SocialCrawl alternative for Douyin, Xiaohongshu and WeChat data
Scraping Douyin and Xiaohongshu yourself means maintaining logins, anti-bot handling and parsers; a data API is called with a key. SocialCrawl charges 5 credits a row returned on Douyin and Xiaohongshu and has no WeChat; for Official Accounts, Channels, WeChat Search and deeper Douyin and Xiaohongshu data, DataXAPI fits. 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.
SocialCrawl and DataXAPI side by side
SocialCrawl charges in credits bought in pounds: Starter is £15 for 2,500 credits, £0.006 a credit; Pro is £299 for 150,000, about £0.002 a credit. The pound figures below use these two packs.
| Item | SocialCrawl | DataXAPI |
|---|---|---|
| Douyin search, 20 videos | 5 credits a row returned, 100 for 20: £0.60 on Starter, about £0.20 on Pro; up to 25 rows a call | $0.0200 a page, usually 8 and up to 20 videos |
| Douyin plays | Returned as null; its docs say Douyin does not publish plays off the platform | douyin.videos.metrics gives a video's plays and likes, $0.0020 a call |
| Xiaohongshu search, 20 notes | 5 credits a row returned, 100 for 20 | $0.0200 a page, usually 20 notes |
| Official Accounts, Channels and WeChat Search not listed on its pages (2026-10-29) | Official Account article lists, text, reads and comments; Channels videos and comments; WeChat Search | |
| Other Chinese platforms | Bilibili, Weibo and Zhihu not listed on its pages (2026-10-29); its list has only kwai | Kuaishou, Bilibili, Weibo, Zhihu |
| Freshness | Cached, and cache hits are free: profiles about 15 minutes, posts about 10, comments about 5, search about 2 | Fetched at call time; every response carries meta.fetched_at |
| Charging | Credits come back when the upstream errs, times out or returns nothing; it says you pay only for calls that return data; batch-by-ID endpoints charge per block of 50 IDs | 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 |
| Payment | Pounds only on its pages; 100 credits on sign-up with no card; credits never expire | A US-dollar balance from $10; Alipay paying in yuan, or a card; $0.10 on sign-up; the balance never expires |
| MCP | Local only, npx socialcrawl-mcp, with the key in SOCIALCRAWL_API_KEY; no remote address; OAuth not listed on its pages (2026-10-29) | Remote, https://api.dataxapi.com/mcp, with Authorization: Bearer <key> or OAuth |
| Files for AI and languages | llms.txt, llms-full.txt, an llms-{platform}.txt for each platform, .md platform pages; English and Korean | llms.txt, /zh/llms.txt, llms-full.txt, a .md version of each page, openapi.json, prices.json; English and Chinese |
Where SocialCrawl is better
Broad coverage outside China: many endpoints for LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube, plus e-commerce, Google, Naver, Polymarket and more. For work mainly outside China it offers more to choose from.
Gentler billing: it charges per row returned, so fewer rows cost less; empty results, timeouts and upstream errors get their credits back; cache hits are free. DataXAPI charges per page, and many list endpoints charge an empty result.
More material for AI and people: an llms file for each platform, dated the day it was written; an estimate tool in its MCP server that needs no key; Korean pages.
How DataXAPI differs
All of WeChat: Official Account article lists, text, reads and featured comments; Channels videos, collections and comments; articles and videos from WeChat Search. Deeper Douyin and Xiaohongshu: beyond search, profiles and comments, Douyin plays, Douyin's Xingtu and trend index, Xiaohongshu comment replies, Xiaohongshu's PGY.
Fetched at call time, with meta.fetched_at on every response. A remote MCP address, with OAuth for ChatGPT and Claude connectors and nothing to install. Pages in Chinese and English; Alipay paying in yuan, or a card, into a US-dollar balance.
Who should pick which
Mostly platforms outside China, LinkedIn or e-commerce data, paying in pounds, paying only for rows returned: SocialCrawl.
The Chinese market, Official Accounts, Channels and WeChat Search, Bilibili, Weibo and Zhihu, Douyin plays and Xiaohongshu comment replies, a direct connector in ChatGPT or Claude, paying by Alipay: DataXAPI. They also work together: SocialCrawl for platforms outside China, DataXAPI for Chinese ones.
How to switch
Douyin: search becomes douyin.videos.search (query, optionally sort and published_within); profile becomes douyin.users.get and the video list douyin.users.videos.list, both taking id (the sec_uid starting MS4w) or url; a single video becomes douyin.videos.get; comments become douyin.videos.comments.list and replies douyin.comments.replies.list (id the comment, post_id the video); user search becomes douyin.users.search; the hot search list becomes douyin.trends.list.
Xiaohongshu: search becomes xiaohongshu.notes.search, profile xiaohongshu.users.get, the note list xiaohongshu.users.notes.list, note details xiaohongshu.notes.get, comments xiaohongshu.notes.comments.list.
Everywhere: the key goes in Authorization: Bearer <key>; lists are in data.items; for the next page pass page.next_cursor back as cursor, within the hour.
Questions
Can SocialCrawl get Official Account articles? Its platform list has no WeChat, Official Accounts, Channels or WeChat Search (2026-10-29). DataXAPI's wechat_mp.accounts.articles.list lists an account's articles by its original ID, $0.0200 a page.
Why are SocialCrawl's Douyin plays null? Its docs say Douyin does not publish plays off the platform. DataXAPI's douyin.videos.metrics returns a video's plays and likes by its ID.
Is a call with no results charged? SocialCrawl gives the credits back for an empty result. Many of DataXAPI's list endpoints charge an empty result, as each endpoint's price says; objects that do not exist and failed calls are not charged.
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.