Calculate social media engagement rate via API — YouTube, X, TikTok in one call

How-to

Calculate social media engagement rate via API — YouTube, X, TikTok, Bluesky in one call

Engagement rate is likes plus comments divided by views (or by follower count, depending on the formula). Most analytics platforms make you log in, authorize OAuth, and wait for data to sync before you can calculate it. Pulse gives you views, likes, and comments for any public post with one GET request — compute the rate yourself in one line of code.

The formula

Two common definitions:

Engagement rate by views = (likes + comments) / views × 100%
Engagement rate by followers = (likes + comments) / follower_count × 100%

Pulse gives you all three numbers — views, likes, comments — plus the author's follower count if you call /profile too. Pick the formula that fits your use case.

In Python — rate by views

import requests

url = "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
r = requests.get("https://pulse.walls.sh/metrics", params={"url": url})
m = r.json()
# Rick Astley — Never Gonna Give You Up: 1.78B views, 19.1M likes
er = (m["likes"] or 0) / m["views"] * 100 if m.get("views") else None
print(f"Views: {m['views']:,}, Likes: {m['likes']:,}")
print(f"Engagement rate (by views): {er:.2f}%")

Views: 1,781,803,241, Likes: 19,151,099
Engagement rate (by views): 1.08%

In Python — rate by followers

import requests

post_url = "https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1932200000000000000"
profile_url = "https://twitter.com/elonmusk"

m = requests.get("https://pulse.walls.sh/metrics", params={"url": post_url}).json()
p = requests.get("https://pulse.walls.sh/profile", params={"url": profile_url}).json()

engaged = (m.get("likes") or 0) + (m.get("comments") or 0)
er = engaged / p["followers"] * 100 if p.get("followers") else None
print(f"Engagement rate (by followers): {er:.4f}%")

Batch: calculate rates for multiple posts at once

import requests

urls = [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "https://bsky.app/profile/someone.bsky.social/post/abc123",
    "https://www.tiktok.com/@creator/video/123456",
]
r = requests.get("https://pulse.walls.sh/metrics/batch", params={"urls": ",".join(urls)})
for item in r.json()["results"]:
    if "error" in item:
        print(f"{item['url']}: {item['error']}")
        continue
    er = ((item.get("likes") or 0) + (item.get("comments") or 0)) / item["views"] * 100 if item.get("views") else None
    print(f"{item['platform']}: views={item['views']:,}, er={er:.2f}%" if er else f"{item['platform']}: no views")

What Pulse returns for each platform

Platform	views	likes	comments	shares
YouTube	✓	✓	—	—
X / Twitter	✓	✓	✓	✓ (retweets)
TikTok	✓	✓	✓	✓
Bluesky	—	✓	✓	✓ (reposts)
Mastodon	—	✓	✓	✓ (boosts)
LinkedIn	✓ (est.)	✓	✓	—

Bluesky doesn't expose a view count publicly. For Bluesky engagement rate, use the follower-count formula. A missing field returns null — filter before dividing.

Rate limits and pricing

Free: 120 calls/minute, no account or signup needed. For commercial analytics pipelines or higher volume, the $19/mo Pro plan raises the ceiling to 1,200 calls/minute (10×) — see pricing or sign up at /account.

More: full API docs · OpenAPI spec · all supported platforms · YouTube metrics · X/Twitter metrics · TikTok metrics.