Skill

scrape-creators

Scrape public social media data from the terminal — profiles, posts, videos, comments, ads, and transcripts across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, Threads, Bluesky, Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitch, Kick, Truth Social, and 15+ link-in-bio / creator link services.

Verified: 2026-05-13 (printing-press-ingest-2026-05-13+enrich-capability-skill)

When to use scrape-creators

Choose if

You need read-only public social-media data across 20+ platforms from an agent loop, billed against a single credit-metered upstream API rather than juggling per-platform OAuth handshakes. Pick this over building per-platform scrapers when you value typed exit codes, credit-burn introspection, and one auth surface.

Avoid if

You need to publish or mutate social content — the CLI is strictly read-only. Also avoid if your data needs are bounded to a single platform with deep coverage (the per-platform pagination caps mean full historical sweeps are not always possible) or if you cannot fund a paid Scrape Creators API subscription.

Risk Flags

  • MEDIUM auth Single-API-key auth; agents without SCRAPECREATORS_API_KEY get exit code 4 immediately. No OAuth handshake means leaked keys grant full account access until rotated.
  • MEDIUM rate_limit Several upstream platforms hard-cap pagination — Facebook group posts limited to 3/page, LinkedIn company posts to 7 pages, Threads search to 10 results/request, YouTube comments to ~1000 top or ~7000 newest. Agents needing full sweeps must cap query scope or accept partial coverage.
  • MEDIUM scope Twitter publicly returns only ~100 of a user's most-popular tweets (not chronological). Video transcription via AI fallback is limited to content under 2 minutes.
  • LOW rate_limit Exit code 7 surfaces upstream rate limits. The README does not disclose per-endpoint thresholds beyond the platform-specific pagination caps.

Cost

Type: Usage based · Free tier: The CLI binary is free to install. All API calls require a SCRAPECREATORS_API_KEY and consume credits from the paid upstream account.

Hidden costs

  • Upstream Scrape Creators API is credit-metered — e.g. 26 credits for TikTok audience demographics, 25 credits for Google ad details, plus 10 extra credits when use_ai_as_fallback=true for transcription. Per-credit price and plan tiers not disclosed in README.
  • The `account budget` command projects days remaining at current pace, so the CLI itself surfaces burn-rate but the upstream account is the cost driver.

Install

Default

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press install scrape-creators
# Required: paid Scrape Creators API key
export SCRAPECREATORS_API_KEY=<your-key>
# Optional: cap credit burn — surface days remaining at current pace
scrape-creators-pp-cli account budget

Setup docs →

Estimated time to first success: ~10 min

Dependencies

Minimum runtime: Node.js (npx) or Go 1.26.3+ for source install

Distribution

Repository
https://github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library
License
MIT