X (Twitter) People Search Scraper

Find public X (Twitter) accounts with X's native People search and export clean, structured profile data. Enter one or more keyword phrases, choose how many profiles you need, and receive an analysis-ready Dataset containing identity, biography, audience, activity, verification, professional, and profile-link fields.

This Actor searches for people and organizations—not posts. It is useful when you want to discover accounts around a profession, company, research area, community, location, name, or niche without manually paging through X search results.

What you can do

• Search X users with phrases such as AI researcher, climate journalist, fintech Singapore, or a person's name.
• Run several queries in one Actor run.
• Export profile names, handles, bios, locations, websites, avatars, and banners.
• Compare followers, following, likes, posts, and media-post counts.
• Capture verified, blue-verified, protected, sensitive-content, and professional-profile signals.
• Receive Grok-translated bios when X supplies a translation.
• Download results as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS, or access them through the Apify API.

Input

Field	Type	Description	Default
searchQueries	string array	Enter one keyword or phrase per line. Every query runs independently and results follow X's People-search ranking. Post-search operators are not supported.	AI researcher
maxUsersPerQuery	integer	Maximum unique profiles saved for each individual query. 20 normally requests one result page; use a larger number for pagination or 0 for all pages made available by X. The limit applies separately to every query.	20

Example input:

{
  "searchQueries": [
    "AI researcher",
    "climate journalist London"
  ],
  "maxUsersPerQuery": 20
}

Results follow X's own People-search ranking. The query is passed to X as entered, but operators intended for post search—such as since:, until:, min_faves:, and filter:media—are not part of this Actor's supported behavior.

Duplicates are removed by user ID within each query. If the same account matches two different queries, it can appear once for each query so the search_query attribution remains intact.

Output

Each Dataset item is one flattened public profile. There is no nested raw user object.

Group	Fields
Result state	status, message
Search and identity	search_query, user_id, screen_name, profile_url, name
Biography	description, description_entities, profile_description_language
Grok bio translation	grok_translation_available, grok_translated_bio, grok_source_language, grok_destination_language
Profile details	location, created_at, website_url, profile_image_url, profile_banner_url
Audience and activity	followers_count, friends_count, favourites_count, tweets_count, media_count
Verification and privacy	verified, verified_type, is_blue_verified, protected, possibly_sensitive, has_graduated_access
Professional and pinned content	professional_type, pinned_tweet_ids

Representative output:

{
  "status": "success",
  "search_query": "AI researcher",
  "user_id": "891077171673931776",
  "screen_name": "berkeley_ai",
  "profile_url": "https://x.com/berkeley_ai",
  "name": "Berkeley AI Research",
  "description": "We're graduate students, postdocs, faculty and scientists at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence research.",
  "description_entities": {
    "description": {},
    "url": {
      "urls": [
        {
          "display_url": "bair.berkeley.edu",
          "expanded_url": "http://bair.berkeley.edu/",
          "indices": [0, 23],
          "url": "https://t.co/h9tAyYG2Q0"
        }
      ]
    }
  },
  "profile_description_language": "en",
  "grok_translation_available": false,
  "grok_translated_bio": "",
  "grok_source_language": "",
  "grok_destination_language": "",
  "location": "Berkeley, CA",
  "created_at": "Fri Jul 28 23:25:27 +0000 2017",
  "followers_count": 288339,
  "friends_count": 472,
  "favourites_count": 663,
  "tweets_count": 1588,
  "media_count": 42,
  "verified": false,
  "verified_type": "",
  "is_blue_verified": true,
  "protected": false,
  "possibly_sensitive": false,
  "has_graduated_access": true,
  "professional_type": "",
  "pinned_tweet_ids": [],
  "website_url": "http://bair.berkeley.edu/",
  "profile_image_url": "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/891079469594587138/c_bnAh4o_normal.jpg",
  "profile_banner_url": "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_banners/891077171673931776/1501285360"
}

Profile data and counts change over time. Empty strings or arrays mean X did not provide that field for the returned profile. A Grok translation is included only when it is available in X's response.

No results

When X returns no People matches for a valid query, the Actor completes successfully and writes one uncharged status record instead of leaving the Dataset empty:

{
  "status": "no_results",
  "search_query": "example keyword",
  "message": "No X People results were found for this search query."
}

For runs with multiple queries, the Actor writes a separate no_results record for each query with no matches and continues processing the remaining queries. Successful profile records use status: "success".

Run from the Apify Console

1. Open the Actor and select Try for free.
2. Add one or more People search queries.
3. Set the maximum profiles per query.
4. Click Start.
5. Open the Dataset to preview, filter, download, or access the results through the API.

Run with the Apify API

cURL

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/arjun_code~x-twitter-people-search-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "searchQueries": ["AI researcher"],
    "maxUsersPerQuery": 20
  }'

The run response contains defaultDatasetId. Use it to retrieve the result items from the Dataset API.

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("arjun_code/x-twitter-people-search-scraper").call(
    run_input={
        "searchQueries": ["AI researcher"],
        "maxUsersPerQuery": 20,
    }
)

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('arjun_code/x-twitter-people-search-scraper').call({
    searchQueries: ['AI researcher'],
    maxUsersPerQuery: 20,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Common use cases

• Discover researchers, creators, journalists, founders, recruiters, or subject-matter experts.
• Build prospect and partnership lists from public profile data.
• Find organizations and communities in a specific market or location.
• Compare audience and activity signals before outreach or research.
• Create public-profile datasets for enrichment, monitoring, or analysis workflows.

Try the ready-made Find AI Researchers on X (Twitter) example, or enter your own search phrases in the Actor input.

Continue your X research workflow

Goal	Actor
Discover public accounts by keyword, profession, niche, or location	X (Twitter) People Search Scraper
Export followers or accounts followed by one or more profiles	X Followers & Following Scraper — No Login
Inspect account origin, signup source, and username-change history	X Twitter Account Origin Intelligence

A typical workflow is: discover relevant accounts, export their public audiences, then inspect origin signals for selected profiles.

Pricing

This Actor is designed for pay per event pricing. The chargeable event is search-user-result, emitted once for each profile written to the Dataset. no_results status records are not charged as search results. The current event price is shown in the Actor's Pricing tab. Set maxUsersPerQuery to control the maximum number of billable profiles requested for each query. Apify platform usage can also apply according to your plan.

Proxy, credentials, and privacy

The Actor uses Apify Proxy by default. X session credentials are managed privately by the Actor developer and are not requested through public input or written to the Dataset. Only public profile information returned by X People search is exported. Viewer-specific relationship fields—such as whether the scraping account follows, blocks, mutes, or can message a profile—are intentionally excluded.

For temporary network failures and HTTP 401, 403, 404, 429, or 5xx responses, the Actor retries up to two times. Each retry switches to the next available credential and a new Apify Proxy session, then reloads X transaction data before repeating the search request.

Limitations

• This Actor returns People results only; it does not search posts or return tweet content.
• Search order and result availability are controlled by X and can change between runs.
• Protected accounts may expose fewer public fields.
• Some optional fields, including Grok bio translations, may be unavailable.
• X can change its web responses or apply temporary rate limits, which may affect a run.
• maxUsersPerQuery: 0 follows available pages but cannot guarantee every account on X matching a phrase.

Use the data responsibly and comply with applicable laws, privacy requirements, X's terms, and Apify's terms. This independent Actor is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by X Corp.

Support

If a run fails or the output changes, open an issue on the Actor page and include the Apify run ID, input, and expected behavior. Do not include passwords, cookies, tokens, or other secrets.