch | Crawlbase |
|---|---|---|
| Free start | 100 credits, no card | 1,000 free crawl requests (more with payment on file) |
| 1,000 standard-complexity pages | N/A | ~$3.00 at lowest volume band (declines with volume) |
| 1,000 LinkedIn page crawls | N/A (use structured routes instead) | ~$15 (flat LinkedIn rate) |
| 1,000 structured LinkedIn profiles | ~$1.64 | Crawl cost + your HTML parsers |
| Failed crawls | lookup_failed / 503 not charged | Documented as free on unsuccessful crawls |
| Multi-platform social schema | 264 ops / 25 platforms | Any URL; no social schema included |
Crawlbase prices checked 21 July 2026. How we priced this, with sources
Pricing
Social data, priced simply.
Start with 100 free credits. Monthly plans give you predictable volume and lower per-request rates.
Starter
1,000credits
$14.00 per 1k · $0.0140 per request
- Prove one workflow before you buy more
- All 25 platforms on one API key
Growth
25,000credits
$2.36 per 1k · $0.00236 per request
- For a project or one-off batch job
- Better per-credit rate than the Starter pack
Scale
230,000credits
$1.64 per 1k · $0.00164 per request
- For a large one-time job
- Best pack rate of the three — includes bonus credits
Need 1M+ credits, invoicing, or volume rates? Talk to us
Trust signals
DevHunt
Product Hunt
Uneed
Social Fetch vs Crawlbase, side by side.
How each product expects you to integrate, what you're billed for, and which capabilities come as standard.
Product shape
- Social Fetch
- Social REST API
- Crawlbase
- Crawling API + Smart AI Proxy + storage
Billing unit
- Social Fetch
- Credits per completed social lookup
- Crawlbase
- Per successful crawl; tiered by domain complexity
LinkedIn
- Social Fetch
- Structured profile/company routes (1 credit typical)
- Crawlbase
- Flat $15 per 1,000 successful LinkedIn crawls
Entry
- Social Fetch
- 100 free credits; $14 Starter pack (1,000 credits, one-time, never expire)
- Crawlbase
- 1,000+ free crawl requests; PAYG volume tiers
Output
- Social Fetch
- Normalized social JSON + meta envelope
- Crawlbase
- HTML/page body (you parse)
Best fit
- Social Fetch
- App features on social entities
- Crawlbase
- High-volume open-web crawling infrastructure
| Row | Social Fetch | Crawlbase |
|---|---|---|
| Product shape | Social REST API | Crawling API + Smart AI Proxy + storage |
| Billing unit | Credits per completed social lookup | Per successful crawl; tiered by domain complexity |
| Structured profile/company routes (1 credit typical) | Flat $15 per 1,000 successful LinkedIn crawls | |
| Entry | 100 free credits; $14 Starter pack (1,000 credits, one-time, never expire) | 1,000+ free crawl requests; PAYG volume tiers |
| Output | Normalized social JSON + meta envelope | HTML/page body (you parse) |
| Best fit | App features on social entities | High-volume open-web crawling infrastructure |
| Capability | Social Fetch | Crawlbase |
|---|---|---|
| Synchronous REST JSON (no actor run polling) | ||
| One API key for all platforms | ||
| Unified schema across platforms | ||
| Public OpenAPI specification | ||
| Official TypeScript SDK | ||
| Interactive API playground | ||
| TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, X in one vendor | ||
| Pay-as-you-go without required monthly subscription | ||
| PAYG credits never expire | ||
| Web fetch (markdown/HTML) in same product | ||
| Scheduled account / feed monitors | ||
| Signed webhooks when watched accounts post |
Customers
Teams building on Social Fetch.
“Our TikTok and Instagram scrapers broke constantly. Social Fetch took us off that rotation — we ship product again.”
“Transcripts at volume from one endpoint. No broken scrapers for our small team to maintain.”
“Live profile data on every request. We never flag accounts from a stale cache.”
“Heavy concurrent load, no rate limits to negotiate. The rare API I haven't wrapped in retries.”
Which one should you pick?
If the Crawlbase list sounds like you, Crawlbase is probably the better buy — and that's fine.
Pick Social Fetch if…
- Structured LinkedIn/TikTok/Instagram JSON without HTML parsers
- A multi-platform social catalog, not a LinkedIn-crawl-plus-parsers plan
- Flat credit budgeting for product features
- Sync REST with requestId for support
- Coverage beyond LinkedIn HTML transport
Pick Crawlbase if…
- High-volume open-web crawling is the main workload
- You need Smart AI Proxy threads or crawl storage products
- You already parse LinkedIn HTML and only need cheaper transport
- Domain-complexity PAYG pricing matches your target mix
Social Fetch vs Crawlbase: common questions
Migration, billing surprises, and what changes when you add a second platform.
Is Crawlbase cheaper for LinkedIn?
Crawlbase's ~$15/1k is for successful LinkedIn page crawls (HTML). Social Fetch's ~$1.64/1k is for structured LinkedIn lookups. Cheaper depends on whether you already have parsers and what "done" means for your feature.
Does Social Fetch crawl arbitrary URLs?
We have web fetch routes for supported use cases, but the product center is social entities. For general crawling at volume, Crawlbase (or similar) is the better fit.
Does Crawlbase charge failed crawls?
Docs state unsuccessful crawls are not billed. Social Fetch similarly does not charge lookup_failed or 503 temporarily_unavailable.
Can I use both?
Yes. Crawlbase for broad web crawls; Social Fetch for social profile/post/comment routes in the product.
What is domain complexity?
Crawlbase classifies targets as standard, moderate, or complex based on anti-bot difficulty and prices successful requests accordingly. Social Fetch does not expose that dimension — standard social routes stay flat credits.
The detailed Social Fetch vs Crawlbase comparisonHow Crawlbase works, where the costs come from, and when to keep it.
Crawlbase sells successful pages, not social objects
The Crawling API's contract is: give us a URL, we return the page when cb_status is success, and we charge based on how hard that domain was. Smart AI Proxy and cloud storage extend the same infrastructure story. That is classic scraping infrastructure.
Social Fetch's contract is: give us a social handle or URL, we return documented fields. Domain complexity is our problem on supported routes, not a line item on your invoice.
LinkedIn: $15/1k HTML vs $1.64/1k JSON
Crawlbase's LinkedIn pricing is easy to misread. Fifteen dollars per thousand successful crawls is the transport cost for public LinkedIn HTML. It does not include a stable person/company schema, Ad Library search, or the rest of a multi-network catalog.
Social Fetch LinkedIn routes are ordinary credits — about $1.64 per 1,000 at Scale for structured responses. If your product needs LinkedIn profile cards in a UI, compare JSON APIs to JSON APIs. If you are building a custom LinkedIn HTML pipeline with your own parsers, Crawlbase's crawl rate may still fit.
Where Crawlbase's volume curve wins
At tens of millions of open-web pages, Crawlbase's declining per-1k curve for Standard domains can land far below any social API's rates — because you are buying page fetches, not social products. That is the correct tool for broad crawls, archives, and non-social monitoring.
Do not use that curve to argue Social Fetch is "expensive for HTML." We are not selling HTML.
Where they win
Crawlbase is a fit when crawling infrastructure is the product: complexity-aware pricing, proxy modes, async crawls, storage. Social Fetch will not replace that stack.
We win when the backlog spans social entities across 25 platforms — LinkedIn plus TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, and the rest of the catalog — and you want one key instead of a LinkedIn crawl SKU plus a pile of other HTML jobs.
Bottom line: Crawling infrastructure vs social data API
Crawlbase wins at scale page fetching and LinkedIn HTML transport. Social Fetch wins when you need structured social JSON — including LinkedIn — without owning parsers. Do not compare $15/1k LinkedIn crawls to $1.64/1k profile JSON as if they were the same SKU.
Methodology and sourcesHow we priced each scenario, and where every Crawlbase figure comes from. Checked 21 July 2026.
Sources
Crawlbase pricing from crawlbase.com docs/blog and public plan summaries (July 2026). Domain complexity tiers and LinkedIn rates change; use their live calculator for exact quotes.
Crawlbase is a trademark of its owner. Social Fetch is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Crawlbase. Details about Crawlbase come from public sources checked on 21 July 2026.
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