What changed
- X ended its free academic API in 2023. Reads are now paid per post, at about $5 per 1,000 on pay-per-use.
- Meta shut down CrowdTangle in August 2024.
- Reddit moved its API to paid terms in 2023.
Deen Freelon and colleagues trace this history in "The Post-API Age of Social Media Data Access" (The ANNALS, 2025). The practical result: many studies now stall at data collection, or depend on a scraper one lab maintains.
What a collection costs now
| Collection | Vanefeed credits | ≈ Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 100,000 posts from 200 accounts | 10,000 | $10–15 |
| 250,000 X search results | 37,500 | $37–54 |
| 5,000 profiles | 5,000 | $5–7 |
| 50,000 YouTube comments | 5,000 | $5–7 |
At published pack rates ($0.99–$1.45 per 1,000 credits, lower on custom volume plans). Invoiced, no card online, and purchase orders accepted.
Methods-section friendly
- Every response carries a request id, a
fetched_attime and the exact query, so collection is easy to document and repeat. - Metrics a platform doesn't show come back as
null, never an invented 0. - The same fields on X, YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook pages, TikTok, Telegram channels and news sites, so cross-platform comparison needs no per-platform cleaning.
- Export JSON, CSV or NDJSON straight from the playground.
Collecting responsibly
Vanefeed returns public content only: no private accounts, direct messages, private groups or contact details, and its rules forbid profiling or tracking private individuals. You remain responsible for your institution's ethics approval and the platform terms that apply to your study.
Running a study?
Start with 100 free credits, or tell us about your project and we'll talk about a research pilot.