📘 Facebook Profile Scraper | $4/1K | No Login, Real-Time, Multi-Strategy

Direct Facebook scraping for public profiles and pages — name, bio, followers, likes, public emails + phones, websites, verification badge, page category, and a 0-100 activity score. Multi-strategy fallback (mbasic, mobile, embed, OG-meta) survives Facebook's 2026 anti-bot updates. Residential proxy. No login.

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✨ What's new in v2.0 (May 2026)

🔧 Direct fetch (no Thunderbit) — the previous Thunderbit-based pipeline was blocked by Facebook in early 2026. v2.0 fetches Facebook directly through 5 fallback strategies (mbasic, mobile, desktop, Googlebot, embed iframe) so a block on one route is automatically routed around.

🛡️ Residential proxy by default — Facebook heavily rate-limits datacenter IPs. v2.0 uses Apify residential proxy (country-pinnable) for much higher success rates.

👥 Page vs profile detection — different layouts get different extraction logic. profileType is one of page / profile / group / unknown.

✅ Verification badge detection — surface the blue tick / verified-page status as a boolean.

📊 Activity score (0-100) — composite signal combining followers + verification + has-website + has-email + has-phone + page-vs-profile. Tier classifier: small / growing / established / major.

📧 Email + phone scraping — pulls public emails and phones from page text, JSON-LD blocks, and Open Graph meta. Filtered through 30+ Facebook CDN domain blacklist.

🌐 Website unwrapping — Facebook wraps external links in l.facebook.com/l.php?u=…. v2.0 unwraps them so you get the page's real website URL.

🎯 Best-contact-channel + cross-platform search URLs — one field that says "email this" or "DM this Facebook page", plus 1-click search links for Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter/X, YouTube and Google.

🌍 Locale detection — og:locale exposes the page's primary language for international segmentation.

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Why direct scraping won

Approach	Status (May 2026)	Why
Thunderbit	❌ Blocked	Facebook tightened anti-bot in early 2026
Browser automation (Playwright)	⚠️ Slow + expensive	Takes 30-60s per profile, 10× cost
Direct mbasic + residential proxy ✅	✅ Working	mbasic.facebook.com still serves no-JS HTML for accessibility
Open Graph meta tags fallback ✅	✅ Always works	OG tags are always served for link-preview crawlers

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What you get for $0.004 per profile

Core fields (always returned when scrape succeeds)

• username, fullName, bio, category, locale
• profileUrl, avatarUrl
• profileType — page / profile / group / unknown
• verified — boolean for blue badge

Counts

• followerCount — primary follower number
• likeCount — page likes (different from followers on pages)

Contact data

• emails[], primaryEmail — public emails scraped from page
• phones[], primaryPhone — public phones scraped
• websites[], primaryWebsite — external sites unwrapped from l.facebook.com/l.php?u=…
• bestContact: {channel, value, label} — single highest-confidence outreach path

Lead intelligence (NEW)

• activityScore (0-100) — composite quality signal
• activityScoreReasons[] — every contributing signal in plain English
• activityTier — small / growing / established / major

Cross-platform helpers

• socialSearchUrls{} — 1-click links to find this person/page on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, Google

Diagnostics

• fetchStrategy — which Facebook endpoint succeeded (mbasic / mobile / desktop / googlebot / embed)
• fetchStatus — HTTP status of the successful fetch

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Input

{
  "profileUrls": [
    "https://www.facebook.com/NASA",
    "https://www.facebook.com/cocacola",
    "https://www.facebook.com/Microsoft"
  ],
  "maxConcurrency": 3,
  "useResidentialProxy": true,
  "proxyCountry": "US"
}

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
profileUrls	array	required	Public FB profile or page URLs (/username/ or /profile.php?id=...)
maxConcurrency	int	3	Parallel scrapes (1-10) — keep low to avoid rate limits
timeout	int	45	Seconds to wait per profile
useResidentialProxy	bool	true	Use Apify residential proxy (strongly recommended)
proxyCountry	str	"US"	ISO country code for residential proxy

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Sample output (NASA page)

{
  "success": true,
  "inputUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/NASA",
  "profileType": "page",
  "fetchStrategy": "mbasic",
  "fetchStatus": 200,

  "username": "NASA",
  "fullName": "NASA",
  "bio": "Explore the universe and discover our home planet.",
  "category": "Government organization",
  "locale": "en_us",
  "verified": true,

  "profileUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/NASA",
  "avatarUrl": "https://scontent.fbcdn.net/...",

  "followerCount": 26000000,
  "likeCount": 25800000,

  "websites": ["https://www.nasa.gov/"],
  "primaryWebsite": "https://www.nasa.gov/",
  "emails": ["public-inquiries@hq.nasa.gov"],
  "primaryEmail": "public-inquiries@hq.nasa.gov",
  "phones": [],
  "primaryPhone": null,

  "bestContact": {
    "channel": "email",
    "value": "public-inquiries@hq.nasa.gov",
    "label": "public email from page"
  },

  "socialSearchUrls": {
    "instagram": "https://www.google.com/search?q=%22NASA%22+site%3Ainstagram.com",
    "linkedin":  "https://www.google.com/search?q=%22NASA%22+site%3Alinkedin.com",
    "tiktok":    "https://www.google.com/search?q=%22NASA%22+site%3Atiktok.com",
    "twitter":   "https://www.google.com/search?q=%22NASA%22+site%3Ax.com+OR+site%3Atwitter.com",
    "youtube":   "https://www.google.com/search?q=%22NASA%22+site%3Ayoutube.com",
    "googleSearch": "https://www.google.com/search?q=%22NASA%22"
  },

  "activityScore": 85,
  "activityTier": "major",
  "activityScoreReasons": [
    "verified page (blue badge)",
    "business page (extracts more data)",
    "26,000,000 followers — major brand",
    "has external website",
    "has public email"
  ]
}

Aggregate summary record (always last)

{
  "_summary": true,
  "totalScraped": 8,
  "totalFailed": 0,
  "verifiedCount": 5,
  "withEmailCount": 6,
  "withPhoneCount": 2,
  "withWebsiteCount": 7,
  "avgActivityScore": 67.5,
  "activityTierBreakdown": {"small": 0, "growing": 2, "established": 3, "major": 3}
}

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Use cases

🏢 B2B Lead Generation

Pull a list of competitor pages, filter to those with primaryEmail populated, sort by activityScore. Hand to your SDR team.

📊 Brand Monitoring

Daily snapshot of follower counts, verification status, and category for a watchlist of brands.

🎯 Influencer Discovery

Filter pages by activityTier == "growing" (10K-100K followers) — these are micro-influencers with engaged audiences but reasonable rates.

🔗 CRM Enrichment

Already have FB URLs in your CRM? Run this actor and merge bestContact, primaryEmail, primaryWebsite, verified back into your records.

🌍 International Expansion Research

Use locale to find pages in target markets. Cross-reference socialSearchUrls to find their other-platform presence.

📰 Media Watchlist

Scrape news outlets and government pages periodically. Track follower growth and verification status changes.

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How activity score works

Signal	Points
Verified blue badge	+25
Is business page (not personal)	+5
Followers ≥ 1M	+20
Followers 100K-999K	+15
Followers 10K-99K	+10
Followers 1K-9K	+5
Has external website	+10
Has public email	+10
Has public phone	+5
Has bio	+5
Has avatar	+3

Score is clamped 0-100. Tiers: small (<30), growing (30-49), established (50-69), major (70+).

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How fetch fallback works

Each profile cycles through 5 endpoints until one returns parseable HTML:

1. mbasic.facebook.com — no-JS accessibility version, lightest HTML, easiest to parse
2. m.facebook.com — modern mobile site
3. www.facebook.com — desktop, heaviest but always serves Open Graph meta
4. Googlebot UA — sometimes opens content blocked from regular browsers
5. embed iframe (/plugins/page.php?href=…) — designed to be embedded, never login-walled

The first endpoint that returns >5 KB of HTML and isn't a login wall wins. mbasic and mobile typically return immediately — desktop and embed are fallbacks.

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Pricing

Pay per successful profile:

Volume	Cost
1 profile	$0.004
100 profiles	$0.40
1,000 profiles	$4.00
10,000 profiles	$40.00

Free Apify tier (~$5/month) covers ~1,250 profiles per month for free.

You only pay for successful scrapes. If Facebook blocks all 5 strategies for a URL, that record is marked success: false and you're not charged for it.

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FAQ

Q: Why was the previous version broken? A: Thunderbit (the third-party scraper used in v1) was blocked by Facebook in early 2026. v2.0 fetches Facebook directly through public HTML endpoints + residential proxy, sidestepping the Thunderbit ban.

Q: How accurate is the verification detection? A: When verified: true, the badge has been confirmed via either JSON-LD identifier field or the verification_badge HTML token near the <title>. False negatives possible (some old pages don't expose the badge in HTML even when verified on the live site).

Q: Will this work on personal profiles? A: Yes for public profiles. Personal profiles return less data than pages — typically just name, bio, avatar, and (sometimes) follower count. No category or page email.

Q: Will it scrape private profiles or logged-in features? A: No — only data Facebook serves to logged-out browsers. Friends lists, post content, etc. are not exposed.

Q: How accurate is the email scraping? A: When the page lists a public email in its About section or contact info, the actor finds it. When the page hides emails behind a "Contact Us" button or login prompt, no email is returned. Email extraction also filters out 30+ Facebook CDN domains and image-asset filenames.

Q: What about phone numbers? A: Same as emails — pages that publish them get them extracted. Phone regex requires 10-15 digits.

Q: Speed? A: Typically 5-15 seconds per profile. The actor returns early as soon as mbasic or mobile yields a good response, falling through to slower endpoints only if needed.

Q: Can I use my own proxy? A: Currently the actor uses Apify residential proxy. Custom proxy support is on the roadmap.

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Disclaimer

This Actor scrapes only publicly accessible data Facebook serves to logged-out users. Use responsibly and respect Facebook's Terms of Service for your jurisdiction. Do not use scraped data for spam, harassment, or any unlawful purpose.