How trackagoat fetches TikTok data, what each scrape type does, when scrapes run automatically, how to trigger one manually, daily quotas, and what to do when data looks stale.
trackagoat fetches TikTok data through a background scraper service. Data is not fetched in real time: it's collected on a schedule and stored so you can chart trends over time.
trackagoat is not affiliated with TikTok. Data is collected via Apify's public TikTok scraper. Stats reflect what Apify observed at scrape time and may be a few minutes to a few hours behind what you'd see on TikTok directly.
| Type | What it fetches | Runs for |
|---|---|---|
| Creator Profiles | Follower count, total likes, video count, bio, avatar | Each tracked creator |
| Video Stats | View, like, comment, share, and save counts | Each tracked video |
| Discover Videos | New videos posted by tracked creators since last check | Each tracked creator |
Each type runs on its own schedule and can be triggered independently.
Each discovery pass fetches a creator's most recent posts. To make sure nothing is permanently missed, trackagoat also runs a cost-bounded reconcile: every tracked creator periodically (roughly once a month) gets a deep re-scan that walks further back through their history and fills in any posts an earlier pass skipped.
Creators with a detected gap — where the number of posts trackagoat has captured is well below the post count shown on their TikTok profile — are prioritized for reconcile, so real gaps are typically closed within a cycle or two rather than waiting for the full monthly rotation. You can see which creators currently have a gap in the Tracking Gaps widget on the Program Health page.
Photo carousels (TikTok /photo/ posts) are fully supported: they're discovered, shown alongside videos with a link to the carousel, and updated on a slower cadence than videos to keep costs in check.
Scrapes run automatically in the background. How often depends on your plan:
| Tier | Creator Profiles | Video Stats | Discover Videos |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Every 24 hours | Every 24 hours | Every 24 hours |
| Starter | Every 12 hours | Every 4 hours | Every 12 hours |
| Ultra | Every 6 hours | Every 1 hour | Every 4 hours |
These are the minimum intervals: your org admin can configure longer intervals, but never shorter than the tier floor. Ultra tier has no enforced floor.
Scraping starts automatically once you add a creator. You don't need to do anything to get data flowing.
Org admins can trigger an update immediately without waiting for the next scheduled run. This is useful when you just added a creator and want fresh data right away, or when you know a big video just dropped.
Where to find manual triggers:
When you click "Update Now", a dialog opens that:
After confirming, a toast confirms the scrape started. The page data updates automatically when the job completes (usually under a minute).
Manual updates count against a daily quota that resets at midnight UTC. Automated scheduled updates do not count against this quota: only manual "Update Now" triggers do.
| Tier | Manual updates per day |
|---|---|
| Free | 1 |
| Starter | 10 |
| Ultra | 100 |
What counts as one trigger:
If you reach your daily limit, the "Update Now" dialog shows "Daily limit reached" and the button is disabled until midnight UTC. Your org's Usage tab (visible to admins under Org Settings) shows how many you've used today.
Creator list: a data-freshness badge on each creator shows when their profile was last updated.
Video list: each video shows a tier badge indicating how often it's scheduled for updates. Hover the badge to see the next scheduled update time.
Video detail → Details tab: shows the tier and next scheduled update.
Org Settings → Scraping tab (admin only): shows the last run time, status (OK / Partial / Failed), and processed count for each job type across the whole org.
Stats are snapshots, not live counters. A view count of 12,400 means that's what Apify saw the last time it scraped that video: not necessarily the current live count on TikTok.
Expected freshness by tier after a successful update:
Data in charts is aggregated from the stored snapshot history. If no update has run yet for a newly added creator or video, analytics will show no data until the first update completes.
If the scraper encounters an error (TikTok rate limit, Apify outage, handle not found), the job is retried automatically with exponential backoff.
A creator that fails 5 consecutive profile updates is automatically auto-disabled to stop wasting quota on a handle that may be gone. Auto-disabled creators stop being updated until an org admin re-enables them (subject to a 24-hour cooldown). See Creators for the re-enable flow.
If you notice a creator hasn't updated in a long time, check:
Is the TikTok handle still valid? The account may have been deleted, renamed, or made private.
Is the org-wide Scraping tab showing errors? If all job types are failing, the scraper service itself may be down: contact support.
Try a manual "Update Now": if it succeeds, the prior failure was transient.
The min_*_hours scrape frequency settings are floors on scheduled scrapes: they don't limit how often you can do manual triggers (that's the max_manual_scrape_triggers_per_day quota above).
See Limits & plan tiers for all limit keys and how enforcement works.
