Social Fetch - Social Media API

Product Introduction

1. Definition: Social Fetch is a unified social media scraping API (Application Programming Interface) designed for developers and SaaS teams. It is a technical infrastructure product that programmatically extracts structured, normalized JSON data from public profiles, posts, comments, videos, and transcripts across 13+ major social platforms including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, and Facebook.
2. Core Value Proposition: It exists to eliminate the maintenance burden and technical complexity of building and managing in-house web scrapers. Its primary value is providing a single, reliable API key and a consistent JSON data schema for accessing live social media data, allowing product teams to focus on building their core application features instead of constantly fixing broken selectors, managing proxies, and handling platform anti-bot countermeasures.

Main Features

1. Unified API for 13+ Platforms: The API provides a single endpoint structure (/v1/{platform}/{resource}) for accessing data from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, Threads, Rumble, Telegram, Spotify, and GitHub. How it works: Developers use one authentication key (x-api-key header) to call platform-specific routes. The underlying technology involves maintaining a distributed fleet of scraper services that handle platform-specific rendering, authentication, and DOM parsing, then normalizing the output into a consistent JSON shape regardless of the source platform.
2. Normalized JSON Schema & Live Data Fetch: Every successful API response returns data in a predictable, typed JSON envelope alongside metadata like requestId and creditsCharged. How it works: Instead of serving cached data, each request triggers a live fetch from the target social platform in approximately 3.2 seconds on average. The technology ensures fields like followers, handle, verified, and avatarUrl have consistent key names across different networks, drastically simplifying client-side data parsing and storage logic.
3. Pay-As-You-Go Credit System with No Expiry: The product operates on a credit-based pricing model rather than strict monthly subscriptions. How it works: Users purchase packs of credits (e.g., 1 credit typically equals 1 API call). Key technologies and policies include: credits from one-time purchases never expire, subscription plans provide monthly included credits at a lower effective rate, and users are not charged for infrastructure failures (lookup_failed status), only for completed lookups (found or not_found).
4. Comprehensive Data Capabilities: The API surface is organized into four core capability families: Profiles & Accounts, Posts & Media, Search & Discovery, and Engagement & Threads. How it works: Each capability maps to specific GET endpoints. For example, the engagement_threads capability provides access to full comment reply trees with parent_id and author structures, using cursor-based pagination to handle large datasets efficiently without over-fetching.
5. Developer-First Integrations: Offers multiple integration paths including a native TypeScript SDK, a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for AI agents (Cursor/Claude), and pre-built nodes for no-code tools like n8n and Apify. How it works: The TypeScript SDK provides generated types that mirror the API routes, offering Result types and lookupStatus guards. The MCP server exposes over 87 endpoint tools with OAuth, allowing AI agents to make typed API calls instead of parsing raw HTML.

Problems Solved

1. Pain Point: The high maintenance cost and instability of DIY social media scrapers. Developers waste significant engineering resources constantly updating CSS selectors, rotating proxy IPs, and bypassing platform rate limits and layout changes.
2. Target Audience: SaaS founders and product teams building social media monitoring, influencer marketing, creator intelligence, brand safety, and market research tools. Developer personas include Full-Stack Engineers, Data Engineers, and Product Managers who need reliable social data feeds without operational overhead.
3. Use Cases:
   • Social Media Monitoring & Crisis Detection: Automatically polling brand keywords on X/Twitter and triggering Slack alerts when crisis terms spike.
   • Influencer Vetting & Campaign Management: Hydrating a creator database with live follower counts, post engagement, and verification status from Instagram and TikTok for brand deal negotiations.
   • AI Agent & LLM Data Provisioning: Providing structured social data via MCP or function calls so AI agents have access to current, typed information instead of unreliable web search results.
   • Content Repurposing & RAG: Fetching video transcripts from YouTube and TikTok Reels to feed into Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems for content analysis and repurposing.
   • Competitive & Market Intelligence: Scraping public Reddit discussions and Facebook group posts to analyze customer sentiment, churn reasons, and local marketplace trends.

Unique Advantages

1. Differentiation vs. Alternatives: Unlike generic scraping APIs or marketplace solutions (e.g., Apify actors, Bright Data), Social Fetch offers social-native endpoints with a first-party, normalized schema. Competitors often require a generic "scrape job" setup followed by polling and dataset downloads, whereas Social Fetch returns JSON directly in the HTTP response. Unlike DIY scrapers, the company absorbs all costs related to DOM shifts and anti-bot measures.
2. Key Innovation: The combination of a "live upstream fetch" guarantee (no intermediate cache) with a unified, versioned JSON schema. This ensures data freshness and developer consistency simultaneously. The policy of not charging for lookup_failed errors transfers the operational risk of scraping fragility from the customer to the provider, aligning incentives perfectly.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. Is Social Fetch API data real-time and fresh? Yes. Social Fetch performs a live fetch from the target social platform on each API request, with an average response time of ~3.2 seconds. There is no cache layer, so the data reflects the profile or post as it exists at the moment of the request, not a stale snapshot.
2. Do Social Fetch API credits expire? Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) credit packs never expire. You can buy a pack and use the credits over months or years. Credits included with a monthly Starter, Growth, or Scale subscription reset each billing cycle and do not roll over.
3. What happens if a profile is not found (lookupStatus: not_found)? A not_found result is a completed lookup and will cost credits, as the system performed a real search on the platform. You are only not charged for infrastructure failures (lookup_failed) or 503 temporarily_unavailable errors.
4. Are there rate limits on the Social Fetch API? There are no enforced per-minute rate limits or RPS caps on paid metered routes. Your effective limit is your credit balance. The service recommends staying below ~500 concurrent requests for optimal reliability. Rate limits do apply to the whoami and balance endpoints.
5. Which social media platforms does Social Fetch support? The API supports TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, Threads, Rumble, Telegram, Spotify, and GitHub, plus generic Web routes. The full list of endpoints is detailed in their public capability matrix and documentation.