Console

Social media data MCP servers: reading data, not posting

Scraping social platforms yourself means maintaining logins, anti-bot handling and parsers; a data MCP server lets an AI client call endpoints that already work. The 9 options here are not ranked: tell reading from posting first, then compare account sign-in, auth, billing, Chinese platforms and clients. 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.

Open in ChatGPTOpen in Claude

Reading and posting are two kinds

Social media MCP servers come in two kinds. Posting servers publish and schedule on your own accounts, such as Postiz, Buffer, Typefully and Ayrshare, and need write access to them. Data servers read public posts, accounts and comments, such as Bright Data and Apify. The two articles that draw this line are vendors' blogs, with a stake in it.

Write and read access are often separate. Sociona's MCP server lists posts:read, posts:write, schedule:read and schedule:write as different scopes. To read data you need not grant write access at all.

Data servers split again: those that read signed in with your own platform account, as many open-source projects do, and those where the service fetches and you hold only its key. The first costs nothing, and the risk falls on your account.

Nine options side by side

The table ranks no one: open source first, then general services, then services for Chinese platforms. A cell saying not listed means the pages do not say, not that it is missing.

OptionSigns in with your accountAuthBillingChinese platformsClients its pages name
xiaohongshu-mcp (open source)Yes: signs in to Xiaohongshu and keeps the cookiesLocal signed-in sessionFree, self-hostedXiaohongshu; it can also post notes, videos and commentsClaude Code, Cursor, Cline, VSCode, Gemini CLI, OpenClaw, Cherry Studio and more
yzfly/douyin-mcp-server (open source, archived)NoTranscripts need a SiliconFlow or Alibaba Bailian keyFreeDouyin: video info from a share link, a link without watermark, transcriptsNot checked for this page
Bright Data MCPNoThe hosted address takes the token in the URL, or local npx; OAuth not listed on its pages (2026-10-29)5,000 requests free a month, then $1.50 per 1,000 results for search, scraping and extractionNot listed on its pages (2026-10-29)Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor and more
Apify MCPNo (you sign in to Apify)The hosted server takes OAuth, or Authorization: Bearer with an Apify token; it also runs locallyConnecting is free; each Actor charges its own price; the free plan has $5 of usage a monthWhatever Actors the Apify Store hasClaude Code, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, Codex, Claude and more
SocialCrawl MCPNoLocal only, npx socialcrawl-mcp, with the key in an environment variable; OAuth not listed on its pages (2026-10-29)100 credits on sign-up, packs from £15, priced in pounds only on its pagesDouyin, XiaohongshuClaude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, Codex, OpenClaw
AIsaNoRemote, with browser OAuth by default or Authorization: Bearer with a key; also x402 pay-per-call$1 free a month; card top-ups from $10, charged per resultDouyin, Bilibili, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Zhihu, Kuaishou, WeChat; prices per platform not listed on its pages (2026-10-29)Claude (custom connector)
RedFox MCPNoOne remote server per platform, with the REDFOX_API_KEY header; also a local npm package; OAuth not listed on its pages (2026-10-29)¥100 at least, endpoints from ¥0.04; data largely marked T+1Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Official Accounts, Channels, Kuaishou, Bilibili, ToutiaoCodex, Workbuddy, Claude
QoviaNoOne remote server, Authorization: Bearer with a key, or x-api-key; OAuth not listed on its pages (2026-10-29), and Claude Desktop is bridged with mcp-remote50 trial calls for a new account; charged per successful call, with failures and empty results free; Douyin endpoints from $0.0005 a call, Xiaohongshu note search $0.005 a callDouyin, Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Bilibili, Weibo, Zhihu, Tieba, Toutiao, Xingtu, PGY; on WeChat, account search, article lists, reads and Channels account searchClaude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Claude Desktop (through mcp-remote)
DataXAPINoOne remote server, Authorization: Bearer with a key, or OAuthA prepaid US-dollar balance, $0.10 on sign-up, $10 at least; a page of Xiaohongshu note search is $0.0200Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Official Accounts, Channels, WeChat Search, Kuaishou, Bilibili, Weibo, ZhihuClaude Code, Cursor, Codex, ChatGPT, Claude, Cherry Studio, n8n

Where the others are better

xiaohongshu-mcp: free, it posts notes and comments, and it has more than 16,000 GitHub stars (2026-10-29), a large community. douyin-mcp-server: free, and it transcribes Douyin videos, which DataXAPI has no endpoint for; but the repository is archived and no longer updated.

Bright Data: 5,000 requests free a month, plus general web scraping, search engines and browser automation. Apify: OAuth and a listing in Claude's connector directory, a broad store, $5 free a month. AIsa: one-click OAuth into Claude, $1 free a month, a tool that quotes before calling, and invoices on its enterprise plan.

SocialCrawl: many platforms outside China, and a price estimate tool that needs no key. RedFox: video transcripts for Douyin, Xiaohongshu and Channels, AI search answers, Toutiao, low unit prices, all in Chinese.

Qovia: low unit prices, $0.0005 a call for Douyin search and comments and $0.005 for Xiaohongshu note search and Official Account article lists, all below DataXAPI's; neither failures nor empty results are charged; by default its MCP server gives the AI 4 tools, finding an endpoint before calling it; Xingtu and PGY creator data and e-commerce reviews; pages in Chinese and English.

How DataXAPI differs

It only reads, never posts, and uses no platform account or cookie of yours. One remote server, https://api.dataxapi.com/mcp, covers every platform; clients that take a header send Authorization: Bearer <key>, and ChatGPT and Claude connectors sign in with OAuth, with no key typed.

Calls by ID, keyword or account are fetched at call time, and every response carries meta.fetched_at. A call through MCP is charged from the balance at the endpoint's price, the same as a direct API call. Failed calls, timeouts and objects that do not exist are not charged; many list endpoints charge an empty result, as each endpoint's price says.

Who should pick which

To post or schedule: a posting server, outside this page. Xiaohongshu only, no money, and a spare account to carry the risk: xiaohongshu-mcp. Platforms outside China, or general web pages: Bright Data, Apify, SocialCrawl. OAuth in ChatGPT or Claude across many platforms and categories: AIsa, Apify. Video transcripts, Toutiao, low prices in yuan, with data a day old: RedFox. Unit price first, empty results free, a key in a coding tool, Xingtu, PGY or e-commerce reviews: Qovia.

No account of your own at stake, data as of the call, Official Accounts, Channels and WeChat Search among the Chinese platforms, and ChatGPT, Claude and coding tools on one address: DataXAPI.

How to connect DataXAPI

For Claude Code, Cursor and Codex, dataxapi setup writes the entry; in Cherry Studio and n8n, type the address and the Authorization header into the client; in ChatGPT and Claude, add a connector with the address alone and sign in with OAuth when asked.

Coming from xiaohongshu-mcp, its reading tools map to these endpoints: note search to xiaohongshu.notes.search (query, sort), note details to xiaohongshu.notes.get (id or url), comments to xiaohongshu.notes.comments.list, a creator's profile to xiaohongshu.users.get. DataXAPI cannot post; keep the old tool for posting.

Questions

Will a server signed in with my Xiaohongshu account get it banned? There are no public figures. xiaohongshu-mcp's README says one account cannot be signed in on several web clients, or the server gets signed out. Whether your own account is used decides whose risk it is.

Which work in ChatGPT? AIsa, Apify and DataXAPI state OAuth; Apify and DataXAPI name ChatGPT. The others' pages do not list OAuth (2026-10-29).

Can an MCP server get Douyin comments? Only if the service has the endpoint. DataXAPI's douyin.videos.comments.list is $0.0020 a page; the archived douyin-mcp-server parses links and transcribes, and its pages list no comments tool (2026-10-29).

Endpoints

Each with its price; every page has the parameters, the fields and a recorded response.

Xiaohongshu note searchSearch Xiaohongshu notes by terms: title, text, author, engagement counts, images, and a link that opens.$0.0200 / a callXiaohongshu note detailGet one Xiaohongshu note by ID or link: title, text, author, engagement counts, images.$0.0200 / a callXiaohongshu note commentsGet a page of top-level comments on a Xiaohongshu note by ID or link, newest first: text, commenter, likes, reply count, time posted.$0.0200 / a callXiaohongshu user profileGet a Xiaohongshu account by user ID or profile link: name, handle, bio, follower, following and note counts, verification.$0.0200 / a callDouyin video commentsGet a page of comments on a Douyin video: text, commenter, likes, reply count, time posted.$0.0020 / a call

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.