What is a social media API?
A social media API is an HTTP interface that returns structured data about social platforms, usually JSON for profiles, posts, comments, search, or media metadata. "Social media API" covers official partner kits, first-party public-data APIs, and marketplace scrapers that wrap HTML.
Three shapes people mean
Official platform APIs (TikTok Kit, Instagram Graph, YouTube Data API) serve partners with review, OAuth, and write or owner-scoped access.
Public-data REST APIs accept an API key and return public profiles/posts across networks with a stable envelope. Social Fetch sits here.
Scraper runtimes and Actors take a job payload, crawl pages, and dump datasets later. Useful for custom scripts; different latency and ops model than a single GET.
What Social Fetch is
One key across 17 platforms and 137 marketplace operations. Responses use { data, meta }. Metered calls charge credits; meta.requestId is for support.
Browse platforms at /platforms, read contracts under /docs, try free tools at /tools, or route a question through /ask.
How to pick one
Need publish or owner insights? Start with the platform's official kit. Need public enrichment across networks with one schema? Use a public-data REST API. Need a one-off custom crawl script? A scraper runtime can fit, if you accept job latency and schema churn.
Ask about latency (sync GET vs async job), schema stability, credit or quota metering, and whether you get a request ID when something fails. Glossary siblings: /glossary/social-media-scraper-api, /glossary/api-key-vs-oauth, and pages like /glossary/does-tiktok-have-an-api for each major network.
FAQ
Is a social media API the same as a scraper?
Not always. Some products are first-party REST over maintained scrapers; others expose raw crawl jobs. Ask about latency, schema stability, and whether you get requestId support.
Do I need OAuth for public profiles?
Official kits often require OAuth for owner data. Public-data APIs typically use an API key for public lookups only.
Where should I start on Social Fetch?
Pick a platform hub under /platforms, or ask a question on /ask. Pricing and credits are on /pricing and /docs/credits.