Social media scraping tools, compared
We build InsightSocial, so we are not neutral. What we can do is be accurate: verified pricing, and an honest section on every page explaining where the other tool is the better buy.
At a glance
List prices checked 18 October 2026. Follow each comparison for the full breakdown.
| Tool | How it runs | Entry price | What you are billed for | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| InsightSocial | Chrome extension, your own session | Free (500 exported rows/mo), $9.99/mo Pro | Per exported row | Marketers and researchers who need social exports in a spreadsheet |
| Apify | Cloud platform, 90,000+ Actors | Free ($5 credits), then $19/mo | Compute units + proxies + actor fees | Developers building scheduled data pipelines |
| PhantomBuster | Cloud automations acting through your accounts | Free (30 min/mo, 10-row exports), then $69/mo | Execution time + email and AI credits | Outbound teams automating LinkedIn outreach |
| Thunderbit | Chrome extension, AI field detection | Free (6 pages), then paid credit plans | 1 credit per row scraped | Scraping many different ordinary websites |
| Bright Data | Enterprise proxy + data network | Free 5K records, then $1.50/1K or $499/mo | Per GB and per 1,000 records | Enterprise-scale collection with compliance review |
Thunderbit publishes dollar prices through a live widget, so we quote its credit allowances rather than a figure we cannot verify. Check their pricing
Full comparisons
Developer scraping platform
InsightSocial vs Apify
Social media data two ways: a Chrome extension that exports what you see, or one API key for 22 platforms. No compute units, no actor rental.
Read comparisonAI web scraper extension
InsightSocial vs Thunderbit
Same browser-extension convenience, but built for infinite social feeds instead of ordinary web pages.
Read comparisonEnterprise proxy + data network
InsightSocial vs Bright Data
Social media exports without a per-GB meter or a procurement cycle.
Read comparisonCloud outreach automation
InsightSocial vs PhantomBuster
The data half of PhantomBuster, without the cloud login or the $69 entry price. Scrape in your own browser, pay only for the rows you export.
Read comparisonCloud review and Google Maps scraper, pay as you go
InsightSocial vs Outscraper
Outscraper is a cloud service billed per 1,000 reviews, built for bulk lists of places and an API. InsightSocial is a browser extension billed per exported row, built for the company, place or product you have open.
Read comparisonFree generic table-scraping extension
InsightSocial vs Instant Data Scraper
Instant Data Scraper is free and grabs any table it can see. InsightSocial keeps review and comment structure: stars, verified flags, owner replies and reply depth as their own columns.
Read comparisonReview and comment research for ad angles
InsightSocial vs Adlicio
Adlicio turns comments and reviews into ranked ad angles and hooks, billed per URL. InsightSocial exports the rows themselves, billed per row, from a lower monthly price.
Read comparisonLooking for a specific platform?
InsightSocial ships a purpose-built extractor for each of 6 social platforms and 10 review and discussion sites, rather than a generic page reader.
Browse all scrapersFrequently Asked Questions
It depends on scale. For millions of records with unattended cloud scheduling, Bright Data or Apify are the right infrastructure. For scraping a wide variety of ordinary websites, Thunderbit’s AI field detection is hard to beat. For exporting TikTok, LinkedIn, X or YouTube data into a spreadsheet at human scale, a purpose-built browser extension like InsightSocial is faster to start, cheaper to run, and reads pages you are logged into without handing your cookies to a cloud service.
Most of a cloud scraper’s cost is unblocking: residential proxies, CAPTCHA solving, and retries when a datacenter IP gets challenged. An extension does not need any of that, because the requests come from your own IP with your own cookies at normal browsing speed. Removing the proxy bill removes the largest variable line item.
InsightSocial, Thunderbit and PhantomBuster need none. Apify can be used without code by running Store actors from its dashboard, but you will need engineering to use its API, webhooks or custom actors. Bright Data offers no-code interfaces but is designed around API integration.
Tools that use your own logged-in account. InsightSocial and Thunderbit run in your browser, so they read what you can see, including pages only your account can open. PhantomBuster acts through the account you connect to its cloud, and it can export your own LinkedIn connections, which InsightSocial does not. Apify actors need your cookies, and enterprise vendors like Bright Data mostly stick to public data.
All five have free tiers, and they differ in shape. InsightSocial lets you scrape and browse without limit, and meters only exports: 500 rows a month. Bright Data gives 5,000 Web Scraper API records a month. Apify gives $5 in platform credits, consumed by compute units and proxy traffic. Thunderbit's free plan scrapes up to 6 pages, at most 30 credits a page. PhantomBuster's free plan gives 30 minutes of cloud time a month with exports capped at 10 rows, and its 14-day trial gives 2 hours.
Try InsightSocial free
Unlimited scraping, plus 500 rows exported a month. No credit card, no API key.
No credit card required · Works on Chrome, Edge, Brave