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Weir vs Apify for Twitter and Reddit Data (2026)

Weir vs Apify for Twitter and Reddit data: actor pricing per event, batch runs vs API calls, scheduling, MCP and a worked monthly cost. As of October 2026.

By Tarun Khatri · · 8 min read

Choose Apify if you need data from more than X and Reddit, want a no-code console with scheduled runs and spreadsheet exports, or are running large batch jobs. Choose Weir if you want public X and Reddit data as ordinary request-and-response API calls: single posts, threads and small searches, one schema maintained by one team, and free credits every month that work through the API.

Disclosure: Weir is our product. Apify's details below come from its own pricing pages, actor listings and docs, checked on October 19, 2026 and linked inline. Actor prices are set by each actor's developer and change often.

How the two differ

Apify is a platform. Its store lists "91,000+ ready-to-run tools called Actors", built and priced by different developers. For X, the most widely used is Tweet Scraper V2 by apidojo. For Reddit, one long-running option is Reddit Scraper Lite by Trudax. You start a run, it writes results to a dataset, and you read the dataset.

Weir is a single API for two sources. Each call returns its results in the response, priced by what came back.

Weir vs Apify at a glance

Apify (Tweet Scraper V2 + Reddit Scraper Lite) Weir
Pricing model Pay per event, set per actor, on top of an Apify plan ($0 / $19 / $199 / $999 a month) Prepaid credit packs, $5 to $1,000, no subscription
X posts $0.40 per 1,000 tweets on every plan $0.105 to $0.21 per 1,000 from search
Reddit posts $4.00 per 1,000 results on Free, down to $3.40 on Business, plus $0.02 per GB per run start $0.30 to $0.60 per 1,000 (3 credits each, plus 1 per call)
100,000 tweets + 20,000 Reddit posts a month about $116 (Starter plan) 165,200 credits, $20 to $32
How you get data Start a run, read a dataset; synchronous runs time out after 300 s One HTTP call per page, results in the response
Smallest job Tweet Scraper V2: at least 50 tweets per query, no single tweets or conversations One post, one thread, one profile
Scheduling Cron schedules for any actor Monitors: hourly, daily or weekly, new items only, signed webhooks
Writes No (for these actors) No
MCP Hosted at mcp.apify.com, OAuth or token Hosted at api.weirapp.io/mcp, OAuth or key
Free tier $5 of usage a month; Tweet Scraper V2 is demo-only on Free, with no API access 5,000 credits a month, full API
Field names Per actor (author.userName, upVotes, communityName) Each platform's own (author.username, score, subreddit)
Other sites Instagram, Google Maps and thousands more X and Reddit only

Sources: Apify pricing, Tweet Scraper V2 pricing, Reddit Scraper Lite pricing, Apify MCP; Weir pricing.

Batch runs vs request and response

The biggest difference isn't price. It's the shape of the work.

Apify actors are batch jobs. Tweet Scraper V2 needs each query to return at least 50 tweets, allows one concurrent run with up to five batched queries, asks users not to rerun the same query at short intervals, and doesn't allow single-tweet or conversation scraping (actor page). You can call a run synchronously through run-sync-get-dataset-items, but if the run takes longer than 300 seconds you get a 408 (API docs). That fits "collect 10,000 tweets about a launch, export to CSV" well.

Weir is request and response. Look up one post, read its replies or thread, page through a search 20 posts at a time, or fetch one subreddit's newest comments. That fits an app or an agent answering a question right now.

Neither shape is better in general. If your job is a nightly export, Apify's model is natural. If your code reacts to a user, an agent or a webhook, a per-call API is simpler.

Where Apify wins

  • Breadth. If you also need Instagram, TikTok, Google Maps, e-commerce or any website, it's probably already in the store. Weir covers X and Reddit and nothing else.
  • No-code. Configure an actor in the console, schedule it, and download JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or RSS without writing an integration.
  • Flexible scheduling. Schedules take cron expressions and can fire as often as every 10 seconds, though individual actors may ask you not to poll.
  • Large batch jobs. Datasets, run history and retries are built for collecting a lot in one go.
  • Choice. If one Reddit actor is too expensive or breaks, there are others from other developers, some listed at lower prices than Reddit Scraper Lite.
  • Agent payments. Apify's pricing page describes paying through x402 or MPP at agi.apify.com for a temporary, capped token.

Where Weir wins

  • Reddit price. 3 credits per Reddit post is $0.30 to $0.60 per 1,000. Reddit Scraper Lite is $3.40 to $4.00 per 1,000 results.
  • X price. $0.105 to $0.21 per 1,000 posts against Tweet Scraper V2's $0.40.
  • Small and single requests. One post, one thread, a 5-result search. Nothing has a 50-item minimum.
  • A free tier that works through the API. 5,000 credits every month with full API and MCP access. On Apify's Free plan, Tweet Scraper V2 is limited to five demo runs of 10 items and "cannot use the actor via API".
  • One schema, one maintainer. Both sources keep their own field names, documented in one place (response shapes). On Apify, each actor defines its own output.
  • Monitors. A saved search, subreddit, account or thread is checked on a schedule, and you only get what's new, with signed webhooks (docs).

MCP on both

Apify's MCP server is hosted at https://mcp.apify.com, with OAuth or a bearer token. Its tools search the store, fetch actor details and run actors. call-actor returns the run status and storage ids rather than the results, and get-dataset-items reads the results. That's powerful for an agent that needs to pick a scraper for any site.

Weir's MCP server at https://api.weirapp.io/mcp has a tool for each endpoint, such as search_x, search_reddit and get_x_thread, and each returns data directly. It signs in with OAuth from Claude and ChatGPT (setup). For X and Reddit research inside a chat, that's fewer steps. For anything else, Apify's is the one that reaches it.

Worked cost example

A team tracks a product category: 100,000 tweets and 20,000 Reddit posts a month.

Apify, Starter plan:

  • Tweets: 100,000 x $0.40 / 1,000 = $40.00.
  • Reddit, with Reddit Scraper Lite at the Starter price: 20,000 x $3.80 / 1,000 = $76.00, plus $0.02 per GB of memory each time a run starts.
  • Total usage: about $116 a month. The $19 Starter fee comes with $19 of usage, and the rest is pay as you go. A cheaper Reddit actor would lower this.

Weir:

  • Tweets: 100,000 posts + 5,000 calls (about 20 per page) = 105,000 credits.
  • Reddit: 20,000 x 3 credits + 200 calls (100 per page) = 60,200 credits.
  • Total: 165,200 credits. After the 5,000 free credits, 160,200 are paid. That's $32.04 at the $5 pack's rate, $23.56 at the $50 pack's and $20.03 at the $200 pack's.

If you add Instagram or Google Maps to the same pipeline, Weir can't help with those, and running everything on Apify may be simpler than splitting providers.

Migrating from Apify actors to Weir

On Apify you run an actor with an input object. This call runs Tweet Scraper V2 and returns its dataset items:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/apidojo~tweet-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchTerms": ["from:XDevelopers api"], "sort": "Latest", "maxItems": 100}'

On Weir, X and Reddit are separate calls with cursors instead of maxItems:

curl https://api.weirapp.io/v1/x/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $WEIR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "api", "fromUsers": ["XDevelopers"], "sort": "latest", "limit": 20}'

curl https://api.weirapp.io/v1/reddit/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $WEIR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "crm", "subreddits": ["saas", "startups"], "sort": "new", "time": "week", "limit": 100}'

What changes in your code:

Apify actor output Weir
Tweet author.userName author.username
Tweet author.followers author.followersCount
Tweet likeCount, retweetCount, replyCount Same names
Reddit communityName subreddit
Reddit username author (a string on Reddit)
Reddit body selftext
Reddit upVotes, numberOfComments score, numComments
maxItems and one dataset per run limit per page; pass meta.nextCursor back as cursor
Apify schedule POST /v1/monitors with "schedule": "daily"

FAQ

Is Weir cheaper than Apify for Twitter data?

Per tweet, yes, as of October 2026: $0.105 to $0.21 per 1,000 posts against Tweet Scraper V2's $0.40. Apify includes a no-code console and exports, so the comparison is mostly about whether you need those.

Is Weir cheaper than Apify for Reddit data?

Against Reddit Scraper Lite, yes: $0.30 to $0.60 per 1,000 posts against $3.40 to $4.00 per 1,000 results. Other Reddit actors on Apify list different prices, so compare the one you'd actually use.

Can I schedule Weir like an Apify actor?

Yes, with monitors: hourly (paid tiers), daily or weekly. They report only new items. Apify schedules are more flexible, with cron down to 10 seconds.

Does Apify have an MCP server?

Yes, at https://mcp.apify.com, with OAuth. It can search and run any permitted actor. Weir's MCP server covers only X and Reddit, but returns results directly from each tool.

Is scraping Reddit and X allowed?

Weir isn't licensed by Reddit or X, and Reddit Scraper Lite describes itself as an unofficial Reddit API. Third-party tools that read public data can be affected if a platform changes access, and how you use the data is subject to the law and the platforms' terms. This isn't legal advice.

Trying Weir

Sign up for 5,000 free credits a month and follow the quickstart. For Reddit options beyond these two, see Best Reddit API alternatives. For X, see Weir vs TwitterAPI.io.

Sources

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