What this API does and who it is for
Real-Time LinkedIn Scraper gives developers programmatic access to LinkedIn public data across five broad domains: profiles, companies, jobs, posts, and articles. Rather than serving cached snapshots, every call triggers a live fetch, so the data you receive reflects the current state of the page at the moment of the request. The provider also states that no database is used on their end, which is the mechanism behind their GDPR compliance claim.
The API suits a fairly wide range of teams. Recruiters and HR-tech platforms are obvious users — profile enrichment, candidate tracking, and open-to-work detection are all directly supported. Sales teams can pull company details, employee counts, and job postings to qualify leads. Content researchers can surface posts, hashtag threads, and article reactions. If your application needs any of this data and you want to avoid managing your own scraping infrastructure, this API is worth evaluating.
Endpoint coverage
With 51 endpoints across five groups, coverage is broad. Here is what each group provides:
Profile endpoints
The profile group is the most extensive. You can retrieve a full profile by username or URL, search for people by keyword (including a URL-based variant), fetch the last 50 posts or comments a person has made, pull received and given recommendations, get connection and follower counts, check recent activity timestamps, and retrieve what posts a person has reacted to. Two bundle endpoints — one combining profile data with connection counts, another adding posts to that bundle — cost 2 credits each instead of 1, reflecting the heavier data payload. A Get Similar Profiles endpoint rounds out the group.
Company endpoints
Company data is available by company ID, by domain name, or through a keyword search. The group also covers company jobs, job counts, employee counts (with location filtering via a POST body), company posts, post comments, and a "pages people also viewed" list. The standout endpoint here is Get Company Insights [PREMIUM], a beta feature that costs 5 credits per call and bundles insight details with company details in a single response — five times the cost of any other endpoint in the API.
Job endpoints
You can search jobs with two variants (Search Jobs and Search Jobs V2, both 1 credit each), retrieve full job details including skills and embedded company info, and fetch the hiring team associated with a posting. This is enough to build a job aggregator or a lead-generation tool that tracks which companies are actively hiring for specific roles.
Post and article endpoints
Post search works by keyword or by hashtag. Individual posts, their reposts, and profile-posted jobs are all retrievable. The article group mirrors that pattern: fetch a user's articles, a single article, its comments, or its reactions — each at 1 credit.
Response structure
Every response wraps data in a consistent envelope:
{ "success": true, "message": "", "data": { ... } }Failed requests return success: false with a descriptive message and, importantly, the provider states you are not charged for failed requests. This is a useful guarantee when working with profiles that may be private or otherwise inaccessible.
Pricing
Only one plan is publicly listed on the marketplace:
| Plan | Monthly price | Credits | Requests |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $0 | 50 | 75 |
At 1 credit per most calls, 50 credits translates to roughly 50 individual endpoint calls per month on the free tier. Because credits and requests are tracked separately, the 75-request cap will become the binding constraint if you mix any 2-credit bundle calls into your usage (those consume 2 credits but likely still count as 1 request each). Either way, the free plan is not suitable for production workloads at any meaningful scale.
Unused credits do not roll over; they expire at the end of each billing cycle. The provider notes that custom packages are available on request, but no additional paid tiers are listed publicly. If your volume needs exceed the Basic plan, you will need to contact the provider directly.
Practical use cases
- Talent pipeline enrichment: Pull full profiles including work history, skills, certifications, and open-to-work status into an ATS. Use the recent-activity-time endpoint to prioritize outreach to candidates who are currently active.
- Candidate change tracking: Poll profiles periodically for position changes or updated open-to-work flags to surface candidates who have recently become available.
- Sales intelligence: Combine company details, employee counts, and active job postings to build a signal around hiring intent — companies growing fast in specific roles are often in a buying mode for related tools.
- Content monitoring: Track posts and reactions by keyword or hashtag to understand how topics or competitor brands are discussed on LinkedIn.
- Job board aggregation: Use the job search and job detail endpoints to ingest fresh listings, complete with embedded company data, into a third-party platform.
Limitations and things to verify before integrating
Free tier volume: 50 credits per month is a prototyping budget, not a production one. Any serious pipeline will need a custom plan, and pricing for those plans is not publicly documented.
Search result completeness: The /search-people endpoint documentation explicitly warns that you may receive fewer than 10 results per page because LinkedIn does not always surface profiles publicly. The endpoint attempts to filter these out automatically, but expect some variability in result counts.
Premium endpoint cost: The Company Insights endpoint costs 5 credits per call. On the free tier that is 10 calls per month at most before credits run out, assuming you use no other endpoints.
Plan changes: Upgrading or downgrading requires contacting the provider — it cannot be done self-serve through the marketplace dashboard.
Terms of use: The provider links to a separate terms-and-conditions document. Review it before building any commercial product on top of this API, particularly around data storage and redistribution, given that LinkedIn's own terms restrict automated data collection.
Getting started
The API is available through RapidAPI. Subscribe to the Basic plan (no credit card required) and you will receive an API key scoped to your account. All endpoints follow a straightforward REST pattern — GET for most reads, POST where filtering parameters are complex (company jobs, employee count with location, post search). Pass your RapidAPI key in the X-RapidAPI-Key header alongside the appropriate query parameters such as a LinkedIn username, profile URL, or search keyword.
Start with the /health endpoint to confirm connectivity, then call GET / with a known public profile username to validate your key and inspect the response shape. From there, the 1-credit cost per call means you can explore most of the surface area with the free plan before committing to a custom package.
