A data API for developers and AI agents (social, search, resale prices): one key, pay per use. Go deep on one platform, or ship a vertical wrapper that comes with conclusions
- Status
- Open
- Why now, and how long the window lasts
- Agents need to call tools, but platforms are charging for APIs (X and Reddit raised prices, eBay restricted sold data). 'One key, pay as you go, with MCP' is the easiest model for developers to buy, and volume grows with the customer's agent traffic. The window is measured in years, but acquisition runs on SEO, which takes about half a year to work.
- Confidence
- Medium. Revenue is calculated by payment platforms, and three new products are growing at the same time. Gross margin and proxy costs are not visible. What would overturn this: two or more of Socialcrawl, AnyAPI and Social Fetch declining for two consecutive months, or X, TikTok or Instagram launching a large-scale crackdown on scraping.
Evidence
Grouped by store. Each group starts with the charts that can be graphed (real curves, data dates below the chart), then the scanner's original notes and source links.
Indie product revenue (TrustMRR)4 evidence · 10 products with curves
2 more products' curves
- Indie (UK, 11-01 check): Socialcrawl (socialcrawl.dev, a unified social-scraping API plus 'search people's opinions'). May $684 → August $26,192 → October $47,045. 30-day $42,896 (+58.8%), with only 1,085,97% of MRR coming from pay-as-you-go. October daily $532–3,379, with no zero-revenue days.
- Indie (US, 11-01 check): AnyAPI (getanyapi.com, 'OpenRouter for scraping', one key for 366 social, search, maps and e-commerce APIs, pay per request). June $17 → September $3,702 → October $17,830. 30-day $17,510 (+331%), 10-28 to 10-30 at $1,080–1,220 per day.
- Indie (UK, 11-01 check): Social Fetch (socialfetch.dev, one person, 26 platforms; credit packs starting at $14 plus $29–225 monthly subscriptions). April $201 → October $8,938, growing for 7 straight months. 30-day $8,653, MRR $4,621,108 from subscriptions. The official site claims '8M requests per day'. The same founder reports '30-day about 980k requests' on TrustMRR, a gap of 240×.
- Indie (multiple countries, 30-day, 11-01 check): Search1API (s1.dev, search plus scraping for agents) $7,224 (+430%), listed at $80,000. Xquik (UAE, X data) $6,078,5–October, steady at $5–6.5k. PostPeer (posting API) $6,752 (−5.6%). PostEverywhere $8,599. OpenTweet ('X posting layer for AI agents') $4,485. zocialcomment (Thailand, comment export, $1 per 100 comments) $3,966 (+34%). Mallary $2,438 (−21%). SocialClaw $1,943 (+52%).
Product Hunt1 pieces of evidence
- PH (2026-04-28 and 07-07 launches, 263 and 165 votes): Social Fetch's second launch month (July $1,223) was actually the low point of the year. The revenue inflection came in 8–October. The founder says traffic comes from Google search, and on 10-20 they published 12 'Best X API' comparison posts in one day (ph-dossiers/social-fetch.md).
For-sale listings1 evidence items
- For sale (Acquire, 11-02): developer-facing APIs age slowly. f5to5nqgj6, a PDF generation and screenshot API (Germany, one person, 50 months), TTM revenue $71,900, profit $65,400, last month $6,800, asking $170,000. 1ivu6r0lh5, a Text-to-SQL tool (one person, 63 months, 238 subscriptions), TTM $49,800, last month $3,000, asking $150,000. For comparison, in the same report the consumer-facing prompt-rewriting tool ej18c4vtui's last-month revenue was only 18% of its TTM monthly average.
Already doing it
General scraping: Socialcrawl, Social Fetch, AnyAPI. X-specific: Xquik, OpenTweet. Posting layer: PostPeer, PostEverywhere, Mallary, SocialClaw. Search: Search1API. Comment export: zocialcomment. Sold prices: SoldComps (see [038]).
In our product dossiers: Social Fetch
The hardest step
Anti-bot maintenance. If a platform cracks down seriously once, the product stalls. Proxy costs eat gross margin. Avoid things like LinkedIn, which have legal grey areas.
Who it's for
An individual who knows web backends, can maintain scrapers over the long term, and is willing to write dozens of 'Best X API' comparison posts. Pricing is pay-per-use plus cheap credit packs. Position it either as deep coverage of a single platform (comments, transcripts and commerce data for TikTok, Douyin or Xiaohongshu) or as a vertical wrapper that delivers conclusions (creator screening, brand mention monitoring), then add MCP.
Should every product builder know this?
Yes. 'B2B plus ongoing usage' is the only naturally compounding revenue shape in this batch (Social Fetch grew for 7 straight months with no zero-revenue days). Also, the point that self-reported usage numbers can't be trusted applies to evaluating any API product.
Change log
Original: Scanner opportunity library #039 (updated daily, 06:00); this page was generated on the 2026-11-08 edition.