LinkedIn People Scraper

Scrape LinkedIn people profiles by search query with advanced filters. Extracts structured profile data including name, headline, location, current role, experience, education, and skills. In Full Profile with Email mode, the actor also extracts email addresses directly from LinkedIn's Contact Info section and by crawling external websites linked on each profile — no third-party enrichment API required.

Features

• 🔍 Fuzzy people search with keyword queries
• 🔒 Authenticated scraping via your LinkedIn session cookie (li_at)
• 📧 Email extraction from LinkedIn Contact Info and linked external websites
• 🎯 14 filter types: location, company, school, job title, seniority, headcount, and more
• 📄 Pagination control: set start page and number of pages to scrape
• 💾 Dataset output with configurable views + HTML snapshots in key-value store
• 📋 Run metadata saved for audit and debugging

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How to get your LinkedIn session cookie

This actor requires a valid LinkedIn session cookie (li_at) to access profile data. LinkedIn does not expose contact info or full profiles to unauthenticated visitors.

Steps (Chrome):

1. Open linkedin.com and log in to your account
2. Press F12 to open DevTools
3. Click the Application tab
4. In the left sidebar, expand Cookies and click https://www.linkedin.com
5. Find the cookie named li_at in the list
6. Click it and copy the full Value (it's a long string)
7. Paste it into the "LinkedIn Session Cookie (li_at)" input field

Firefox: Same steps, but DevTools is under Storage → Cookies.

Security note: Your cookie value is marked as isSecret in this actor — it is never logged to the console or saved to the dataset output. Treat your li_at cookie like a password. Do not share it.

Cookie expiry: LinkedIn session cookies typically last 1 year, but LinkedIn can invalidate them earlier if suspicious activity is detected. If the actor returns a "cookie expired" error, simply repeat the steps above to get a fresh cookie value.

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Scraper Modes

Full Profile

Scrapes authenticated profile data for each person:

• Full name, headline, location
• About / summary text
• Current job title and company
• Full work experience history
• Education history
• Skills list
• Languages
• Follower count
• Profile URL

Full Profile with Email

Everything in Full Profile, plus:

• LinkedIn Contact Email — extracted directly from the Contact Info modal (only visible when logged in)
• External Website URLs — collected from the Contact Info section
• Emails from Websites — each linked website is crawled (homepage + contact/about pages) and emails are extracted from the HTML
• Best Email — the highest-confidence email selected from all sources, scored by name match and domain relevance

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Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
linkedInSessionCookie	string	✅	Your li_at cookie value from LinkedIn
scraperMode	select	✅	fullProfile or fullProfileWithEmail
searchQuery	string	✅	Keyword or name query (e.g. "Marketing Manager", "John Doe")
maxProfiles	integer		Max profiles to collect. Default: 50
startPage	integer		Page to start from. Default: 1
numberOfPages	integer		Pages to scrape. Default: 5 (≈ 50 profiles)
websiteCrawlDepth	integer		Depth to crawl external websites for emails (1–3). Default: 2
locationFilter	array		Filter by location (e.g. "United States", "Nairobi")
currentCompanyFilter	array		Filter by current employer name
pastCompanyFilter	array		Filter by past employer name
schoolFilter	array		Filter by educational institution
currentJobTitleFilter	array		Filter by current job title keywords
pastJobTitleFilter	array		Filter by past job titles
yearsOfExperienceFilter	select		Filter by total years of experience
yearsAtCurrentCompanyFilter	select		Filter by tenure at current company
seniorityFilter	array		Filter by seniority level (Entry, Senior, Director, CXO, etc.)
functionFilter	array		Filter by job function / department
firstNamesFilter	array		Filter by first name
lastNamesFilter	array		Filter by surname
profileLanguagesFilter	array		Filter by profile language
companyHeadcountFilter	array		Filter by company size
companyHQLocationsFilter	array		Filter by company HQ location
proxyConfiguration	proxy		Proxy settings. Residential proxies strongly recommended

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Output

Dataset — Scraped Profiles

Each item in the dataset contains:

{
  "profileUrl": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe/",
  "fullName": "Jane Doe",
  "firstName": "Jane",
  "lastName": "Doe",
  "headline": "Head of Marketing at Acme Corp",
  "location": "San Francisco, California",
  "about": "Passionate marketer with 10+ years in B2B SaaS...",
  "currentJobTitle": "Head of Marketing",
  "currentCompany": "Acme Corp",
  "experience": [
    { "title": "Head of Marketing", "company": "Acme Corp", "duration": "Jan 2021 – Present", "description": null },
    { "title": "Marketing Manager", "company": "Beta Inc", "duration": "2018 – 2020", "description": null }
  ],
  "education": [
    { "school": "University of California, Berkeley", "degree": "B.A. Communications", "dates": "2012 – 2016" }
  ],
  "skills": ["B2B Marketing", "Demand Generation", "HubSpot", "Content Strategy"],
  "languages": [{ "language": "English", "proficiency": "Native or bilingual proficiency" }],
  "connectionDegree": "2nd",
  "followerCount": "500+",
  "websiteUrls": ["https://janedoe.com"],
  "contactEmail": "jane@janedoe.com",
  "emailsFromWebsites": ["jane@janedoe.com", "hello@janedoe.com"],
  "bestEmail": "jane@janedoe.com",
  "scrapedAt": "2025-01-15T09:23:41.000Z"
}

Fields contactEmail, emailsFromWebsites, and bestEmail are only populated in Full Profile with Email mode.

Key-Value Store

Key	Contents
snapshot-page-001	Raw HTML of search results page 1
snapshot-page-002	Raw HTML of search results page 2
profile-<username>	Raw HTML of each visited profile page
run-metadata	JSON summary of the run (query, filters, counts, timing)

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Proxy recommendations

LinkedIn is one of the most aggressively protected websites to scrape. Residential proxies are strongly recommended and are set as the default. Datacenter proxies are almost always blocked within a few requests.

On the Apify platform, use the built-in RESIDENTIAL proxy group. When running locally, either disable proxy (useApifyProxy: false) for development testing, or configure a residential proxy provider.

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Important notes

• Terms of Service: LinkedIn's Terms of Service prohibit automated scraping. Use this actor only for lawful purposes and in compliance with applicable laws (GDPR, CCPA, etc.). Do not use scraped data for spam or unsolicited contact.
• Rate limits: The actor runs with maxConcurrency: 1 and randomised delays between requests to mimic human behaviour. Aggressive settings will result in blocks.
• Profile availability: Some profiles may be private, deleted, or restricted to 1st-degree connections. These will be partially populated or skipped.
• Email coverage: Not all LinkedIn users list their email in Contact Info or link to external websites. Email extraction coverage varies by audience — professional communities and freelancers tend to have higher coverage than corporate employees.

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Local development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Set your cookie in storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json
# Then run locally:
apify run

# Results appear in:
# storage/datasets/default/      ← scraped profiles
# storage/key_value_stores/default/  ← snapshots and metadata

See the implementation plan document for full local development and testing instructions.