Which Endpoint Should I Use?
Decision tables for the endpoint pairs developers most often confuse, covering profile vs profile/full, Instagram's 1cr vs 5cr endpoints, list vs composite, search, transcripts, comments, and batch.
Which Endpoint Should I Use?
With 335 endpoints across 43 platforms, a few of them do near-identical jobs. Picking the wrong one costs extra credits or returns less than you needed. Each table below answers one "these two look the same, which do I want?" question. Costs are per successful call; failed and cached responses are not charged.
A profile, or a profile plus its posts?
profile is one upstream call that returns the author object (bio, follower and following counts, verification). profile/full is a composite: it returns that same profile, the account's recent posts, and computed analytics in a single call, so you skip the follow-up list request.
| Your goal | Use this endpoint | Why | Credit cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just the profile object | /v1/tiktok/profile | One call, author only | 1cr (LinkedIn 5cr) |
| Profile + recent posts + analytics in one call | /v1/tiktok/profile/full | Composite, no follow-up list call | 5cr |
profile/full is available for /v1/tiktok/profile/full, /v1/instagram/profile/full, /v1/youtube/profile/full, /v1/twitter/profile/full, /v1/facebook/profile/full, and /v1/linkedin/profile/full. If you already hold the handle and only need counts, use plain profile. If your next step is always "and their recent posts", profile/full is one call instead of two.
Instagram: the 1-credit or the 5-credit endpoint?
Instagram is served by two upstreams. The 1-credit endpoints cover the public surface (profile, posts, reels, a single post, keyword and reel search). The 5-credit endpoints unlock data the public surface hides: share counts, follower and following lists, stories, tagged posts, locations, and comment lists.
| Your goal | Use this endpoint | Why | Credit cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Profile, posts, reels, single post | /v1/instagram/profile, /v1/instagram/profile/posts, /v1/instagram/profile/reels, /v1/instagram/post | Public surface, cheapest upstream | 1cr |
| A post's share count | /v1/instagram/post/stats | Only this endpoint returns shares | 5cr |
| Followers / following / similar accounts | /v1/instagram/followers, /v1/instagram/following, /v1/instagram/similar | Lists the public surface does not expose | 5cr |
| Active stories | /v1/instagram/stories | Ephemeral data, second upstream only | 5cr |
| Comments on a post | /v1/instagram/post/comments | Comment list, second upstream only | 5cr |
| Posts by hashtag | /v1/instagram/search/hashtag | Hashtag feed, second upstream only | 5cr |
The trap is /v1/instagram/post (1cr) versus /v1/instagram/post/stats (5cr): the cheap one returns everything about a post except the share count. Reach for post/stats only when you specifically need shares. Note also /v1/instagram/basic-profile (1cr), a slimmer profile payload than /v1/instagram/profile.
A raw list, or the enriched /full list?
For Instagram posts and reels you can pull a plain page or the enriched composite. The plain list is one fast, cheap page. The /full variant fans out per item to attach views, likes, comments, and per-item share counts where available.
| Your goal | Use this endpoint | Why | Credit cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| One page of a user's reels | /v1/instagram/profile/reels | Fast, cursor-paginated | 1cr |
| Reels with views, likes, comments, share counts | /v1/instagram/profile/reels/full | Composite, per-reel enrichment | 5cr |
| One page of a user's posts | /v1/instagram/profile/posts | Fast, cursor-paginated | 1cr |
| Posts with views, likes, comments, share counts | /v1/instagram/profile/posts/full | Composite, per-post enrichment | 5cr |
If you page through a long back catalogue and do not need per-item share counts, the plain list is far cheaper. If you need engagement on every item and want one call, use /full.
Search one platform, the forums, or everywhere?
Four different search jobs, four different endpoints. Per-platform search is for when you already know the platform. The universal endpoint plans, fuses, and reranks across many platforms at once.
| Your goal | Use this endpoint | Why | Credit cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search a platform you already chose | /v1/tiktok/search, /v1/youtube/search, /v1/reddit/search | Single-platform keyword search | 1cr |
| One keyword across all of Reddit | /v1/reddit/omni-search | Every subreddit, attribution + top comments inline | 1cr |
| Fused forum search (Reddit + Hacker News + Naver) | /v1/search/forums | One ranked list across forum sources | 10cr |
| One query across 12 social platforms | /v1/search/everywhere | LLM-planned, RRF-fused, reranked, clustered | 20cr |
Start with per-platform search (1cr) when the platform is decided. Escalate to /v1/search/everywhere (flat 20cr) only when you genuinely want the cross-platform sweep, not twelve separate 1cr calls you would have to fuse yourself.
Getting a transcript
Transcript pricing depends on the platform's upstream. YouTube is the cheapest and has two options; the ScrapeCreators-backed platforms are a flat 10cr; a composite bundles the transcript with the rest of a video's data.
| Your goal | Use this endpoint | Why | Credit cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube caption files, cheapest | /v1/youtube/video/subtitles | Raw subtitle files | 1cr |
| YouTube clean transcript | /v1/youtube/video/transcript | Parsed, readable transcript | 3cr |
| TikTok / IG / X / Facebook / Reddit / Rumble transcript | /v1/tiktok/post/transcript | ScrapeCreators transcription | 10cr |
| Transcript + detail + stats + comments in one call | /v1/prism/video-intel | Composite across YouTube/TikTok/Rumble/Instagram | 5cr base, +10cr with transcript |
For YouTube, prefer subtitles (1cr) if you can parse caption files yourself and transcript (3cr) if you want it cleaned. Other platforms only offer the 10cr transcript, for example /v1/instagram/media/transcript, /v1/twitter/tweet/transcript, /v1/reddit/post/transcript. If you also want the video's stats and top comments, /v1/prism/video-intel is one call.
Which comment endpoint?
Four endpoints touch comments and they are easy to mix up. The distinction is one page versus the whole tree, a single comment versus a batch re-check.
| Your goal | Use this endpoint | Why | Credit cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| One page of top-level comments | /v1/tiktok/post/comments, /v1/reddit/post/comments | Cursor-paginated single page | 1cr (Reddit 5cr) |
| Every comment on a post, replies nested | /v1/prism/comments | Server-paginated to completion, one call | 1cr |
| Look up one comment by URL or id | /v1/tiktok/comment, /v1/instagram/comment | Single-comment resolver | 2cr (Instagram 5cr) |
| Re-check up to 25 known comments | /v1/prism/comment-lookup | Batch, failed items refunded | 2cr |
Use /v1/prism/comments when you want the complete thread without writing the pagination loop yourself. Use the per-platform post/comments when one page is enough and you want to control paging.
Freshening numbers at scale (single vs batch)
When you already hold post or comment URLs and just want current numbers, the batch endpoints re-check many at once and refund the ones that fail, which is cheaper and simpler than looping single calls.
| Your goal | Use this endpoint | Why | Credit cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Current engagement on one post | /v1/tiktok/post | Single post detail | 1cr |
| Current engagement on up to 100 mixed-platform posts | /v1/prism/post-stats | One POST, per-URL results, failed URLs refunded | 1cr |
| Re-check up to 25 known comments | /v1/prism/comment-lookup | One POST, per-item results, failed items refunded | 2cr |
Still unsure?
- Point a URL at
/v1/prism/lookup(0cr) and it dispatches to the correct detail endpoint automatically. - Browse the full catalogue in the API Reference, or see Credits for how the 1 / 5 / 10 tier ladder and refunds work.