An Apify alternative for social media data
LurkAPI is a social media data API. Apify bills every post a scraper returns; LurkAPI bills each call, and one call returns a profile's 12 latest posts. So 100,000 Instagram posts cost $9 here and $199 a month on Apify.
100,000 Instagram posts cost $199 a month on Apify and $9 here
Apify
$23$199$950$1,500
Starter plan, a monthScale plan, a monthScale plan, a monthBusiness plan, a month
LurkAPI
$9$9$45$59
Starter packStarter pack5 × Starter packsGrowth pack
$14 less for the same 10,000 Instagram posts$190 less for the same 100,000 Instagram posts$905 less for the same 500,000 Instagram posts$1,441 less for the same 1,000,000 Instagram posts
On Apify's $19 Starter plan, pay as you go stops at $100, so past about 51,700 posts a month you need the $199 Scale plan. Unused usage expires each month; packs here never do.
An answer in half a second, not an actor run
An Apify actor has to start, scrape and save a dataset before you get anything back. In a published test, one Instagram Reel took a median 13.7 s. Here an Instagram profile answers in 0.42 s.
- Instagram0.42 sprofile median13.7 sone Reel, actor run
Apify's: 13.71 s median for one Instagram post per run, from ScrapeCreators' benchmark. Ours: the median of successful calls in production over the 7 days to October 26, 2026, for the call nearest theirs.
What comes with LurkAPI, next to Apify
MCP, free credits and billing as each one's own pages put them, and the 16 platforms one key reads.
| Feature | LurkAPI | Apify |
|---|---|---|
| Free credits every day, no card | ||
| Credits that never expire | ||
| No monthly plan to buy | ||
| Billed per call, not per item returned | ||
| One request, with the answer in the response | ||
| Response times on its own site |
88 endpoints on 16 platforms
- Instagram8
- Facebook9
- Reddit5
- YouTube8
- TikTok17
- Google8
- Bluesky3
- Snapchat1
- Truth Social3
- Telegram3
- X (Twitter)3
- Threads3
- LinkedIn7
- Link-in-bio1
- eBay2
- Web7
Every endpoint and its price
YouTube
TikTok
Bluesky
Snapchat
Truth Social
Telegram
X (Twitter)
Threads
Link-in-bio
eBay
Web
Try it on your own calls in a minute
100 free credits, no card. Run one call right here, or let your AI set LurkAPI up for you.
Nike's 12 latest posts, in one call. Run it here.
Or let your AI set it up
Paste one prompt into Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or VS Code and it connects LurkAPI for you.
Other Apify alternatives, compared
What 100,000 Instagram profile lookups cost on each.
LurkAPI
$59Growth pack
Billed per call, not per post: 12 Instagram posts a call. Packs never expire.
HikerAPI
$100Standard
Instagram only, with 120 endpoints, if Instagram is all you scrape.
Bright Data
$150Pay as you go
The nearest thing to Apify: ready-made scrapers billed per record, 5,000 records free each month.
ScrapeCreators
$1884 × $47 packs
Billed per call too, and its credits never expire.
Each price is the cheapest published buy of 100,000 Instagram profiles, as of October 31, 2026.
Questions before you switch
- How much does Apify cost?
- $19, $199 or $999 a month, and each fee is that month's usage, spent at each actor's price per result. Usage you don't spend expires at month end.
- Is Apify free?
- Its free plan gives you $5 of usage a month, about 1,900 Instagram profiles. Past that, runs stop until the next month.
- How much does the Apify Instagram Scraper cost?
- $2.70 per 1,000 results on the free plan, $2.30 on Starter, $1.90 on Scale and $1.50 on Business. Every post, comment or profile it returns is one result.
- What's the cheapest Apify alternative for Instagram?
- LurkAPI: $9 buys 10,000 calls, and each returns up to 12 posts.
Run your Apify scrapes on LurkAPI, free
100 credits, no card. Swap one actor run for a GET and compare.