X Profile Lookup: twitter profile scraper from $2/1k

You give this actor a list of X (Twitter) handles or profile URLs and for each one it returns the display name, bio, location, website, join date, exact follower / following / post counts, badge type, profile picture and header image. Every number is read from the profile page's own server-rendered data at request time. No login, no cookies, no API key, and no stored database sits between you and the answer.

Who it's for

Growth and partnerships teams sizing an account before they pitch it, community managers keeping a roster of member handles current, researchers tracking how a set of accounts grows week over week, and anyone whose CRM has a Twitter handle column that has never been enriched. If your workflow today is "open 40 tabs and copy the follower count into a spreadsheet", this is that job as one API call. Pricing is per profile: a few tenths of a cent for a profile that came back with data, and nothing at all for a handle that is unused, suspended or typo'd. No seat license, no monthly minimum, no credit system to decode.

Why this one

• Exact counts, not the abbreviated ones on the page. The profile card shows "92.3M followers" and "74.3K posts". The page's own data carries 92385570 and 74276, and that is what this actor returns. Rounded figures are useless for tracking growth; these are not.
• No API key and no $200/month tier. X's official API starts at $200/month for the plan most people need. This reads the public profile page, which anyone can open in a browser, and bills per profile found.
• Never charged for a miss. A handle nobody holds comes back as a clean NOT_FOUND row, a suspended account is labelled as suspended rather than silently returned as empty data, and neither one costs anything.
• A suspended account is never sold to you as a hit. X still renders a page for a suspended handle. This actor reads the status and treats it as a miss, instead of billing you for a row with no profile in it.
• Handles, @handles, x.com links and old twitter.com links all work. Paste whatever your CRM already stores; you do not have to normalise the column first.
• No credential ever enters this actor. There is no input field that could take a bearer token, a cookie or a password, because none is needed.

What you get

Every row starts with the same five fields, then the profile fields.

Field	Type	Description
query	text	The handle or URL you submitted, echoed back
found	boolean	true if the profile was found
status	text	OK on a match; NOT_FOUND, BLOCKED, BAD_FORMAT, or REQUEST_FAILED on a miss
message	text	Plain-English reason for a miss, only present when found is false
scrapedAt	ISO 8601 datetime	When the page was fetched
handle	text	The account's handle, in the casing X itself uses
userId	text	The account's stable numeric X user ID, which survives a handle change
displayName	text	The account's display name
bio	text	The bio text, as X stores it
location	text	The self-declared location, if the account sets one
website	link	The account's link, already expanded past the t.co wrapper
joinedDate	ISO 8601 datetime	When the account was created
followersCount	number	Exact follower count
followingCount	number	Exact following count
tweetCount	number	Exact number of posts
verified	boolean	Whether the account carries any badge
verifiedType	text	Which badge: Blue, Business or Government
isProtected	boolean	Whether the account is protected (posts visible to followers only)
profileImageUrl	image	Profile picture, upgraded to the 400x400 size
bannerUrl	image	Header image, if the account sets one
profileUrl	link	Canonical profile page

Deselect any field in the Input tab's column picker to drop it from every row: query, found, status, message and scrapedAt always stay.

Price

Pay-per-event. A flat per-run fee covers session/proxy warmup; you're billed per item only when data is actually found and returned — see .actor/pay_per_event.json for exact prices. A miss is never charged.

1,000 handles through this actor: about $2 if every one resolves, less if some do not, and less again on a paid Apify plan. The same 1,000 profiles through X's own API means a $200/month subscription before you read the first row.

How to use

1. In the Apify Console. Open the actor page and click Start — the profiles field is already pre-filled with a working example. Results land in the run's dataset as soon as each item is found.
2. Via the API. Call it directly with a POST request — no Console needed once you have an API token:

   curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~x-profile-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
     -X POST \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"profiles":["nasa","apify","github"]}'
   

3. On a schedule. Save this actor as an Apify Task with the input you want, then add a Schedule (hourly, daily, weekly) so it runs on its own — no server of your own required.

1. Open the Input tab and paste your list into "X handles or profile URLs to look up": one per line, as a bare handle (nasa), an @handle, or a full profile URL on either domain.
2. Leave "Try it first" on for your opening run. It caps the run at 5 profiles so you can check the output shape before spending on the whole list.
3. Optionally trim "Which columns do you want?" to the fields you actually need, or use "Only keep rows containing" and "Skip rows containing" to filter by keyword.
4. Turn "Try it first" off and press Start to run the full list.

Typical uses: enriching a CRM column of Twitter handles, sizing a list of creators before an outreach campaign, and running the same list weekly so you can chart follower growth over time.

Input

{
  "profiles": [
    "nasa",
    "apify",
    "github"
  ]
}

One X (Twitter) handle or profile URL per line. Accepted formats: nasa, @nasa, https://x.com/nasa, https://twitter.com/nasa.

Sample output

query	found	status	handle	userId	displayName	bio	location	website	joinedDate	followersCount	followingCount	tweetCount	verified	verifiedType	isProtected	profileImageUrl	bannerUrl	profileUrl	scrapedAt
nasa	true	OK	NASA	11348282	NASA	Making the seemingly impossible, possible. ✨	Pale Blue Dot	http://www.nasa.gov/	2007-12-19T20:20:32.000Z	92385617	117	74276	true	Government	false	https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1321163587679784960/0ZxKlEKB_400x400.jpg	https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_banners/11348282/1775567134	https://x.com/NASA	2026-09-08T10:13:18.979Z

A handle nobody holds, or one belonging to a suspended account, gets a row with found: false and a status / message explaining which of the two it was. Neither is charged.

Use it from Clay, n8n, Make, or an AI agent

This actor runs synchronously over plain HTTP — call it directly from a script, a workflow tool, or an AI agent, no Apify Console needed once you have an API token.

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~x-profile-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"profiles":["nasa","apify","github"]}'

n8n. Add an HTTP Request node: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~x-profile-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body Content Type JSON, JSON Body {"profiles":["nasa","apify","github"]} (swap in an expression from an earlier node for a real value).

Clay. Add an "HTTP API" column: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~x-profile-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body {"profiles":["{{profile}}"]}, mapping the row's profile into the profiles array.

MCP. In Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client with the Apify MCP server, ask for "Twitter Profile Scraper: X Profile API | Apify" — the agent will find and run this actor.

Tips

• Run "Try it first" on a few accounts whose follower counts you already know, so you can confirm the numbers before committing a long list.
• Store userId, not handle, as your join key. Handles change; the numeric ID does not, so a rename shows up as a changed handle on the same userId instead of a broken row.
• Keep the parallel-request setting low on a big list. X notices bursts, and a page of BLOCKED rows costs more in wasted time than a slower, steadier run.
• verifiedType is more useful than verified on its own: Government and Business badges say something about the account that a paid Blue badge does not.
• location is free text the account holder typed. "Pale Blue Dot" is a real value. Do not feed it into a geocoder without cleaning it.
• Re-run the same list on a schedule and diff followersCount between runs to get growth. This actor keeps no history of its own.

vs. alternatives

	What it costs	What you get	Trade-off
This actor (x-profile-lookup)	$2 per 1,000 found profiles at the FREE tier, less on paid tiers, nothing for a miss	One flat row per handle: display name, bio, location, website, join date, exact follower / following / post counts, badge type, pictures	Profile data only. It returns nothing about the account's posts, followers list, or engagement. If you need posts, apidojo/tweet-scraper is the actor for that job, not this one.
apidojo/tweet-scraper	$0.40 per 1,000 tweets	Posts: the tweets themselves, with their text, media and engagement counts	A different product for a different question. Use it when you want what an account said; use this when you want who the account is.
X API (official)	From $200/month	Everything X chooses to expose, under a documented contract with rate limits you can plan against	If you are building a product on X data and need guarantees, pay for the API. This is for the enrichment case where a monthly subscription for a follower-count column makes no sense.
Doing it yourself	Your time, plus parsing a serialized page payload that X reformats without notice, plus telling a suspended account apart from an unused handle	The same data	The parsing, the exact-versus-rounded count handling, the suspended-versus-missing distinction, and re-testing when the page changes are the maintenance this actor absorbs.

Prices for third-party tools are their published figures as of September 2026 and are not tracked here; check the vendor before relying on the comparison.

FAQ

Why does a row say found: false? One of four reasons, and message always names which: nobody holds that handle (NOT_FOUND, a real HTTP 404 from X), the account is suspended (NOT_FOUND, with "suspended" in the message), the input is not a valid handle shape (BAD_FORMAT), or the request was refused or timed out (BLOCKED / REQUEST_FAILED). None of the four is charged.

Am I charged for a miss? No. The charge fires only when a profile actually resolves and its data is returned. Suspended accounts, unused handles and blocked requests all produce a row and cost nothing.

Do I need an X API key, a login, or a cookie? No. There is no input field that accepts one. The actor reads the public profile page, the same page a logged-out visitor sees.

Are the follower counts exact or rounded? Exact. The visible profile card rounds to "92.3M"; the page's underlying data carries the real integer, and that is the number in followersCount. The same is true of followingCount and tweetCount.

Is this a live check or a stored database? Live. Every run fetches the current page. There is no snapshot behind it, which is also why growth tracking needs a schedule plus your own storage rather than a history field here.

What happens to protected accounts? They still return a row. X serves the profile header for a protected account, so display name, bio, join date and the three counts are all present; isProtected: true flags it. What a protected account does not expose is its posts, which this actor does not return for any account.

What does verifiedType mean? It is X's own label for the badge on the account: Blue for a paid subscription, Business for an organisation, Government for an official body. null means the page carried no badge for that account.

Does an old twitter.com URL still work? Yes. twitter.com, mobile.twitter.com and x.com links all resolve to the same handle before the request is made.

Is this GDPR-relevant? What comes back is an account's own public, self-published profile information, the same fields any visitor sees without logging in. It returns no private data, no email addresses and no follower lists.

Can an AI agent call this directly? Yes. It is on the Apify MCP server, so an agent in Claude, Cursor or another MCP client can find and run it by name, or you can call the REST endpoint shown above from any script or workflow.

Related actors

• Threads Profile Lookup: the same profile-stats shape for Meta's Threads, which is where a lot of X audiences went.
• TikTok Profile Lookup: follower, like and video counts for a list of TikTok handles.
• LinkedIn Company Lookup: once a handle is qualified, pull the company behind it.
• Google News Lookup: check what coverage an account or brand is getting.