Bluesky Scraper – Posts, Profiles, Threads & More

Extract posts, profiles, threads, followers, and custom feeds from Bluesky — the fast-growing decentralized social network built on the AT Protocol. No account required. No browser. No proxies. Pure API.

Try it now: click Try for free above.

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Why Bluesky Scraper?

Most Bluesky scrapers handle one use case. This Actor handles seven — and does it faster, cheaper, and more accurately than browser-based alternatives.

#	What makes it better	Why it matters
1	7 scrape modes in one actor	Search, author feed, thread, profile, followers, following, and custom feed. Competitors often need separate actors per mode.
2	Direct AT Protocol API	No headless browser, no proxies, no fragile HTML parsing. Pure API calls = faster runs, lower cost, higher reliability.
3	Engagement rate auto-calculated	In authorFeed mode, follower count is pre-fetched once and engagementRate = (likes + reposts + quotes) / followers is computed per post. No spreadsheet formulas needed.
4	Structured hashtags and mentions via facets	Tags and mentions are extracted from AT Protocol facets — machine-readable structured data, not regex on raw text. Always accurate, even for posts with special characters or non-Latin scripts.
5	Custom feed generator support	Scrape any public Bluesky algorithm (What's Hot, topic feeds, community feeds) by URI. Unique to Bluesky's open protocol.
6	No login required	100% public API. No credentials, no session tokens, no risk of account bans.
7	Stable AT URIs as post IDs	Every post gets its postId as a permanent AT URI (e.g. at://did:plc:.../...). These decentralized identifiers never break when users change their handle.
8	Smart rate-limit handling	Automatically honors Retry-After headers from the API. No wasted retries, no failed runs.
9	Full media extraction	Image URLs, alt texts, and video thumbnails are extracted and indexed per post.
10	MCP-ready	Works out of the box with Claude Desktop via Apify's MCP server. Run natural-language Bluesky queries without writing a single line of code.

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What does Bluesky Scraper do?

The Actor connects directly to the AT Protocol public AppView API (api.bsky.app) and supports seven distinct scrape modes:

Mode	What it collects
searchPosts	Posts matching a keyword, phrase, or hashtag — with optional date range and language filters
authorFeed	All posts (and optionally reposts/replies) from one or more Bluesky accounts
postThread	A full post thread including all nested replies
profile	Detailed profile stats for one or more accounts
followers	The complete follower list of an account
follows	The complete following list of an account
customFeed	Any public Bluesky feed generator, identified by its AT URI

All modes support automatic cursor-based pagination to collect results beyond the first page.

Common use cases:

• Brand monitoring — track mentions of your product, company, or topic in real time
• Research and journalism — snapshot public conversations with date-range filters
• Influencer discovery — surface high-engagement accounts via follower and engagement metrics
• Academic datasets — build labeled corpora for NLP, sentiment analysis, or network studies
• Competitor intelligence — monitor what your industry is discussing on Bluesky
• Content curation — find top posts on any hashtag ranked by engagement

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How to use Bluesky Scraper

1. Click Try for free to open the Actor input form
2. Select a Scrape mode from the dropdown (e.g. searchPosts)
3. Enter your search query (e.g. #AI or climate change) or one or more Bluesky handles
4. Set Max items to control how many results to collect
5. Optionally add date filters, a language filter, or a custom feed URI
6. Click Start and find your structured results in the Output tab — downloadable as JSON, CSV, or Excel

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Input

All fields are configured in the Input tab or via JSON.

Field	Required	Description
mode	Yes	One of: searchPosts, authorFeed, postThread, profile, followers, follows, customFeed
searchQuery	For searchPosts	Keyword, phrase, or hashtag — e.g. #AI or "machine learning"
handles	For authorFeed, profile, followers, follows	One or more Bluesky handles, e.g. ["user.bsky.social"]
postUrl	For postThread	Full post URL or AT URI
feedUri	For customFeed	AT URI of the feed generator, e.g. at://did:plc:z72i7hd/app.bsky.feed.generator/whats-hot
maxItems	No	Max items to collect (default: 100, 0 = unlimited; UI maximum: 10,000)
searchSort	No	latest or top (default: latest)
searchSince	No	Start date filter, e.g. 2024-01-01
searchUntil	No	End date filter, e.g. 2024-12-31
searchLang	No	ISO 639-1 language code, e.g. en, de, ja
includeReplies	No	Include replies in author feed (default: false)
includeReposts	No	Include reposts in author feed (default: false)

Example — hashtag search:

{
  "mode": "searchPosts",
  "searchQuery": "#AI",
  "searchSort": "latest",
  "searchLang": "en",
  "maxItems": 500
}

Example — custom feed:

{
  "mode": "customFeed",
  "feedUri": "at://did:plc:z72i7hdynmchkltzmefcsowb/app.bsky.feed.generator/whats-hot",
  "maxItems": 100
}

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Output

Each item is pushed to the default Apify dataset. Download results as JSON, CSV, HTML, or Excel from the Storage tab.

Example post output item:

{
  "postId": "at://did:plc:abc123/app.bsky.feed.post/3kwikpostabcde",
  "url": "https://bsky.app/profile/alice.bsky.social/post/3kwikpostabcde",
  "text": "Really enjoying the discourse around #AI safety this week.",
  "authorHandle": "alice.bsky.social",
  "authorDid": "did:plc:abc123",
  "authorDisplayName": "Alice",
  "authorFollowerCount": 3200,
  "authorFollowingCount": 410,
  "authorPostCount": 812,
  "authorAvatarUrl": "https://cdn.bsky.app/img/avatar/plain/did:plc:abc123/bafkreiabcdef@jpeg",
  "likeCount": 47,
  "repostCount": 12,
  "replyCount": 8,
  "quoteCount": 3,
  "engagementRate": 0.0192,
  "createdAt": "2024-11-15T14:22:30.000Z",
  "indexedAt": "2024-11-15T14:22:31.500Z",
  "lang": ["en"],
  "hasMedia": false,
  "mediaUrls": null,
  "mediaAltTexts": null,
  "externalUrl": null,
  "externalTitle": null,
  "inReplyToUri": null,
  "inReplyToUrl": null,
  "inReplyToHandle": null,
  "isRepost": false,
  "repostOf": null,
  "labels": null,
  "tags": ["AI"],
  "mentionedDids": [],
  "scrapedMode": "authorFeed"
}

Example profile output item (modes: profile, followers, follows):

{
  "did": "did:plc:abc123",
  "handle": "alice.bsky.social",
  "displayName": "Alice",
  "description": "Researcher. Bluesky enthusiast.",
  "followerCount": 3200,
  "followingCount": 410,
  "postCount": 812,
  "avatarUrl": "https://cdn.bsky.app/img/avatar/plain/did:plc:abc123/bafkreiabcdef@jpeg",
  "bannerUrl": null,
  "createdAt": "2023-05-01T10:00:00.000Z",
  "indexedAt": "2024-01-15T08:30:00.000Z",
  "labels": [],
  "scrapedMode": "profile"
}

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Data table

Post fields (modes: searchPosts, authorFeed, postThread, customFeed)

Field	Type	Description
postId	string	Permanent AT URI for the post (e.g. at://did:plc:.../app.bsky.feed.post/...)
url	string	Public bsky.app URL
text	string | null	Full post text
authorHandle	string	Author's Bluesky handle
authorDid	string	Author's decentralized identifier
authorDisplayName	string | null	Author's display name
authorFollowerCount	integer | null	Follower count at scrape time. null in searchPosts mode — the search API returns minimal author objects without stats.
authorFollowingCount	integer | null	Following count. null in searchPosts mode (same reason).
authorPostCount	integer | null	Total post count. null in searchPosts mode (same reason).
authorAvatarUrl	string | null	Avatar image URL. null in searchPosts mode (same reason).
likeCount	integer	Number of likes
repostCount	integer	Number of reposts
replyCount	integer	Number of replies
quoteCount	integer	Number of quote posts
engagementRate	float | null	(likes + reposts + quotes) / authorFollowerCount. Populated in authorFeed mode only; null in other modes.
createdAt	string | null	ISO 8601 creation timestamp
indexedAt	string | null	ISO 8601 timestamp when the post was indexed by Bluesky
lang	string[] | null	Detected language codes
hasMedia	boolean	true if the post contains images or video
mediaUrls	string[] | null	Image or video thumbnail URLs
mediaAltTexts	(string | null)[] | null	Alt text per image in the same order as mediaUrls; individual entries may be null if no alt text was provided
externalUrl	string | null	Embedded link card URL
externalTitle	string | null	Embedded link card title
inReplyToUri	string | null	Parent post AT URI if this is a reply
inReplyToUrl	string | null	Parent post public URL if this is a reply
inReplyToHandle	string | null	Parent post author handle. null in searchPosts mode (parent author not embedded in search results).
isRepost	boolean	true if this item is a repost
repostOf	string | null	AT URI of the original post if isRepost is true; otherwise null
labels	string[] | null	Moderation labels applied to the post
tags	string[]	Hashtags extracted from AT Protocol facets (empty array if none)
mentionedDids	string[]	DIDs of accounts mentioned in the post, extracted from facets (empty array if none)
scrapedMode	string	The Actor mode that produced this item

Profile fields (modes: profile, followers, follows)

Field	Type	Description
did	string	Decentralized identifier of the account
handle	string	Bluesky handle (e.g. user.bsky.social)
displayName	string | null	Account display name
description	string | null	Bio / profile description
followerCount	integer | null	Number of followers
followingCount	integer | null	Number of accounts followed
postCount	integer | null	Total post count
avatarUrl	string | null	Profile picture URL
bannerUrl	string | null	Banner image URL
createdAt	string | null	Account creation timestamp
indexedAt	string | null	Timestamp when indexed by Bluesky
labels	string[] | null	Moderation labels applied to the account
scrapedMode	string	The Actor mode that produced this item

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Pricing / Cost estimation

This Actor uses Apify's pay-per-event pricing. Typical costs:

• Small run (100 posts): ~$0.01–$0.05
• Medium run (1,000 posts): ~$0.10–$0.30
• Large run (10,000 posts): ~$1.00–$2.00

New Apify accounts receive a free tier with monthly compute units included. Most small research tasks run entirely for free.

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Use with Claude Desktop / Cursor / VS Code (via Apify MCP)

Query Bluesky interactively from Claude Desktop without writing any code — ideal for ad-hoc research and conversational analysis. This Actor is available as an MCP tool through Apify's hosted MCP server, so everything runs in the cloud. No local setup required.

What you need

• An Apify account (free tier available)
• Your Apify API token (found under Settings → Integrations)

Setup (one-time)

Add the following to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@apify/actors-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "APIFY_TOKEN": "your_apify_api_token_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Config file location:

• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Restart Claude Desktop — the Bluesky Scraper will appear as an available tool in the chat (hammer icon). When prompting Claude, mention the Actor by name so it picks the right tool.

Example prompts

"Search for the 20 most recent posts about #climatepolicy in English and summarize the main arguments."

"Show me the last 10 posts from @bsky.app and tell me what topics they cover."

"Fetch the full reply thread for this post: https://bsky.app/profile/user.bsky.social/post/3abc123"

"Find the top 50 followers of @atproto.com and list their display names and follower counts."

"Scrape the What's Hot feed and tell me the top 5 trending topics right now."

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Tips and advanced options

• Date range filtering (searchSince / searchUntil) narrows search results significantly and reduces unnecessary API calls for historical research.
• Language filtering (searchLang) is especially useful for multilingual topics like #AI — use en for English-only results.
• Author feed mode with includeReplies: false (default) produces cleaner top-level post datasets without conversation noise.
• Thread mode is ideal for journalists and researchers who need the full reply context for a specific post.
• Engagement rate (engagementRate) is only populated in authorFeed mode because follower count requires a separate profile lookup — this is done once per handle and cached for the entire run.
• Custom feed URIs can be found in the Bluesky app: open any feed, tap the three-dot menu, and copy the link. The AT URI appears in the share URL.
• Set maxItems: 0 for unlimited scraping — use with care on large accounts or popular hashtags.

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FAQ, disclaimers, and support

Is scraping Bluesky legal? This Actor accesses only the public AT Protocol API — the same API used by official Bluesky clients. All data collected is publicly available. You remain responsible for complying with Bluesky's Terms of Service and applicable data protection regulations (GDPR, CCPA, etc.) in your jurisdiction.

Can I scrape private accounts or DMs? No. This Actor only accesses public data via the public AppView API. Private accounts and direct messages are not accessible.

Why are some fields null in searchPosts mode? Bluesky's search API returns minimal author objects that do not include follower/following/post counts or avatar URLs. Fields like authorFollowerCount, authorFollowingCount, authorPostCount, and authorAvatarUrl are null for search results. Use authorFeed mode if you need full author stats.

What rate limits apply? The AT Protocol AppView API has generous public rate limits. The Actor handles rate-limit responses (HTTP 429) automatically by honoring the Retry-After header — no run failures due to throttling.

I need a custom feature or bulk data pipeline. Open an issue on the Issues tab or contact us via the Apify platform — custom solutions are available.

Known limitations

• Search result counts may be approximate; the AT Protocol API does not guarantee exact pagination totals
• The searchUntil / searchSince date parameters may occasionally return slightly out-of-range results — this is known AT Protocol behavior
• Video content is supported (thumbnail URL extracted) but full video file download is not included