I needed public social media data for a side project and had no idea how these APIs are priced. Here's what I found after testing and reading pricing pages.
Actor-based scrapers (e.g. Apify): great for batch jobs, but each run takes seconds to tens of seconds. Too slow if a user is waiting on a page.
Marketplace APIs (RapidAPI): many options, often with free tiers and small monthly plans. Quality varies a lot between providers, and a monthly plan costs money even in months you barely use it.
Pay-per-request APIs: I tested HikerAPI. It's a plain REST API with one header for auth, and responses came back fast enough for live pages. The pricing has a twist: your per-request price depends on how much you've prepaid. At the entry level it was $0.02 per request; once your balance reaches $100 it drops to $0.001. Unused balance doesn't expire. The catch for me: card payment fees from my country were around 15%, and my first card was declined.
What I'd tell another beginner
Test with a free tier first, and plan your test calls. I burned through about 100 trial requests in one afternoon.
Cache everything you can. Repeated lookups shouldn't cost money.
"Not found" responses can still be billed, so validate input before calling.
Compare total cost including payment fees, not just the per-request price.
What are you using for social data, and how do you keep costs down?
I'm part of HikerAPI's user-rewards program — they credit my account for posts like this. Sharing my actual experience.
It was my first time paying for an API, so I was careful
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