Best Social Media Data Providers of 2024

In this guide, you will see:

• What a social media data provider is
• The key factors to consider when comparing these services
• The top 5 social media data providers of the year
• A comparison table of these solutions

Let’s dive in!

What Is a Social Media Data Provider?

A social media data provider offers structured information from social media sites such as X, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and others. The data sold by these services includes user interactions, follower growth, engagement metrics, and more. This information is typically sourced from public APIs, official partnerships, or web scraping.

Social media data is typically delivered through:

• Pre-built datasets: Ready-made collections of data gathered from various social media platforms and organized into standardized formats. For more information, check out our tutorial on how to create datasets.
• Charts and graphs: Visual representations of data to make insights more accessible.
• APIs: To get real-time access to social media data, allowing you to integrate this information directly into web applications.
• Custom data services: Tailored solutions designed to meet specific requirements, providing personalized datasets or specialized data extraction services.

Learn more in our related article on data sourcing.

Social media data providers serve a wide range of industries. Businesses and individuals use their data for a variety of purposes, from brand monitoring and competitor tracking to sentiment analysis and market research.

Elements to Consider When Evaluating Social Media Data Providers

Here are the main aspects to keep into account when selecting the best social media data providers:

• Features: Range of capabilities offered by the social media data company.
• Social media platforms: Social media networks covered by the provider.
• Data formats: Available formats for downloading or exporting data.
• Data delivery: Systems and ways data is provided to users.
• Compliance: Respect for GDPR, CCPA, and other data privacy regulations.
• User reviews: Average review score from users/customers on G2.
• Free data: Availability of sample data to assess quality before purchasing a plan.
• Pricing: Pricing structure for the provider’s plans.

Top 5 Social Media Data Providers

See the 5 best social media data providers chosen and ranked based on the aspects presented earlier.

1. Bright Data

On top of its top-tier proxy services, Bright Data provides a broad range of other solutions. These include web scraping tools, data acquisition services, and a comprehensive dataset marketplace.

The social media data acquisition service from Bright Data includes:

• Pre-built datasets: Data sourced from popular social media platforms and delivered in standardized formats like JSON and CSV.
• Custom datasets: Tailored to specific requirements to guarantee high flexibility.

Bright Data offers both subscription and one-time purchase options, catering to different audiences. Data quality is ensured through strict validation processes, with full compliance with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA.

For social media specifically, Bright Data can retrieve details like ID, country, industry, size, number of followers, posts, name, title, current company, avatar, experience, education, location, and more. Those data records can be retrieved from a long list of social media sites.

In addition to extensive documentation, the company also ensures responsive customer support from a team of over 80 data experts. These same features make Bright Data the top choice among the best company data providers.

Trusted by over 20,000 customers globally, Bright Data stands out as the best social media data provider. Explore our social media data offering!

Features: 

• Flexible price-per-record plans
• Custom dataset creation through a specialized platform
• Round-the-clock support from a team of over 80 data specialists
• Clean, validated, and accurate data
• Custom schedules to automate data delivery 
• Sample data available in JSON and CSV formats
• Updated records delivered monthly
• Customization, enrichment, and formatting options for data
• Discounted pricing for purchasing subsets of existing datasets

Social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, X, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and others

Data formats: JSON, NDJSON, JSON Lines, CSV, Parquet, XLSX, and others

Data delivery: Snowflake, Google Cloud Storage, PubSub, AWS S3, Microsoft Azure, SFTP, and others

Compliance: GDPR, CCPA, and others

User reviews: 4.6/5 (195 reviews)

Free data: Yes, via sample datasets

Pricing: 

• Dataset marketplace: Starting from $300/mo or $500 one time
• Custom datasets: Starting from $300/mo or $1,000 one time

2. Datarade

Datarade is a platform that simplifies the process of finding, accessing, and comparing data products from over 500 companies. These include top-notch data providers like Bright Data.

As a social media data provider, Datarade comes with a broad range of information from various platforms. Users can preview data samples and get support from data sourcing professionals.

Note that pricing, features, formats, and delivery options vary significantly depending on the selected data service. That makes it challenging to directly compare Datarade with other top social media data providers on the list.

Features: 

• Hundreds of data providers
• Support from data sourcing experts
• Instant data samples

Social media platforms: LinkedIn, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and others

Data formats: XLS, CSV, JSON, and others

Data delivery: AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, REST APIs, email, and others

Compliance: Includes GDPR and CCPA

User reviews: 4.5/5 (21 reviews)

Free data: Depends on the chosen provider, but some offer a free sample

Pricing: From a few cents per API call to thousands of dollars per month

3. Brandwatch

Brandwatch is one of the most popular consumer intelligence platforms on the Internet. Among its services is a data option to explore millions of historical records collected from social media sites. All of this is available in an easy-to-use online dashboard.

The data exploration feature is only included for some social media sites. Brandwatch also offers advanced search features to help users explore this data. In addition, useful insights can be derived from charts and reports.

Unfortunately, pricing details are not publicly disclosed. Instead, you can request a free demo through a public form on its site.

Features: 

• Data analysis in a dedicated platform
• AI-powered assistant and search
• Data auto segmentation via machine learning
• Instant reporting capabilities

Social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, X, Reddit, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Reddit

Data formats: XLSX, PPT, PDF

Data delivery: In the platform or via the Brandwatch API

Compliance: GDPR and CCPA

User reviews: 4.4/5 (607 reviews)

Free data: No, but free demo available

Pricing: Undisclosed

4. Statista

Statista is a well-known data provider for scientific research. As a social media data provider, it offers extensive statistics, forecasts, and reports covering many social media platforms.

Some of these reports are specific to certain countries or regions, making the data geographically relevant. This information is valuable not only for researchers but also for companies, especially in decision-making processes and strategic planning. Here is why Statista makes the list of the best dataset websites.

Statista features a few subscription options that cater to both businesses and individual users. The end goal is to help them gain a comprehensive understanding of social media trends.

Features: 

• Built-in research AI 
• Market insights
• PDF reports
• Advanced filtering options

Social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr, and others

Data formats: XLS, PNG, PDF, PPT

Data delivery: File download

Compliance: GDPR

User reviews: 4.2/5 (17 reviews)

Free data: Yes, via free datasets

Pricing: 

• Basic: Free for free stats
• Starter: $199/mo for free stats and premium stats
• Personal: $549/mo for free stats, premium stats, and PDF reports
• Professional: $959/mo for free stats, premium stats, PDF reports, and market insights

5. Zyte

Zyte sells data extraction services based on web scraping, providing both standard and custom social media datasets. The platform ensures high accuracy and full compliance with legal standards by focusing solely on public data.

Zyte manages the entire process, from sourcing and cleaning data to formatting and delivering it. That makes it a versatile option for different business needs.

Currently, a public list of the supported social media platforms is not available.

Features: 

• 99.99% data accuracy
• Built-in data compliance guaranteed by a legal team
• Both standard and custom data extraction services

Social media platforms: Undisclosed

Data formats: JSON

Data delivery: AWS S3

Compliance: GDPR

User reviews: 4.2/5 (49 reviews)

Free data: Yes, via data samples

Pricing:

• Standard: From $450/mo
• Custom: From $1,000/mo

Best Social Media Data Provider: Summary Table

Compare the top social media data providers in the summary table that follows:

Conclusion 

In this article, you explored the landscape of social media data providers. You saw the key factors to consider when evaluating such companies and used them to compile a list of the top providers. Ultimately, Bright Data emerged as the leading social media data provider.

Bright Data operates one of the largest, fastest, and most reliable proxy networks in the industry. Trusted by many Fortune 500 companies and over 20,000 customers, this network is used to ethically gather data from the Web. 

The vast dataset marketplace offered by Bright Data covers more than just social media data, including:

• Ecommerce Datasets: Data from Amazon, Walmart, Target, Zara, Zalando, Asos, and many more.
• Business Datasets: Data from platforms like LinkedIn, CrunchBase, Owler, and Indeed.
• Financial Datasets: Data from Yahoo Finance, Market Watch, Investopedia, and more.
• Real Estate Datasets: Data from sites such as Zillow, MLS, and more.

Sign up now and find the right social media data for your needs. Start your free trial with the Web Scraper API, or download free dataset samples.