Social Fetch vs Firecrawl
Firecrawl is a web context API for AI — scrape, crawl, map, and search pages into LLM-ready markdown. Social Fetch is a social data API — TikTok handles, Instagram posts, LinkedIn companies as normalized JSON. If your agent needs a whole docs site, Firecrawl. If it needs a creator's follower count, Social Fetch.
- Primary job
- Structured social media dataWeb scrape, crawl, and search for AI agents
- Typical output
- Normalized profile/post JSONMarkdown, HTML, or schema extract per page
- Pricing shape
- From $1.35/1k; PAYG credits never expireMonthly plans (Hobby $19 → Growth $399); credits reset
Teams running monitoring, research, and enrichment pipelines
Why Social Fetch
Why teams switch from Firecrawl.
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 Firecrawl 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 Firecrawl, 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.
Credits for pages vs credits for social lookups
Firecrawl: Free 1k/mo, Hobby $19/5k, Standard $99/100k, Growth $399/500k. Scrape/Crawl 1 credit/page; JSON extract and Enhanced Mode add credits. Plan credits reset; auto-recharge packs roll. Social Fetch: prepaid packs at $1.64/1k — different unit (page vs social operation).
1,000 standard social profile lookups
- Social Fetch
- ~$1.64
- Firecrawl
- N/A as a social product — scrape URLs + parse HTML
1,000 web pages to markdown
- Social Fetch
- Web fetch routes exist; not priced as a crawl farm
- Firecrawl
- ~1,000 credits (Hobby covers 5k/mo)
Unused credits next month
- Social Fetch
- Still on your balance (PAYG)
- Firecrawl
- Plan credits reset (auto-recharge packs roll)
Required subscription
- Social Fetch
- No on PAYG
- Firecrawl
- Yes for volume above free tier
Crawl entire documentation site
- Social Fetch
- Wrong tool
- Firecrawl
- Designed for this
| Scenario | Social Fetch | Firecrawl |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 standard social profile lookups | ~$1.64 | N/A as a social product — scrape URLs + parse HTML |
| 1,000 web pages to markdown | Web fetch routes exist; not priced as a crawl farm | ~1,000 credits (Hobby covers 5k/mo) |
| Unused credits next month | Still on your balance (PAYG) | Plan credits reset (auto-recharge packs roll) |
| Required subscription | No on PAYG | Yes for volume above free tier |
| Crawl entire documentation site | Wrong tool | Designed for this |
Firecrawl 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 Firecrawl, side by side.
How each product expects you to integrate, what you're billed for, and which capabilities come as standard.
Primary job
- Social Fetch
- Structured social media data
- Firecrawl
- Web scrape, crawl, and search for AI agents
Typical output
- Social Fetch
- Normalized profile/post JSON
- Firecrawl
- Markdown, HTML, or schema extract per page
Pricing shape
- Social Fetch
- From $1.35/1k; PAYG credits never expire
- Firecrawl
- Monthly plans (Hobby $19 → Growth $399); credits reset
TikTok profile by handle
- Social Fetch
- First-class REST route
- Firecrawl
- Scrape the public URL yourself — no social schema
Site-wide crawl / map
- Social Fetch
- Not the product (web fetch is single-page)
- Firecrawl
- Core product
Social catalog
- Social Fetch
- 264 ops / 25 platforms
- Firecrawl
- Any URL — you own parsing social HTML
| Row | Social Fetch | Firecrawl |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Structured social media data | Web scrape, crawl, and search for AI agents |
| Typical output | Normalized profile/post JSON | Markdown, HTML, or schema extract per page |
| Pricing shape | From $1.35/1k; PAYG credits never expire | Monthly plans (Hobby $19 → Growth $399); credits reset |
| TikTok profile by handle | First-class REST route | Scrape the public URL yourself — no social schema |
| Site-wide crawl / map | Not the product (web fetch is single-page) | Core product |
| Social catalog | 264 ops / 25 platforms | Any URL — you own parsing social HTML |
| Capability | Social Fetch | Firecrawl |
|---|---|---|
| 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 Firecrawl list sounds like you, Firecrawl is probably the better buy — and that's fine.
Pick Social Fetch if…
- TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. as structured JSON
- Product features that need lookupStatus and stable field names
- PAYG social credits that never expire
- Avoiding HTML parsers for social profile pages
Pick Firecrawl if…
- Crawling or mapping entire websites into markdown for RAG
- Agent workflows that need browser interact / multi-step page actions
- Open-web search + scrape where social schema is irrelevant
- Teams already on Firecrawl's monthly credit plans for non-social pages
Social Fetch vs Firecrawl: common questions
Migration, billing surprises, and what changes when you add a second platform.
Can Firecrawl replace Social Fetch for TikTok data?
Only if you are willing to scrape TikTok URLs and maintain your own parsers. Firecrawl will fetch pages; it will not give you our social schema, multi-platform envelope, or platform-specific maintenance. For production social features, use a social API.
Does Social Fetch crawl websites like Firecrawl?
No. We offer web fetch utilities for individual pages alongside social routes. We do not offer Firecrawl-style crawl, map, or browser interact products.
Which is cheaper?
For web pages, compare Firecrawl's monthly credit plans. For social lookups, compare Social Fetch's $1.64/1k packs. Mixing the unit of work into one "cheaper API" number is how budgets go wrong.
Do Firecrawl credits roll over?
Monthly plan credits do not. Auto-recharge packs do. Social Fetch PAYG packs never expire.
The detailed Social Fetch vs Firecrawl comparisonHow Firecrawl works, where the costs come from, and when to keep it.
Do not compare credits until you compare jobs
Firecrawl turns URLs into LLM-ready markdown — crawl, map, search. Social Fetch returns /v2/instagram/profiles/{profile} with followerCount without an HTML parser.
Do not pick Firecrawl for social data or Social Fetch to crawl a 10,000-page help center. Read the job first.
Scraping a social URL is not a social API
Yes, you can point Firecrawl at https://www.tiktok.com/@user. You will get markdown or HTML reflecting whatever the public page rendered that day. You will not get our lookupStatus, normalized fields across Instagram and YouTube, or a support trail when the page structure shifts.
Social platforms actively break generic scrapers. Firecrawl's Enhanced Mode and proxy stack help for many sites; they are still general web tools. Social Fetch's extraction layer is maintained per platform as the product. That is why we charge per social operation instead of per HTML page.
Monthly page credits vs non-expiring social credits
Firecrawl's plans reset monthly. Quiet weeks waste allotment unless you buy auto-recharge packs that roll. JSON extraction and Enhanced Mode stack extra credits on top of the base page cost — budget the modifiers, not only the headline 1 credit/page.
Social Fetch PAYG credits sit until you spend them. A launch spike in March and silence in April does not burn April's budget. Optional monthly plans exist if you want included credits; they are not required.
If your usage is steady page crawling for an agent fleet, Firecrawl's Standard 100k credits at $99/mo can be rational. If your usage is bursty social lookups, non-expiring packs fit better.
Use both when the agent needs both worlds
A practical agent stack: Firecrawl (or Tavily/Exa) for open-web research, Social Fetch for structured creator and brand entities. MCP and LangChain integrations exist on both sides of that split. We are not trying to replace Firecrawl for crawl/map. We are trying to stop social lookups from being implemented as brittle page scrapes.
Bottom line: Web context API vs social data API
Firecrawl is the right buy for LLM-ready web crawl and scrape. Social Fetch is the right buy for production social profiles and posts. Credits are not interchangeable: one meters pages, the other meters social operations. Keep Firecrawl for the open web; use Social Fetch when the entity is a creator, brand, or post on a social network.
Methodology and sourcesHow we priced each scenario, and where every Firecrawl figure comes from. Checked 21 July 2026.
Sources
Firecrawl pricing from firecrawl.dev/pricing (July 2026). Hobby $19/mo or $16/mo annual; Standard $99/$83; Growth $399/$333. Confirm current credit modifiers for JSON and Enhanced Mode on their billing docs.
Firecrawl is a trademark of its owner. Social Fetch is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Firecrawl. Details about Firecrawl come from public sources checked on 21 July 2026.
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