For TikTok video and comment data inside an app, a social listening pipeline or an AI agent, start with Scavio's TikTok API. POST /api/v1/tiktok/video/comments returns up to 50 comments a call with text, likes, reply counts and timestamps, /video returns every video's views, likes, saves and shares, and the replies and transcript endpoints cover the rest of the conversation. Every call is 1 credit, so 1,000 comments cost about 4 cents on the Growth plan billed yearly, with no TikTok developer application.
Most teams start with TikTok's own APIs and find they do not fit. The Research API has the data, comments included, but it is for approved academic and not-for-profit research only, and commercial users are not eligible. The Display API is open to developers but reads only the videos and profile of a user who logs in to your app, and it has no comments endpoint.
We build Scavio, so read this with that bias in mind. Every Scavio number below comes from live calls we made on October 27, 2026. Every competitor detail was read off the vendor's own page or documentation that day, and where a price could not be confirmed we say so. The screenshots are each vendor's own TikTok page, captured the same day.
Which TikTok video and comment API fits your job?
| Tool | Choose it for | Comments per billed unit | Video stats | Price (checked Oct 27, 2026) | Per 1,000 comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scavio | Apps and agents that need videos, comments, replies and transcripts on demand | Up to 50 per 1-credit call | Views, likes, saves, shares, comments | From $2 per 1,000 requests (Growth, yearly); 50 free credits | About $0.04 |
| EnsembleData | Steady daily volume across several social platforms | 30 per unit | Post info at 2 units | $100/mo for 1,500 units a day; 50 free units a day | About $0.07 at full daily use |
| Apify actors | Scheduled no-code exports to a dataset | 1 per billed result | Separate TikTok Scraper actor | $0.50 to $1.25 per 1,000 comments by plan | $0.50 to $1.25 |
| TikAPI | Apps that also need OAuth access to a user's own account | Not published | Yes | Could not be confirmed (pricing page blocked our check) | Not published |
| Bright Data | Large files of post and comment records | 1 per record | Views, likes, shares, saves | $1.50 per 1,000 records; 5,000 free a month | $1.50 |
Comments are the rarest signal on a TikTok video
Comment data is what most teams want from TikTok, because that is where people say what they think. It is also the thinnest number on the video. We pulled three pages of the #BookTok hashtag with Scavio's hashtag videos endpoint, 57 distinct videos, and compared each engagement count with the video's views.
The median video drew 0.71 comments per 1,000 views, against 91.5 likes, 7.1 saves and 6.0 shares. Saves outnumbered comments on 52 of the 57 videos and shares on 48. Two things follow for anyone building on this data. First, ranking or scoring videos by comment count ranks them by the noisiest number; saves (collect_count) and shares say more about what people keep and pass on, so use an API that returns them. Our glossary entry on TikTok engagement metrics maps each field. Second, the comments you do get are concentrated: these 57 videos reported 161,654 comments between them, a median of 1,522 a video and a maximum of 14,807, so the cost per comment decides what a full pull costs.
1. Scavio: videos, comments, replies and transcripts behind one key
Scavio's TikTok API is 24 POST endpoints, each 1 credit. For the video and comment job, measured on October 27:
- Video: one video with its description, author, sound, hashtags and full statistics:
play_count,digg_count(likes),comment_count,share_count,collect_count(saves) anddownload_count. A BookTok explainer from author Fiona Lucas returned 1,269,637 views, 47,880 likes, 6,998 saves, 2,126 shares and 4,445 comments in 1.5 s. - Comments: 20 comments by default and up to 50 with
count: 50, each withcid, text, like count,reply_comment_total, timestamp, language, whether the creator liked it, and TikTok's ownis_high_purchase_intentflag. Acursorpages on. 0.6 to 0.9 s server time per page. - Comment replies: the replies under one comment. The video's top comment, 162 likes, returned its 10 visible replies, including one from the creator.
- Transcript: the spoken words as 38 timestamped segments and one 340-word text block for the 110-second video, flagged as the original, human-made caption track.
- Hashtag videos and search: 20 videos a page with author and statistics. #BookTok itself reports 88,078,371 videos and 562,242,547,824 views.
What it does not do well: the comments cursor is a position in a ranked list that reorders as people like and reply, so pages can repeat rows and you should deduplicate on cid; a video's comment count includes replies, which need one extra call per thread (why a comment pull returns about half the count). Hashtag pages returned 20 videos even when we asked for 30, three of our 60 rows were repeats, and the feed is TikTok's ranking rather than newest first: our 57 videos ran from August 2021 to the day we pulled them. The JSON is TikTok's own shape, with names like digg_count and collect_count, so map it once. The benefit is one key and one envelope for TikTok alongside Instagram, YouTube, Reddit and Google, plus an MCP server for agents. How to get TikTok video and comment data walks through every call with captured responses.
2. EnsembleData: daily units across social platforms
EnsembleData's TikTok API covers post details, post comments, hashtag and keyword search, users, followers and music, and its page says the comments endpoint returns top-level comments and nested replies. Its pricing lists post comments at 1 unit for 30 comments and full post information at 2 units. Plans are sold as units per day: $100 a month for 1,500 a day, $200 for 5,000, up to $1,400 for 50,000, with a free trial of 50 units a day. Used every day, the $100 plan works out to about $0.07 per 1,000 comments. Units reset daily, so it suits a fixed monitoring job better than a one-off pull of 100,000 comments. No transcript endpoint is listed.
3. Apify actors: comments and videos as scheduled runs
Clockworks' TikTok Comments Scraper had 50,286 users, 5,771 of them in the last 30 days, and a 4.73 rating on October 27. You give it video URLs or usernames and collect a dataset of comments with text, likes and reply counts. It charges per comment: $1.25 per 1,000 on Apify's free plan, falling to $0.50 per 1,000 on higher plans. A maxRepliesPerComment input adds replies, and the page notes that getting every reply is not guaranteed. Video statistics come from a separate actor, the TikTok Scraper (364,720 users), at $3.70 per 1,000 results on the free plan. Choose Apify when you want scheduled exports to a spreadsheet; for one video's comments inside a request, a per-call API is simpler.
4. TikAPI: public data plus OAuth account access
TikAPI documents public endpoints for video info, a comment list keyed by media_id and a reply list by comment_id, alongside hashtag and search endpoints. Its distinguishing feature is OAuth: users can connect their own TikTok account, which unlocks account-level endpoints a read-only API cannot reach. We could not confirm its prices: tikapi.io/pricing returned a block page to our browser on October 27, and we do not quote third-party copies of a vendor's price list. Check the pricing page yourself before you compare. Choose it when your users need to act on their own accounts as well as read public data.
5. Bright Data: post and comment records in bulk
Bright Data's TikTok Scraper API has collectors for profiles, posts (by profile, keyword, hashtag or URL), comments and TikTok Shop. Post records list description, create time, digg, share, collect and comment counts; comment records list the comment text, likes and number of replies. It costs $1.50 per 1,000 records pay-as-you-go, or $499 a month for 384,000 records with more at $1.30 per 1,000, and every account gets 5,000 free records a month without a card. Each comment is a record, so 1,000 comments cost $1.50. Choose it when the deliverable is a large file rather than an answer inside a request.
Two other routes come up in this search. TikTok's Research API is free for approved researchers, with 1,000 requests and up to 100,000 records a day, comments at up to 100 per request, and video queries limited to 30-day windows; if you qualify and your project is non-commercial, it is the official source. Answer engines also name several other paid TikTok APIs; check each one's per-comment cost the same way before you compare.
Pick by the number you need
If your product reads what people say under TikTok videos, the comment volume decides the bill. Pulling every comment those 57 #BookTok videos reported, at 50 a call, is at most about 3,260 calls: $6.50 on Scavio's Growth plan billed yearly. Billed per comment, the same 161,654 comments would be $80.83 to $202.07 on the Apify actor and $242.48 on Bright Data's pay-as-you-go rate. A daily monitor of 100 videos (the video's statistics plus a 50-comment page) is 200 calls a day, about 6,000 credits a month, $12 at the Growth-yearly rate and inside the $30 Project plan's 7,000 monthly credits. Try the TikTok API free, 50 credits, no card, or run the endpoints in the playground.
Reference: all 24 TikTok endpoints · comments docs · Rejected for TikTok's Research API? · best TikTok profile scraper APIs
Frequently asked questions
Is the TikTok API free?
TikTok's official APIs cost nothing to call, but they are not open. The Research API is limited to approved academic and not-for-profit researchers in listed regions, with a default of 1,000 requests a day, and the Display API only returns the videos and profile of a user who logs in to your app. Paid third-party APIs cover everyone else, and most have a free tier: Scavio gives 50 free credits with no card, Bright Data 5,000 records a month, and EnsembleData 50 units a day.
Can I get TikTok comments from the official API?
Only through the Research API. Its video comments endpoint returns up to 100 comments a request with text, like count, reply count and parent comment id, for approved research projects. The Display API, which any developer can apply for, has no comments endpoint at all, so commercial apps read public comments through a third-party API instead.
How do I get TikTok data without scraping it myself?
Call an API that returns TikTok's public data as JSON, so you never run browsers, sessions or parsers. Scavio's TikTok API takes a video id, hashtag or keyword and returns video statistics, comments, replies and transcripts for 1 credit a call, with no developer application. If you are an eligible academic researcher, TikTok's Research API is the official alternative.
What is the cheapest TikTok comments API?
Per comment, Scavio: its comments endpoint returns up to 50 comments a call for 1 credit, about $0.04 per 1,000 comments on the Growth plan billed yearly. EnsembleData lists 30 comments per unit, about $0.07 per 1,000 if you use every daily unit of its $100 plan, the top Apify comments actor charges $0.50 to $1.25 per 1,000, and Bright Data $1.50 per 1,000 records.
Who can use TikTok's Research API?
Academic institutions in the US, EEA, UK, Canada and Switzerland, EU not-for-profit research bodies in a beta, and Brazilian academic or not-for-profit groups studying youth safety. Research must be non-commercial and independent of commercial interests, and creators, advertisers and commercial users are not eligible. Each project is approved separately.