Best music data APIs, 2026Every main way to get music data.Spotify’s, Apple’s and SoundCloud’s own APIs and the main music analytics and data APIs, compared on what they return, how they charge and how you connect.
An editorial comparison of what each vendor publishes, checked 25 Sept 2026. Monocrawl is ours and listed first. How we compared
What are you building?
Artist, track, album and playlist data from Spotify, Apple Music and SoundCloud in your productA data API that returns public catalogue data on request, or a music analytics API that serves it from its own database. They differ most in platforms and pricing.
Play counts, monthly listeners and followers for artists and tracksAn option that returns stream or play counts. Spotify’s and Apple’s own APIs return none; SoundCloud’s returns plays.
Stream history, charts and playlist tracking for A&R and label reportingA music analytics API that keeps its own history, charts and playlist tracking. They differ most in history depth and how they charge.
An AI agent that looks up artists, tracks and playlistsAn option with its own MCP server and music tools, so the agent can call it directly.
Playback, libraries and playlists for people who log in to your appThe platforms’ own APIs: Spotify’s Web API, Apple’s Apple Music API and SoundCloud’s API, for users who log in and authorise your app.
10options compared
5with an MCP server
6free to start
42sources, checked 25 Sept 2026
Four routes
Spotify’s Web API and Apple’s Apple Music API are built for apps that serve their listeners, and SoundCloud’s API for apps that upload, play and share its content. Each needs a paid account first. Data APIs read public pages, or their own music databases, with one API key.
Spotify for Developers
Apple MusicKit
SoundCloud for Developers
Monocrawl and the vendors below
What they return
Which platforms each option lists on its own pages, what it returns and how you connect. Play counts include streams and plays.
| Music data | Connect | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Option | Spotify | Apple Music | SoundCloud | Artists | Tracks and albums | Playlists | Play counts | Search | Podcasts | REST API | MCP server | Sources |
| MonocrawlOur product | Our API | |||||||||||
| Spotify Web APIOfficial, Spotify | – | – | – | – | 12345 | |||||||
| Apple Music APIOfficial, Apple | – | – | – | – | – | 678910 | ||||||
| SoundCloud APIOfficial, SoundCloud | – | – | – | – | 1112131415 | |||||||
| ApifyMusic scraper actors | – | 1617181920 | ||||||||||
| Bright DataScraper Studio | – | – | – | 212223 | ||||||||
| ChartmetricMusic analytics API | – | 2425262728 | ||||||||||
| ScrapingBeeWeb scraping API | – | – | 2930313233 | |||||||||
| SoundchartsMusic analytics API | – | 3435363738 | ||||||||||
| ViberateMusic analytics API | – | 39404142 | ||||||||||
Pricing
A request, a result, a record and a unit are not the same size, and allowances reset on different schedules. Price your own workload with each vendor.
One key and one response format across 70+ platforms, with monitors for alerts.
Monthly plans
No published price for the API. Development mode needs the app owner to have Spotify Premium.
Up to 5 users an app, unless Spotify grants extended quota mode.
Worth knowingIts developer policy bars analysing Spotify content to create listenership metrics or benchmarks, and training AI models on it.
No published price
No published price for the API. Requests need a developer token from an Apple Developer Program membership.
Membership is $99 a year.
Worth knowingAlso returns Apple Music charts, music videos and stations; a separate Apple Music Feed exports the catalogue in bulk.
No published price
Free to call today; SoundCloud reserves the right to charge in future.
Registering an app needs a SoundCloud Artist Pro subscription.
Worth knowingStream requests are capped at 15,000 a day per app; SoundCloud does not currently enforce an overall call limit.
Free API; apps need Artist Pro
$5 per 1,000 Spotify items on the free plan
From $2.61 on higher plans. SoundCloud items are $2.30 per 1,000, from $1.20. Starter plan $19 a month.
Worth knowingTwo community actors from one publisher, one for Spotify and one for SoundCloud; the Spotify one also reads podcasts.
$5 of usage a month
$1.50 per 1,000 page loads, pay as you go
$499 a month includes 383,000 page loads.
Worth knowingYou describe the fields, its AI builds the Spotify or SoundCloud scraper, and it repairs the scraper when the site changes.
5,000 page loads a month
From $0.01 per prepaid API credit; most requests cost 1 credit
Or fixed-rate plans from $350 a month for 1 request a second, billed monthly.
Worth knowingCovers 40+ platforms, with more than 10 years of history on most, and tracks charts, playlists and radio airplay.
$5 of trial API credit
$19 a month for 75,000 API credits
A request costs 5 credits with JavaScript rendering, its default; AI extraction adds 5. Prices exclude VAT.
Worth knowingSend a Spotify, Apple Music or SoundCloud URL and get the rendered page back, or JSON from AI extraction rules you write.
1,000 free credits
$50 a month for 10,000 API requests, billed monthly
$250 a month buys 500,000. Premium endpoints start with the $500 Startup plan.
Worth knowingReturns a song’s Spotify streams or SoundCloud plays as a history over the dates you choose, 30 days by default.
1,000-request trial, no card
€300 for API 60: 60 calls a minute and 3 months of history
Its pricing page names no billing period. The largest package, API 1500, is €5,000.
Worth knowingRefreshes its data daily, and keeps one curated profile per artist with no duplicate entries.
14-day trial, on request
Try a call
The same kind of request on Spotify, Apple Music and SoundCloud, in cURL, TypeScript or Python, with the recorded responses for Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits playlist, Daft Punk’s Discovery on Apple Music and Chillhop Music on SoundCloud. No Spotify Premium, no Apple developer token and no SoundCloud app.
GET /v1/spotify/playlistcurl "https://www.monocrawl.com/v1/spotify/playlist?id=37i9dQZF1DXcBWIGoYBM5M" \
-H "x-api-key: mn_your_key_here"
Today’s Top Hits
Playlist by Spotify
Selected public fields from the recorded response. Live values will differ.
Spotify artist2 creditsSpotify track1 creditSpotify playlist page4 creditsSpotify search2 credits
Apple Music album1 creditApple Music search3 credits
SoundCloud profile4 creditsSoundCloud tracks page4 credits2.1sMedian response in our benchmark. 22 September 2026 catalogue benchmark. Median of recorded endpoint timings across 636 operations with a successful HTTP response. Includes network time; individual requests vary.
Questions
Spotify publishes no price for its Web API, but development mode needs the app owner to have Spotify Premium and allows 5 users. SoundCloud says its API is currently free, though registering an app needs an Artist Pro subscription, and Apple’s Apple Music API needs an Apple Developer Program membership at $99 a year. Most data APIs let you start free: Monocrawl gives 1,000 credits every month, Bright Data 5,000 page loads a month, Apify $5 of usage a month, Chartmetric $5 of API credit, Soundcharts a 1,000-request trial and ScrapingBee 1,000 credits. Viberate offers a 14-day trial on request.
Since November 2024, new apps and apps still in development mode cannot use audio features, audio analysis, recommendations, related artists, or Spotify’s algorithmic and editorial playlists. Since May 2025, only organisations can apply for extended quota mode, and the criteria include at least 250,000 monthly active users. From February 2026, and March for existing apps, development mode apps get no artist follower counts, popularity or top tracks, no batch lookups, at most 10 search results a request, and playlist tracks only for playlists they own or collaborate on. Apps already in extended quota mode are unaffected by the 2026 changes.
No: Spotify’s Web API has no stream count or monthly listener field, and development mode apps no longer receive artist follower counts or popularity scores. Monocrawl returns play counts for each track on a playlist page and for an artist’s top tracks, with monthly listeners, followers and world rank. Chartmetric, Soundcharts and Viberate return Spotify stream histories, and Apify’s community Spotify actor returns play counts.
Only in narrow ways. Spotify’s developer policy allows limited commercial use for apps that do not stream music, and bars analysing Spotify content to create listenership metrics or training AI models on it; its terms also bar storing Spotify content beyond what your app needs, or selling data obtained from Spotify. SoundCloud lists a few acceptable commercial uses, such as helping creators promote their own content, and approves others case by case. Apple limits MusicKit to giving your users access to their Apple Music subscriptions.
For the Apple Music API: an Apple Developer Program membership and a MusicKit private key, which you use to sign developer tokens valid for up to six months. For SoundCloud: an Artist Pro subscription to register an app, in the browser or with SoundCloud’s command-line tool. Public tracks, search and playback then work with the Client Credentials flow, and stream requests are capped at 15,000 a day per app.
Monocrawl, Apify, Chartmetric, Soundcharts and Viberate publish their own MCP servers with music tools, so assistants such as Claude or Cursor can call them directly. Chartmetric includes MCP with its paid plans and Soundcharts on all plans; Viberate’s MCP plan is €99 a month billed yearly, with a limited free tier. Bright Data’s and ScrapingBee’s MCP servers have only general scraping tools.
Method
What’s includedThe official APIs of Spotify, Apple Music and SoundCloud, plus widely used music analytics and data APIs that return data from them, publish their pricing or offer a trial, and come up across music data API and Spotify API alternative searches and comparison lists.
What we comparedWhich platforms each vendor lists, what music data it returns, and its pricing, free allowance and access, read on its own pages. “Best” here means worth comparing, not a ranking from tests: we have not run their APIs.
About MonocrawlMonocrawl is our product and is listed first. Its details come from our live plans and catalogue.
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