# TikHub vs Apify

A dedicated social API hub against a general scraping marketplace: pricing, coverage, and reliability compared.

Checked August 2026. Public pricing pages. No affiliate links.

TikHub and Apify solve the same problem from opposite directions. TikHub is a dedicated API hub for social platforms with per-request pricing. Apify is a general scraping marketplace where thousands of community "actors" run on rented compute. Which one fits depends on whether you want an API or a scraping platform.

## At a glance

| Criteria | TikHub | Apify | Openhandle |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Hosted API hub, per-platform payloads | Marketplace of third-party scrapers (actors) on managed compute | Instagram, TikTok, and X in depth, one schema |
| Platform depth | Deep on TikTok and Douyin, with TikTok split into web, app, and ads APIs. Thinner on Instagram and X, plus 12 more platforms | Depth depends on the actor you pick. Thousands of actors, any platform, mixed quality | 45 Instagram, 28 TikTok, and 17 X endpoints. More platforms and data added by demand |
| Pricing model | Prepaid per request. Discounts only past a daily volume | Monthly subscription plus usage: compute units or per-result actor fees | Pay after use. No credits, no subscription |
| Entry price | ~$0.001 per request, prepaid. ~50 free requests at sign-up | Free plan with $5 usage. Paid starts at $29/month before usage | $0.003 per request, no pack to buy |
| Schema | Raw platform payloads, different on every endpoint | Whatever each actor author chose, no standard | One schema across Instagram, TikTok, and X |
| Support | Discord community, no named person | Platform support only. Actor quality depends on its author | Direct support from our team through Crisp and email |

Figures from public pricing pages, August 2026.

## Pricing

**TikHub** charges per request, from $0.001 down to $0.0005 at 30k+ daily requests, with discounts applied automatically. There is no subscription; you top up credits. Enterprise tiers start around $3,000.

**Apify** combines a plan ($0, $29, $199, $999 per month, each including that amount of usage) with metered compute: one compute unit is 1 GB of RAM for one hour, at $0.13-$0.20 per unit depending on plan. Store actors add their own pricing on top: some charge per result, some just consume your compute.

The practical difference: TikHub costs are predictable per request. Apify costs depend on how efficiently an actor runs; a slow actor bills more compute for the same data. Estimating Apify cost per 1,000 posts requires testing the specific actor you plan to use.

## Coverage and schema

TikHub is deepest on TikTok and Douyin, with over a thousand endpoints across its 16 platforms. Responses mirror the platforms' internal payloads: you get a lot of fields, but the shape differs per platform, and your code must handle each one separately.

Apify's coverage is as broad as its marketplace: if a platform can be scraped, an actor probably exists. But each actor defines its own output schema, its own parameters, and its own quality bar. Two Instagram actors can return different fields for the same profile. Switching actors means rewriting your parsing.

## Reliability

TikHub is one vendor operating its own endpoints; when a platform changes, the fix applies to everyone. Apify actors are maintained by individual authors: popular actors are patched quickly, long-tail actors can stay broken for weeks. Check an actor's last-updated date and issue tracker before depending on it.

## Verdicts

- **You want TikTok or Douyin data through a stable API.** TikHub. It is the specialist here, and per-request pricing is easy to model.
- **You need a platform no social API covers, or custom scraping logic.** Apify. The marketplace breadth is unmatched, and you can write your own actor.
- **You are building a product on multiple social platforms with one code path.** neither is ideal out of the box. TikHub gives you per-platform raw shapes; Apify gives you per-actor shapes. Budget normalization work either way.

## How we checked

Pricing and platform claims come from tikhub.io and apify.com public pages, read in August 2026. Vendors change pricing; check their pages before deciding. Tell us about an error and we will correct it.