Which endpoint should I use?

Several endpoints overlap. Two of them may return the same account, one cheaply and one with extras, or the same comments as one page or as a whole thread. Picking the wrong one either costs more than it should or leaves you making a second call. Each section below takes one of those "these look the same" questions and puts the options next to each other with their prices.

Every price here comes from the live catalogue at GET https://api.insightsocial.app/v1/endpoints (free, no key needed). A few pricing rules to keep in mind while you read:

• Fixed endpoints show one number, and that is the charge for a successful call.
• Metered endpoints show a range. The top of the range is held when the call starts, and when it finishes you are charged what the call actually used, never more than the ceiling. Plan your balance around the top of the range.
• Nothing found costs nothing. Failed calls, empty results and dry_run=1 calls are never charged. API credits are non-refundable, so this is how "you only pay for data" works: an unanswered call is simply never billed.
• Repeats are free for a while. If you make the exact same call again within the endpoint's window (1 hour for search, 6 hours for most lists, 24 hours for profiles), it costs 0 and the response says charge_reason: "owned". A response served from the shared cache that you had not already paid for costs 5 credits.

See Credits for the full rules and Endpoint pricing for every price in one table.

Start here

Profile, or profile plus posts?

profile returns the account and nothing else. profile/full returns the same account, its latest page of posts and a set of computed metrics (engagement rate by views and by followers, posting cadence, top post, format mix) in one call, so you skip the follow-up list request and the maths.

If you only need follower counts, use plain profile. When you fetch a profile and then always ask for its latest posts, profile/full replaces those two calls with one. On TikTok, for example, profile plus one page of profile/videos costs 40 to 120 credits and leaves the engagement maths to you, while profile/full is a flat 100 with the maths done.

How many posts one profile/full call reads depends on the platform's page size: 10 on TikTok, 12 on Instagram, up to 30 on YouTube, about 10 to 20 on X, 3 on Facebook and 10 on a LinkedIn company. Asking for more with posts returns that one page and a note in _warnings. Send the returned posts_cursor back as cursor to read the next page at the same price.

The fields that get filled vary by platform. Check the platform's page under Platforms before you rely on one, and read Computed fields for when a computed value is present and when it is null.

Instagram: 20 credits or 100?

Instagram endpoints come in two price bands. The 20-credit endpoints cover what a public profile page shows. The 100-credit (advanced) endpoints return what the public page does not: share counts, follower and following lists, stories, tagged posts, locations and comment lists.

A plain list, or the /full list?

For Instagram posts and reels, and for Facebook reels, there is a plain list and an enriched /full list. The plain list is one fast page. The /full list attaches views, likes, comments and a per-item share count where one can be found.

Paging a long back catalogue when you do not need share counts is far cheaper on the plain list. Use /full when every item needs its engagement and you want it in one call.

What limit means depends on the endpoint

limit does three different jobs on this API. Read the endpoint's parameter description before you rely on one.

• Collect until N. On /v1/instagram/profile/reels/full, /v1/instagram/profile/posts/full and /v1/facebook/profile/reels/full (1 to 50), and /v1/threads/search (1 to 100), limit tells the endpoint to keep walking pages on its own until it has that many items. Each page walked is billed, which is what moves these calls up their range. Leave limit off and you get one page.
• Bigger single page. On /v1/tiktok/search, limit returns one bulk page of up to 120 videos (rounded up to a multiple of 30). On /v1/linkedin/search/posts it returns up to 200 posts in one call.
• Keep the top N. On /v1/tiktok/search/users, /v1/pinterest/search, /v1/reddit/subreddits/search and /v1/instagram/similar, limit trims the page after the search has run. It is not a page size, and the next cursor still moves past the whole page.

Separately, twelve list endpoints take max_pages (1 to 5), which walks that many pages in one call. Each page is billed as one call, and the hold is multiplied by the page count before the call starts.

Facebook: fill the rows, or fetch them?

Four Facebook list endpoints take an optional include parameter that fills in every row on the page from that row's own detail record, in the same call. Without it, the call costs the bottom of its range. With it, you pay for the rows that were actually filled, which is why the price is a range.

include=engagement is the right move when you are pulling the feed anyway. The alternative, one /v1/facebook/post call (20 credits) per permalink, costs about the same and takes a round trip per post. For reels specifically, /v1/facebook/profile/reels/full returns a page of reels with exact engagement on every one.

Only what is new

When you poll the same account on a schedule, most list endpoints can stop at what you already hold instead of returning it again.

since and stop_at_id work on /v1/tiktok/profile/videos, /v1/instagram/profile/posts, /v1/instagram/profile/reels, /v1/twitter/user/tweets, /v1/facebook/profile/posts, /v1/youtube/channel/videos, /v1/youtube/channel/shorts and /v1/threads/user/posts. See Pagination.

Which search?

Every platform has its own keyword search. Pick the one for the platform you care about, and run several in parallel when you want more than one.

The post searches score how relevant each row is to your query, for free, on computed.relevance. When your keyword is also a common word or someone else's brand, add relevance=filter to drop the rows about something else, still at no extra cost. See Labels.

To find accounts rather than posts:

An include=profile search replaces a user search plus one profile call per row. You pay per row actually filled.

/v1/reddit/subreddits/search is usually the step before the other Reddit searches: author.id on each row is the subreddit value the rest of the platform takes. /v1/reddit/omni-search is never the cheap option, because it runs the search and expands the top threads' comments in the same call. Choose it when you want what people are saying rather than a list of links. Its threads parameter (1 to 8) is what moves the price.

Getting a transcript

YouTube has two cheap options. Every other platform has one transcript endpoint at 200 credits.

On YouTube, take subtitles if you can parse caption files, and transcript if you want the words already split into segments. A video with no captions or no speech comes back as a 404 and is not charged. The Video transcription recipe wraps all of these in one function.

Which comment endpoint?

Each platform has a comment list, and a few have a way to look up one comment directly.

Every comment list is labelled for free: each comment carries sentiment, question, purchase_intent and complaint on computed.labels. See Labels.

/v1/reddit/post/comments costs more because it returns the whole discussion with nested replies expanded, which replaces a paging loop you would otherwise write. /v1/tiktok/post/comments and /v1/instagram/post/comments take scan_pages to read several pages in one call.

TikTok and Instagram have no native "read one comment" route, so /v1/tiktok/comment and /v1/instagram/comment scan for the target and stop as soon as they find it. deep_scan=true widens the scan and is what reaches the top of each range. A comment that is not found is not charged.

Hiring and job postings

Job data lives on LinkedIn. The choice is a keyword search, one company's openings, or just the count.

To track hiring across a set of competitors, poll company/job-count on a schedule and spend the 200 on company/jobs only when the count moves.

Ad libraries

Each network's ad library has a keyword door and an advertiser door. Use the keyword door when you only know a brand name. Use the advertiser door for a complete run once you have its id.

The Ad library aggregation recipe runs the three keyword doors in parallel for one brand.

Still unsure?

Ask the catalogue. GET https://api.insightsocial.app/v1/endpoints?platform=tiktok lists every TikTok endpoint with its description, parameters and price, and needs no key. To try a call before you write code, use the Explorer in your dashboard.