Mastodon & Bluesky Scraper (Fediverse)

Scrape profiles, posts and hashtag timelines from Mastodon and Bluesky and get them back in one normalized schema, so you can analyse both networks in the same spreadsheet without reconciling two different JSON shapes.

It runs on the platforms' official public APIs — docs.joinmastodon.org and Bluesky's public AppView. No login, no cookies, no password. That also means it does not break the way scrapers built on private endpoints do.

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Quick start

1. Click Start. The default input already works — no configuration needed.
2. Wait about a minute.
3. Download your data as JSON, CSV, Excel or feed it to the API.

The default run collects 20 posts each from two Mastodon accounts, the #opensource hashtag, and Bluesky's official account.

To scrape your own targets, paste them into Targets, one per line:

@Gargron@mastodon.social
#opensource@mastodon.social
https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon
bsky.app
alice.bsky.social
https://bsky.app/profile/bsky.app/post/3l6oveex3ii2l

The platform is detected per line, so you can mix both networks in one run.

Supported target formats

You have	Write it as	Gets you
A Mastodon account	@user@instance or user@instance	Profile + their posts
A Mastodon profile URL	https://mastodon.social/@Gargron	Profile + their posts
A Mastodon hashtag	#opensource@mastodon.social	Posts using that tag
A Mastodon post	https://mastodon.social/@user/117265110451542347	That single post
A Bluesky handle	bsky.app, alice.bsky.social	Profile + their posts
A Bluesky DID	did:plc:z72i7hdynmk6r22z27h6tvur	Profile + their posts
A Bluesky post	https://bsky.app/profile/bsky.app/post/3l6o… or an at:// URI	That single post
Bluesky people search	bsky:actors:climate science	Matching profiles

Any Mastodon instance works — fosstodon.org, hachyderm.io, your own server. Not just mastodon.social.

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Sample output

Every row has the same keys on both platforms. A Mastodon post:

{
  "platform": "mastodon",
  "type": "post",
  "id": "117265110451542347",
  "url": "https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/117265110451542347",
  "author": {
    "handle": "@Gargron@mastodon.social",
    "displayName": "Eugen Rochko",
    "url": "https://mastodon.social/@Gargron",
    "followers": 382512,
    "following": 740,
    "postsCount": 82249,
    "createdAt": "2016-03-16T00:00:00.000Z",
    "bio": "Executive Strategy & Product Advisor, Founder of @Mastodon.",
    "avatar": "https://files.mastodon.social/accounts/avatars/000/000/001/original/6b2384b33799a0dd.png"
  },
  "text": "Plain text, with the HTML stripped and entities decoded.",
  "createdAt": "2026-09-13T18:19:44.787Z",
  "language": "en",
  "replies": 1,
  "reposts": 0,
  "likes": 12,
  "media": [
    { "url": "https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/…/original/x.png", "type": "image", "alt": "Alt text as written by the poster" }
  ],
  "hashtags": ["opensource", "selfhosted"],
  "mentions": ["@Mastodon@mastodon.social"],
  "inReplyTo": "117265014180109770",
  "isRepost": false,
  "target": "@Gargron@mastodon.social",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-14T07:04:11.201Z"
}

And a Bluesky post — same keys, different values:

{
  "platform": "bluesky",
  "type": "post",
  "id": "at://did:plc:z72i7hdynmk6r22z27h6tvur/app.bsky.feed.post/3mv6jm4auic2g",
  "url": "https://bsky.app/profile/bsky.app/post/3mv6jm4auic2g",
  "author": { "handle": "@bsky.app", "displayName": "Bluesky", "followers": 34893929, "…": "…" },
  "text": "Thanks for being with us here on Bluesky.",
  "createdAt": "2026-09-10T16:59:29.774Z",
  "language": "en",
  "replies": 8,
  "reposts": 16,
  "likes": 317,
  "media": [{ "url": "https://video.bsky.app/watch/…/playlist.m3u8", "type": "video", "alt": null }],
  "hashtags": [],
  "mentions": ["@lightlyspicy.bsky.social"],
  "inReplyTo": "at://did:plc:2buz4gf5sew3rdwzbxsvcd4s/app.bsky.feed.post/3mv6ghymh3s27",
  "isRepost": false,
  "target": "bsky.app",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-14T07:04:12.880Z"
}

Field reference

Field	Notes
platform	mastodon or bluesky — the only column you ever need to branch on
type	profile or post
id	Status id (Mastodon) or at:// URI (Bluesky). Unique per row
text	Plain text. Mastodon HTML is stripped and entities decoded
media	type is image, video, gifv, audio or external (a link card). alt is the poster's own alt text, or null
mentions	Canonical handles, e.g. @user@instance or @alice.bsky.social
isRepost	true when the row reached the feed as a boost/repost. The row is credited to the original author
inReplyTo	Parent post id/URI, or null
target	The input line that produced this row, for tracing
raw	The untouched API object. Only present when Include raw API response is on

Fields that do not apply to a row are null, never missing — a profile row still has a likes key.

Modes

Mode	Account target	Hashtag target	Single post target
both (default)	Profile row + post rows	Post rows	The post row
profiles	Profile row	Profiles of the accounts posting under the tag	The author's profile
posts	Post rows	Post rows	The post row

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Use cases

Brand and community monitoring. Track a hashtag across Mastodon instances and watch the accounts driving it. Run it on a schedule and diff the results to see what is new.

Research datasets. The fediverse is one of the few large social networks whose public data is available through a documented, sanctioned API. Normalized output means a Mastodon corpus and a Bluesky corpus load into the same table.

Migration from X/Twitter. Following an audience that moved to Mastodon and Bluesky? Pull both, in one run, in one schema, instead of maintaining two integrations.

Competitive intelligence. Follower counts, post cadence and engagement for any set of public accounts on either network.

Feeding an LLM or a search index. text is already plain text, so there is no HTML to strip downstream.

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Pricing

Pay per event. You pay for results, not for runtime.

Event	Price
Profile scraped	$0.002
Post scraped	$0.001

Worked example — monitoring 50 Mastodon accounts, 100 posts each:

Item	Count	Unit	Cost
Profiles	50	$0.002	$0.10
Posts	5,000	$0.001	$5.00
Total			$5.10

Comparable social scrapers charge $0.005–$0.01 per item, which would put the same 5,050 items at $25–$50. This Actor is cheaper because it reads an official API instead of paying for proxies and headless browsers.

A cheaper run: the default input (4 targets × 20 posts) returns about 65 rows — 3 profiles and 62 posts — for roughly $0.07, in about 10 seconds.

Ways to spend less:

• Lower Max posts per target — pagination stops as soon as the limit is hit.
• Set Only posts since — pagination stops as soon as the feed passes the date.
• Use posts mode if you do not need profile rows.

Duplicates are never billed twice: a post reached through two different targets is stored and charged once.

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Limits and FAQ

Do I need a Mastodon or Bluesky account? No, and the Actor will never ask for one. Every endpoint it uses serves anonymous requests.

Is Bluesky hashtag or keyword search supported? No — and this is the one real gap, so it is worth stating plainly. Bluesky refuses unauthenticated app.bsky.feed.searchPosts requests from datacenter IP addresses. Supporting it would mean asking you for a Bluesky app password, which this Actor does not do. Bluesky people search (bsky:actors:…), profiles, author feeds and individual posts all work fine. For hashtag monitoring, use a Mastodon hashtag target.

Which Mastodon instances work? Any instance running a default configuration. The Actor uses only the public REST endpoints (/api/v1/accounts/lookup, /api/v1/accounts/:id/statuses, /api/v1/timelines/tag/:tag, /api/v1/statuses/:id). An instance whose admin has restricted public access, or one in authorized-fetch mode, will return an error for that target — the rest of the run continues.

What about cross-instance search by URL? Resolving an arbitrary remote post URL requires Mastodon's /api/v2/search?resolve=true, which needs a token. Instead, point the Actor at the post's own instance URL (e.g. https://fosstodon.org/@user/12345) and it reads it directly, no auth needed.

How fast is it? Requests to each server are paced to stay well inside published limits — Mastodon allows 300 requests per 5 minutes per IP, and the Actor also reads each server's rate-limit headers and slows down further when a budget runs low. Expect roughly 40 posts per request on Mastodon and up to 100 on Bluesky.

What happens if one target fails? That target is recorded as a failure and the run continues. A summary — counts, duplicates skipped, and every failure with its reason — is written to the key-value store as RUN_SUMMARY. The run only fails outright if nothing could be collected.

Are replies and boosts included? Not by default. Turn on Include replies and Include boosts / reposts if you want them. Boosted rows carry isRepost: true and are credited to the original author.

Is private or follower-only content included? No. Only public posts are visible to an anonymous client, which is all this Actor ever sees.

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Legal

This Actor reads publicly available data through the official, documented APIs of each platform. You are responsible for how you use the output, including compliance with GDPR and other data-protection law where personal data is involved. It does not collect private posts, follower-only posts, direct messages, email addresses or any login-gated data.