Social Fetch vs Scrape.do
Scrape.do (scrape.do) sells a general web scraping API: datacenter or residential proxies, JS rendering, geo targeting, pay only for successful responses. Social Fetch sells structured public social data. Cheap HTML credits are not the same product as a TikTok profile object.
Last updated: 2026-07-21
At a glance
The rows teams scan first before reading the full page — how each product expects you to integrate, who runs the upstream fetch, and what billing looks like at a headline level. Numbers and sources are in the pricing section below; this table is the orientation pass.
| Social Fetch | Scrape.do | |
|---|---|---|
| Product | Social data REST API | Web scraping API (HTML/JSON/XML/markdown from URLs) |
| Billing | PAYG packs; $1.65/1k at Scale | Monthly credits from $29 (Hobby) — success-based |
| Credit multipliers | Mostly 1 credit per standard lookup | 1 / 5 / 10 / 25 by proxy + render; special domains higher |
| LinkedIn special cost | Standard social credit (see docs per route) | 30 credits per successful LinkedIn request (docs) |
| You maintain parsers? | No — normalized fields | Yes — unless using a site-specific scraper add-on |
| Best fit | App features needing social entities | High-volume general scraping with WAF bypass |
Scrape.do is priced to win general scraping volume
Published Hobby economics (~$0.11 per 1,000 base credits) look aggressive versus enterprise proxy suites. Success-based billing means timeouts and blocks do not eat the allotment. Every plan unlocking residential, JS, and geo targeting removes the "upgrade to unlock proxies" dance.
For open-web collection — directories, e-commerce, research crawls — that package is the point of the product.
Social pages are where the spreadsheet lies. Residential + JS is 25 credits. LinkedIn is 30. You still parse. Anti-bot changes still wake you up. The headline $/1k credits was never the fully loaded cost of a stable creator API.
Domain specials are a tell
When a scraper vendor publishes LinkedIn at 30 credits and Google at 10, they are admitting those targets need heavier infrastructure. Social Fetch's answer is not "pay 30 credits for HTML" — it is a LinkedIn route that returns documented fields under the same credit philosophy as TikTok.
If your roadmap is mostly LinkedIn company pages and Instagram profiles, compare structured API vendors first. Reach for Scrape.do when the URL is not a supported social entity.
Agents and scrapers want different tools
Run Scrape.do for arbitrary sites and hard WAF targets. For social entity work inside Cursor, Claude, or VS Code, Social Fetch's hosted MCP (OAuth, no API key in mcp.json) and Agent Skills install expose the same marketplace operations as REST — plus docs search helpers. Credits bill like the API.
That is a different workflow from wiring scrape credits into an agent that still has to invent selectors. Migration off Scrape.do-for-social is deleting parse code and calling typed tools or REST, not rewriting your whole data platform.
Where Scrape.do fairly wins
Volume HTML with success-based billing; sites we do not cover; teams that want one scraping gateway with full features on the free tier for tests. If you truly only need raw page bytes and already own parsers, buying Social Fetch would be the wrong abstraction.
We win when the artifact you ship is a social object in a product, not a string of HTML in a dataset.
Who should pick which
Short lists pulled from the sections above — not a scorecard. If your situation matches the right column, Scrape.do is probably the better buy even if Social Fetch wins more checkboxes down the page.
When Social Fetch is the better fit
- You need normalized social profiles and posts, not HTML
- LinkedIn/Instagram/TikTok entity lookups should not burn 25–30 scrape credits each
- MCP or Agent Skills should call social tools without inventing selectors
- PAYG social credits without a monthly scrape subscription fit product traffic
- Support with requestId on social routes beats debugging selectors alone
When Scrape.do is the better fit
- General web scraping at low per-credit rates is the main workload
- Success-based billing and full features on free/Hobby matter operationally
- Targets are non-social or unsupported by Social Fetch endpoints
- You already maintain parsers and only need transport + unblock
- Custom WAF strategies and high concurrency on Advanced/Enterprise plans
Successful scrape credits vs structured social lookups
Scrape.do plans (July 2026): Free 1,000 credits/mo; Hobby $29 (250k); Pro $99 (1.25M); Business $249 (3.5M); Advanced $699 (10M). Base costs: 1 credit datacenter, 5 with JS render, 10 residential/mobile (super), 25 residential+JS. Some domains override — Google 10, LinkedIn 30, others listed in docs. Social Fetch Scale remains $1.65/1k for completed standard social lookups.
| Scenario | Social Fetch | Scrape.do |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 100 credits, no monthly clawback | 1,000 successful credits/month, full features |
| Hobby plan | N/A — buy packs as needed | $29/mo · 250k credits · ~$0.11/1k credits |
| 1,000 datacenter fetches (Hobby) | N/A | ~$0.11 |
| 1,000 residential+JS fetches (25 credits) | N/A | ~$2.90 on Hobby credit math |
| 1,000 LinkedIn pages (30 credits) | ~$1.65 structured (LinkedIn routes) | ~$3.48 on Hobby + your parsing |
| 1,000 structured multi-platform profiles | ~$1.65 | Scrape + parse + keep selectors alive |
Scrape.do pricing from scrape.do/pricing; credit table and domain overrides from scrape.do/documentation/request-costs/ (July 2026). Only successful responses consume credits. Confirm LinkedIn and other specials before estimating social workloads.
Feature checklist
Yes means the capability is on the default path for most users. Partial usually means a different SKU, a marketplace listing that covers only some endpoints, or a workaround you have to wire yourself. A green check for Scrape.do does not mean it belongs in your stack — match each row to the workflow you are actually shipping.
| Capability | Social Fetch | Scrape.do |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | ||
| Native scheduling / batch pipelines | ||
| Webhooks & large dataset export |
Bottom line
The pricing table and feature checklist above are for narrowing the field. This section is the pick-one answer for Social Fetch vs Scrape.do. If their integration shape fits your roadmap better, take it — the prose and “when they win” lists above name those cases on purpose.
Cheap successful scrapes vs social objects
Scrape.do is a strong general scraping API with sharp success-based credit pricing. Social Fetch is a social data API with flat lookup pricing and maintained schemas. Use Scrape.do for the open web. Use Social Fetch when the unit of work is a social entity. Mixing them by URL class is normal; replacing one with the other end-to-end usually is not.
If Social Fetch is still in the running, run one real endpoint before you buy a subscription elsewhere. The playground uses the same API key and response envelope as production — you will know in a few minutes whether the JSON shape fits your code.
Questions about this pairing
What teams ask when Social Fetch and Scrape.do land on the same shortlist — migration, billing surprises, and whether the integration model changes when you add a second platform. For cross-vendor framing, start on the compare hub.
- Is Scrape.do cheaper than Social Fetch for social media?
- Base datacenter credits are much cheaper per page than Social Fetch per lookup. Social pages often need residential+JS (25 credits) or LinkedIn's 30-credit special — and you still parse. Structured Social Fetch lookups at $1.65/1k are usually cheaper fully loaded for production social features.
- Is the slug scrape-do the same as scrape.do?
- Yes. The product site is scrape.do; our compare slug is scrape-do for URL safety.
- Does Scrape.do return TikTok profile JSON?
- It returns whatever the URL response contains (HTML or configured output). Structured TikTok profile schemas are Social Fetch's product, not a Scrape.do default.
- What happens when Scrape.do credits run out?
- Requests stop until you upgrade or buy more credits (per their FAQ). Social Fetch PAYG: buy another pack; optional plans available for steady volume.
- Can I use Scrape.do and Social Fetch together?
- Yes. Route social entity reads to Social Fetch and everything else to Scrape.do. That split matches how most teams already think about URL classes.
- Do you only charge for success like Scrape.do?
- We charge for completed lookups, including not_found. We do not charge lookup_failed or 503 temporarily_unavailable. Different definition of "success" than HTTP scrape success.