How to choose a social media data API: price unit, failed calls, MCP, Chinese platforms
Scraping social platforms yourself means maintaining logins, anti-bot handling and parsers; a data API is called with a key. Compare 6 things before choosing: the price unit, whether an empty result is charged, whether a failed call is charged, MCP and files for AI, how far Douyin, Xiaohongshu and WeChat go, and the currency; the 6 options here are not ranked. DataXAPI's endpoints here are from $0.0020 a call, and a failed call is not charged; what others charge and do was checked on 2026-10-29, each with its source below.
Six things to compare
Price unit: per call (one price a call, however many rows a page holds), per item (per row or result returned), credits (convert them to money first) and subscriptions (a monthly fee plus usage). At the same unit price, a page of 20 and a page of 5 differ fourfold for the same job, so price the job, not the call.
Empty results: a search that finds nothing, an account with no posts, a note with no comments; some services charge it, some do not, some give the credits back. Over a batch of keywords this matters a lot.
Failed calls: timeouts, upstream errors, deleted objects. Most services say failures are free, but what counts as a failure differs: some go by HTTP status, others count timeouts and failed lookups too.
MCP and files for AI: a remote address or a local install; OAuth sign-in or a key; the key in a header or in the URL. Files such as llms.txt and openapi.json decide whether an AI can read the endpoints by itself.
Chinese platforms: most services have Douyin and Xiaohongshu; they differ on comments, replies and play counts. WeChat is where they differ widely: Official Account article lists, reads, text and comments, Channels videos, WeChat Search; each service covers only part of it. Also check whether data is fetched at call time or updated a day later.
Payment and currency: US dollars, pounds or yuan; whether Alipay works; the least top-up; whether the balance expires.
Six options side by side
The table ranks no one. A cell saying not listed means the pages do not say, not that it is missing. Prices are copied in each service's own currency, as its pages stood on 2026-10-29.
| Option | Price unit | Empty result | Failed call | MCP and files for AI | Douyin, Xiaohongshu, WeChat | Payment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qovia | Per successful call, priced per endpoint: Douyin search and comments $0.0005 a call, Xiaohongshu note search $0.005 a call | Not charged; the answer carries meta.empty: true | Not charged, nor are timeouts and failed lookups | Remote MCP with Authorization: Bearer and a key; OAuth not listed on its pages (2026-10-29); llms.txt, llms-full.txt, openapi.json | Douyin and Xiaohongshu; on WeChat, account search, article lists, reads and Channels account search; Channels videos and WeChat Search not listed on its pages (2026-10-29) | US dollars; card, Alipay, Apple Pay or Google Pay (through Stripe), or USDT; 50 trial calls for a new account; least top-up not listed on its pages (2026-10-29) |
| SocialCrawl | Credits per row returned: 5 a row for Douyin and Xiaohongshu search; packs from £15 for 2,500 credits | Credits given back | Credits given back for upstream errors and timeouts | Local only, npx socialcrawl-mcp, with the key in an environment variable; llms.txt, llms-full.txt, an llms file for each platform | Douyin, Xiaohongshu; WeChat not listed on its pages (2026-10-29) | Pounds only on its pages; 100 credits on sign-up; credits never expire |
| RedFox (红狐) | Credits, ¥1 = 10; basic endpoints ¥0.04 a call, down to ¥0.02 at volume | Its pricing page states a rule for failed requests only | Failed requests (not 200) are not charged | One remote MCP server per platform, with the REDFOX_API_KEY header; OAuth not listed on its pages (2026-10-29); llms.txt answered 404 (2026-10-29) | Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Official Accounts, Channels; its public endpoints are largely marked T+1, updated a day later | Yuan, ¥100 at least |
| Bright Data | Per item: 5,000 requests free a month, then $1.50 per 1,000 results for search, scraping and extraction | Its MCP README does not say | Its MCP README does not say | The hosted address takes the token in the URL, or local npx | Not listed on its pages (2026-10-29) | US dollars |
| Apify | Each Actor sets its own price, per event or per platform usage; the free plan has $5 of usage a month, paid plans from $19 a month | The store docs do not say; it depends on the Actor | The store docs do not say; it depends on the Actor | Hosted MCP with OAuth, or Authorization: Bearer with an Apify token | Whatever Actors the Apify Store has | US dollars |
| DataXAPI | Per call, list endpoints per page, each endpoint priced: Douyin search $0.0200 a page, Xiaohongshu note search $0.0200 a page | Many list endpoints charge it, as each endpoint's price says | Failed calls, timeouts and objects that do not exist are not charged | One remote server, Authorization: Bearer with a key, or OAuth; llms.txt, llms-full.txt, a .md version of each page, openapi.json, prices.json | Douyin, Xiaohongshu; Official Account article lists, text, reads and comments, Channels videos and comments, WeChat Search | A US-dollar balance from $10; Alipay paying in yuan, or a card; $0.10 on sign-up; the balance never expires |
Where the others are better
Unit price: Qovia's Douyin endpoints are $0.0005 a call, and its Xiaohongshu note search and Official Account article list $0.005; RedFox's basic endpoints are ¥0.04 a call. All are below DataXAPI's $0.0200 and $0.0200. On unit price alone, they cost less.
Empty results: Qovia does not charge them and SocialCrawl gives the credits back. Many of DataXAPI's list endpoints charge an empty result, which shows over a batch of rare keywords.
Coverage: SocialCrawl, Bright Data and Apify have more platforms outside China and general web pages; Qovia has Xingtu and PGY creator data and e-commerce data; RedFox has video transcripts and AI search answers. Apify and Bright Data also scrape any web page.
Free allowance: Bright Data 5,000 requests a month, Apify $5 of usage a month, Qovia 50 calls for a new account, SocialCrawl 100 credits on sign-up.
How DataXAPI differs
WeChat coverage: Official Account article lists, text, reads and featured comments, Channels videos and comments, and articles and videos from WeChat Search, all under one key. Calls by ID, keyword or account are fetched at call time, and every response carries meta.fetched_at.
MCP: one remote server, https://api.dataxapi.com/mcp, for every platform; clients that take a header send Authorization: Bearer <key>, and ChatGPT and Claude connectors sign in with OAuth, with no key typed. Pages are in Chinese and English, and llms.txt, openapi.json and prices.json are public.
Who should pick which
Unit price first, empty results free, Xingtu, PGY or e-commerce reviews: Qovia. Mostly platforms outside China, paying per row returned, in pounds: SocialCrawl. Low prices in yuan, data a day old is fine, video transcripts: RedFox. General web scraping and platforms outside China: Bright Data, Apify.
Official Account reads, text and comments, Channels videos and WeChat Search, figures as of the call, a direct OAuth connector in ChatGPT or Claude, a small top-up by Alipay or in dollars: DataXAPI. They also work together: the cheaper ones for large batches, DataXAPI for WeChat and today's lookups.
How to try it on DataXAPI
Douyin: search videos with douyin.videos.search (query, optionally sort and published_within); comments with douyin.videos.comments.list (the video ID as id), $0.0020 a page. Xiaohongshu: search notes with xiaohongshu.notes.search (query, sort).
Official Accounts: the article list from wechat_mp.accounts.articles.list (the original ID starting gh_ as id), with reads from wechat_mp.articles.metrics (the long link as url), $0.0200 an article. The key goes in Authorization: Bearer <key>; for the next page pass page.next_cursor back as cursor, within the hour.
Questions
Per call or per item: which costs less? It depends on how many rows a page holds. Many rows a page, all of them wanted: per call. Only the first few, or searches that often find nothing: per item, or a service that does not charge empty results. Price your most common job at each service's rates.
Which give Official Account reads? Qovia, RedFox and DataXAPI. RedFox gives them with the article list, marked T+1; DataXAPI and Qovia charge them article by article.
Which connect to ChatGPT with OAuth? Apify and DataXAPI state OAuth and name ChatGPT; the others' pages do not list OAuth (2026-10-29). Qovia's MCP page says Claude Desktop is bridged with mcp-remote and a key.
Endpoints
Each with its price; every page has the parameters, the fields and a recorded response.
Sources
What this page says of other services is from their own pages and documents, read on 2026-10-29. Prices and features change: check the source before you decide.
- Qovia llms.txt (endpoints and prices)
- Qovia pricing
- Qovia docs (billing, empty results)
- Qovia MCP docs
- SocialCrawl pricing
- SocialCrawl llms.txt
- SocialCrawl Douyin page
- SocialCrawl MCP server
- RedFox pricing
- RedFox MCP
- RedFox platforms
- RedFox llms.txt (404)
- Bright Data MCP on GitHub
- Apify MCP on GitHub
- Apify pricing
- Apify Store pricing models