Scrape Bluesky Posts — Search, Author Feed & Threads

Extract posts from Bluesky Social with full engagement metrics, images, and author data. Three scraping modes in one actor: keyword search, author feed, and full thread extraction. Built on the official AT Protocol API — no browser automation, no unofficial tricks, no fragile DOM scraping.

Works without authentication for author feeds and threads. Keyword search requires a free Bluesky App Password.

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What data you get

Each post returns a clean JSON record:

{
  "uri": "at://did:plc:abc123/app.bsky.feed.post/3lhxxxxxxxxx",
  "cid": "bafyreiabc123",
  "url": "https://bsky.app/profile/user.bsky.social/post/3lhxxxxxxxxx",
  "text": "Interesting thread on B2B SaaS pricing — companies that charge per seat are leaving money on the table 🧵",
  "language": "en",
  "authorDid": "did:plc:abc123",
  "authorHandle": "user.bsky.social",
  "authorDisplayName": "User Name",
  "authorAvatar": "https://cdn.bsky.app/img/avatar/...",
  "createdAt": "2025-11-15T10:30:00.000Z",
  "indexedAt": "2025-11-15T10:30:12.000Z",
  "likeCount": 142,
  "repostCount": 28,
  "replyCount": 19,
  "quoteCount": 6,
  "images": [
    {
      "thumb": "https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/...",
      "fullsize": "https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/...",
      "alt": "Chart showing revenue vs seat count"
    }
  ],
  "externalEmbed": {
    "uri": "https://example.com/article",
    "title": "The Hidden Cost of Per-Seat Pricing",
    "description": "Why usage-based pricing outperforms seat pricing in B2B SaaS",
    "thumb": "https://..."
  },
  "quotedPostUri": null,
  "labels": [],
  "isReply": false,
  "replyToUri": null,
  "rootPostUri": null,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-01-15T14:22:00.000Z"
}

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Scraping modes

1. Search posts (searchPosts)

Search Bluesky for any keyword, hashtag, or phrase. Returns posts in order of newest first or most-engaged first.

Requires a free Bluesky App Password — Bluesky's search API requires authentication. Your main password is never used.

Input:

{
  "mode": "searchPosts",
  "searchQuery": "#buildinpublic",
  "sort": "top",
  "since": "2025-01-01",
  "until": "2025-12-31",
  "lang": "en",
  "maxResults": 500,
  "blueskyHandle": "yourname.bsky.social",
  "blueskyAppPassword": "xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx"
}

Supported query syntax:

• Keywords: SaaS pricing
• Hashtags: #buildinpublic
• From a specific account: from:user.bsky.social topic
• Phrase: "exact phrase here"

2. Author feed (authorFeed)

Get all posts from one or more Bluesky accounts. Useful for monitoring competitors, tracking thought leaders, or auditing your own content. No authentication required.

Input:

{
  "mode": "authorFeed",
  "handles": ["paulgraham.bsky.social", "marc.bsky.social"],
  "maxResults": 200,
  "includeReplies": false
}

Set includeReplies: true to also include reply posts from the author (off by default to return only original posts).

3. Full thread (thread)

Fetch a complete thread — root post plus all replies — from a post URL. Useful for extracting conversations, support threads, or discussion chains.

No authentication required.

Input:

{
  "mode": "thread",
  "threadUri": "https://bsky.app/profile/user.bsky.social/post/3lhxxxxxxxxx"
}

Accepts either a bsky.app URL or an at:// URI directly.

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Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
mode	string	✅	searchPosts, authorFeed, or thread
searchQuery	string	searchPosts	Keyword, hashtag, or phrase to search
handles	string[]	authorFeed	Bluesky handles (e.g. ["user.bsky.social"])
threadUri	string	thread	Post URL or at:// URI
maxResults	number	—	Max posts to return (default: 100, max: 10,000)
sort	string	—	latest or top (searchPosts only, default: latest)
since	string	—	Start date, ISO format (searchPosts only)
until	string	—	End date, ISO format (searchPosts only)
lang	string	—	Language filter, e.g. en (searchPosts only)
includeReplies	boolean	—	Include reply posts (authorFeed only, default: false)
blueskyHandle	string	searchPosts	Your Bluesky handle for auth
blueskyAppPassword	string	searchPosts	App Password (not your main password)

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Output fields

Field	Type	Description
uri	string	AT Protocol URI of the post
cid	string	Content identifier (cryptographic hash)
url	string	Direct link to the post on bsky.app
text	string	Full post text content
language	string|null	Language code of the post (en, de, etc.)
authorHandle	string	Bluesky handle of the author
authorDisplayName	string|null	Author's display name
authorAvatar	string|null	URL to the author's profile picture
createdAt	string	When the post was created (ISO 8601)
likeCount	number	Number of likes
repostCount	number	Number of reposts
replyCount	number	Number of replies
quoteCount	number	Number of quote posts
images	array	Attached images with thumb, fullsize, alt URLs
externalEmbed	object|null	Linked article preview (uri, title, description, thumb)
quotedPostUri	string|null	AT URI of any quoted post
labels	string[]	Content labels applied by moderators
isReply	boolean	Whether this post is a reply
replyToUri	string|null	AT URI of the parent post (if reply)
rootPostUri	string|null	AT URI of the thread root (if reply)
scrapedAt	string	Timestamp when this record was scraped

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Use cases

Brand monitoring and social listening

Search for your brand name, product, or competitors across Bluesky. Track sentiment shifts over time by running the actor on a schedule and comparing engagement metrics. Bluesky's growing B2B/tech audience makes it increasingly valuable for enterprise brand monitoring alongside Twitter/X.

Competitive intelligence

Pull the last 6 months of posts from competitor accounts using authorFeed mode. Analyse what content generates the most engagement (likes + reposts + quotes) to identify their messaging strategy and topic focus.

Influencer research and outreach

Before reaching out to a Bluesky account for a partnership, run authorFeed on their handle to audit posting frequency, average engagement, and content themes. Export to CSV for your sales or marketing team.

Lead generation and intent signals

Search for posts where users describe a problem you solve — #buildinpublic struggling with, "looking for a tool that", "anyone recommend" + your category. These are high-intent signals from people actively seeking solutions.

Academic research and trend analysis

Track public discourse on any topic with date-range filtering. Extract posts from a specific period, export as JSON or CSV, and analyse in Python or Excel. The AT Protocol's open design means data availability is not subject to arbitrary API access changes.

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Pricing

This actor uses Pay Per Event (PPE) pricing — you only pay for what you scrape:

Event	Price
Actor startup	$0.25 per run
Post scraped	$0.003 per post ($3.00 per 1,000)

Example costs:

• 100 posts: $0.25 + $0.30 = $0.55
• 1,000 posts: $0.25 + $3.00 = $3.25
• 10,000 posts: $0.25 + $30.00 = $30.25

No monthly subscription. No minimum usage. Only pay when you run the actor.

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Authentication setup

For searchPosts mode, you need a Bluesky App Password (not your main account password):

1. Log in to bsky.app
2. Go to Settings → App Passwords
3. Click Add App Password, give it a name (e.g. "Apify Scraper")
4. Copy the generated password and paste it into the blueskyAppPassword field

App Passwords are revocable and can't access your DMs or account settings. Safe to use in Apify actors.

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Technical notes

• Built on the AT Protocol public API — no unofficial scraping
• public.api.bsky.app endpoints have generous rate limits; the actor adds a 300ms delay between paginated requests to stay well within them
• Failed requests are automatically retried up to 3 times with exponential backoff
• Rate limit responses (HTTP 429) are handled with automatic back-off using the retry-after header
• Thread mode recursively flattens the full reply tree to a depth of 6 levels

Limitations

• searchPosts date range filtering depends on Bluesky's search index — very old posts (6+ months) may not be returned for all queries
• Thread depth is limited to 6 levels of replies; deeply nested threads are truncated at that depth
• Bluesky does not expose follower counts in post views — if you need author follower counts, run authorFeed mode and cross-reference with the Bluesky user profile API separately