Mastodon Explore Scraper

Pull the trending profiles and their content from any Mastodon instance's explore page, straight from the public Mastodon API. You get rich profile records (bio, follower counts, fields, avatar) and their reviews, where a review is a post or a reply in its thread. Choose between profiles with reviews nested inside, a flat stream of reviews, or bulk posts by keyword. Defaults to mastodon.social and works on any Mastodon server.

Why this scraper

• Three output modes: trending profiles with nested reviews, reviews only (one flat record each), or keyword posts in bulk.
• Keyword mode harvests posts by topic at volume: each keyword timeline is walked back via load-more pagination up to your post cap (tens of thousands of posts).
• Reviews cover both a profile's own posts and the replies underneath them, so you capture the full conversation.
• Deep history: pull up to thousands of a profile's past posts, walked automatically via load-more pagination.
• Reads the public Mastodon REST API directly: fast, stable JSON, no fragile page parsing.
• Trending profiles merge two signals: authors of currently trending posts and the active public directory.
• URL mode: paste profile or post links to scrape exactly what you want.
• Works on any instance (mastodon.social, mas.to, fosstodon.org, your own server).
• Every record keeps the full upstream account object, so no field is ever dropped.

Data you get

Profile record (profiles mode):

Field	Example
recordType	profile
id	13179
acct	Mastodon
username	Mastodon
displayName	Mastodon
bio	Free, open-source decentralized social media. Not for sale.
followersCount	853000
followingCount	4
statusesCount	700
url	https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon
avatar	https://files.mastodon.social/accounts/avatars/000/013/179/original/...png
bot	false
createdAt	2016-11-23T00:00:00.000Z
fields	[{"name": "Homepage", "value": "joinmastodon.org"}]
reviewCount	5
reviews	[ ... array of review records ... ]

Review record (reviews mode, keyword mode, or nested under a profile):

Field	Example
recordType	review
id	109876543210987654
reviewType	post (or reply)
isReblog	false
rebloggedByAcct	null (set to the booster's handle when isReblog is true)
sourceKeyword	news (keyword mode only; null otherwise)
contentText	We just shipped a new version with quote posts.
createdAt	2026-05-20T14:03:11.000Z
language	en
url	https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/109876543210987654
repliesCount	42
reblogsCount	318
favouritesCount	901
inReplyToId	null
tags	["mastodon", "fediverse"]
authorAcct	Mastodon
authorDisplayName	Mastodon
account	{ ... full upstream account object ... }

How to use

Trending profiles with their reviews (default):

{
  "mode": "profiles",
  "instanceUrl": "https://mastodon.social",
  "profileSource": "both",
  "includeReplies": true,
  "maxProfiles": 10,
  "maxReviewsPerProfile": 5,
  "maxRepliesPerPost": 10
}

Reviews only, capped at 200, no replies (faster and cheaper):

{
  "mode": "reviews",
  "profileSource": "trending",
  "includeReplies": false,
  "maxProfiles": 20,
  "maxReviewsPerProfile": 10,
  "maxReviews": 200
}

Bulk posts by keyword (high volume, load-more pagination):

{
  "mode": "keyword",
  "keywords": ["news", "art", "climate"],
  "includeReplies": false,
  "maxPosts": 5000
}

Deep history of one profile (thousands of past posts):

{
  "mode": "reviews",
  "urls": ["https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon"],
  "includeReplies": false,
  "maxReviewsPerProfile": 2000
}

Active local directory profiles only:

{
  "mode": "profiles",
  "profileSource": "directory",
  "onlyLocal": true,
  "maxProfiles": 25
}

URL mode (specific profiles and posts):

{
  "mode": "reviews",
  "urls": [
    "https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon",
    "https://mastodon.social/@Gargron",
    "https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/109876543210987654"
  ],
  "includeReplies": true
}

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	profiles	profiles (nested reviews), reviews (flat), or keyword (bulk posts by topic)
instanceUrl	string	https://mastodon.social	Any public Mastodon server
profileSource	string	both	trending, directory, or both (used when no URLs)
onlyLocal	boolean	false	Directory: local accounts only
urls	array	[]	Profile or post URLs; when set, overrides explore/profiles/reviews/keyword
keywords	array	[news]	Keywords to bulk-scrape in keyword mode (matched as tags, with or without #)
includeReplies	boolean	true	Fetch the reply thread under each post
maxProfiles	integer	10	Max profiles to scrape (up to 500)
maxReviewsPerProfile	integer	5	Posts to fetch per profile, walked via load-more (up to 5000)
maxRepliesPerPost	integer	10	Replies to keep per post
maxReviews	integer	0	Reviews-mode total cap (0 = unlimited)
maxPosts	integer	500	Keyword-mode total cap, split across keywords (up to 100000)
resumeFromRunId	string	(none)	Continue one specific interrupted run/dataset without re-collecting or re-charging
incrementalMode	boolean	false	Turn on for recurring monitoring; see "Resume & recurring updates" above
stateKey	string	(auto)	Name or share an incremental-mode monitoring campaign explicitly
emitUnchanged	boolean	false	Also return UNCHANGED records (incremental mode only; bills extra rows)
emitExpired	boolean	false	Also return EXPIRED records (incremental mode only; bills extra rows)
proxy	object	Apify datacenter	Proxy configuration

Resume & recurring updates

Two different things, both optional:

• Resume from a previous run (resumeFromRunId): paste a previous run ID or dataset ID to continue an interrupted crawl without returning or re-charging for records already collected there.
• Incremental mode (incrementalMode): turn this on for daily/weekly recurring monitoring of the same search. The actor remembers its own baseline (keyed by mode + instance + your query/filter settings, excluding the max* depth caps) in a key-value store — no run/dataset id to paste. The first run returns everything as NEW. Later runs return only NEW, UPDATED, and REAPPEARED records by default. Turn on emitUnchanged or emitExpired only if you also want those rows back (and billed — they're extra dataset items).

When incrementalMode is on, every pushed record gains four fields:

Field	Meaning
changeType	NEW, UPDATED, UNCHANGED, REAPPEARED, or EXPIRED
changedFields	Which fields differed from the last run (empty for NEW/UNCHANGED/REAPPEARED/EXPIRED)
firstSeenAt	When this record was first observed by this monitoring campaign
lastSeenAt	When this record was last observed

EXPIRED rows (records that were present before but are no longer found) are only produced once a run has fully scanned its tracked scope — never when a cap, a failed page, an instance hiccup, or Resume cut a run short, since a partial scan can't tell "gone" apart from "not reached yet".

What counts as a real change vs. noise: followersCount/followingCount/statusesCount on a profile, and favouritesCount/reblogsCount/repliesCount on a top-level review/keyword-mode record, are genuinely volatile but treated as real data — a profile gaining a follower, or a trending post picking up favourites, is exactly what a recurring run should report. The same engagement counters on a review nested inside a profile record (profiles mode) are excluded from change detection there only — a nested post's favourite ticking would otherwise flag the whole profile UPDATED on every run and drown out real profile-level changes (bio, avatar, display name). A reply/post-listing fetch that fails outright never corrupts the baseline: the affected fields carry forward from the last successful scrape instead of being read as "this profile now has zero posts".

Use State key to name a monitoring campaign explicitly, or to intentionally share state across two differently-configured runs; leave it empty to let the actor derive one automatically so different searches never collide.

Send results into your apps (MCP connectors)

Optionally pipe the scraped results into the apps you already use, via Model Context Protocol (MCP) connectors. This is an extra delivery step after the scrape — the Apify dataset is never changed.

What gets written to the connector: a condensed, human-readable summary of each record — not the full JSON. Each item becomes one entry with a title and its key fields flattened to plain text. The complete record always stays in the Apify dataset.

1. Authorize a connector once under Apify → Settings → Integrations (Notion, Linear, Airtable, or Apify).
2. Select it in the "Pipe results into your apps" input field. (If the picker is empty, you haven't authorized a connector yet.)
3. For Notion, also set notionParentPageUrl to the page where items should be created.

The connection is mediated by Apify's MCP proxy, so this actor never sees your third-party credentials. Leave the field empty to skip.

Output example

{
  "recordType": "profile",
  "id": "13179",
  "acct": "Mastodon",
  "username": "Mastodon",
  "displayName": "Mastodon",
  "bio": "Free, open-source decentralized social media. Not for sale.",
  "followersCount": 853000,
  "followingCount": 4,
  "statusesCount": 700,
  "url": "https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon",
  "bot": false,
  "createdAt": "2016-11-23T00:00:00.000Z",
  "fields": [{ "name": "Homepage", "value": "joinmastodon.org" }],
  "reviewCount": 2,
  "reviews": [
    {
      "recordType": "review",
      "id": "109876543210987654",
      "reviewType": "post",
      "contentText": "We just shipped a new version with quote posts.",
      "createdAt": "2026-05-20T14:03:11.000Z",
      "repliesCount": 42,
      "reblogsCount": 318,
      "favouritesCount": 901,
      "url": "https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/109876543210987654",
      "authorAcct": "Mastodon"
    },
    {
      "recordType": "review",
      "id": "109876543299990000",
      "reviewType": "reply",
      "contentText": "Congrats, this is huge for the fediverse!",
      "createdAt": "2026-05-20T14:09:55.000Z",
      "inReplyToId": "109876543210987654",
      "authorAcct": "someuser"
    }
  ]
}

Plan requirement

Runs on any Apify plan, including the free tier. The default connection works on every plan. A residential proxy connection is optional and only worth turning on for very large or sustained runs.