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)
proxy	object	Apify datacenter	Proxy configuration

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 Mastodon API is public, so Apify Datacenter proxy (the default) is sufficient. For very large jobs, datacenter proxy rotation helps keep the run under each server's per-IP rate limit; residential proxy is optional and not required.