4chan Scraper — Boards, Threads & Keyword Monitoring

Extract data from any 4chan board via the official public JSON API — no login, no captcha, no rate-limit games. Full catalogs, complete thread histories, image links, country flags, and multi-board keyword monitoring for OSINT, crypto research, and trend detection.

Why 4chan data?

4chan is where narratives form first — /biz/ memecoins pump before Twitter notices, /pol/ drives news cycles, /g/ and /x/ leak everything. Analysts, journalists, and intelligence researchers need this data, and until now there was no working scraper on Apify.

Modes

Mode	Output	Use case
catalog	All live threads on a board — subject, replies, images, timestamps	Board surveillance, hot-topic discovery
thread	Complete post history of a thread — every reply with image/flag metadata	Archive discussions, quote tracing
boards	All 77 boards with titles and worksafe flags	Directory / discovery
watch	Multi-board keyword scan — e.g. monitor /biz/+/pol/ for "bitcoin"	Scheduled alerts, narrative tracking

Input examples

Everything live on /biz/ right now:

{ "mode": "catalog", "board": "biz", "minReplies": 10 }

Full thread archive:

{ "mode": "thread", "board": "biz", "threadId": 62745847 }

Cross-board keyword alert (schedule every 15 min):

{ "mode": "watch", "boardsToScan": ["biz", "pol", "g"], "keywords": ["ethereum", "etf", "hack"] }

Output fields

recordType (board/thread/post), board, threadId, postId, subject, text (HTML-stripped), authorName (null for Anonymous, real for namefags/tripfags), date (ISO), replies, images, isOP, sticky, closed, capcode (mod/admin/dev), country (flag on /pol/ etc.), imageUrl, imageName, imageSizeBytes, url

Limits & caveats

• Threads 404 (die) — 4chan prunes aggressively; thread mode errors cleanly on archived threads
• Catalog shows threads, thread shows posts — combine them: catalog → pick hot threads → thread for full history
• Country flags only on /pol/, /int/, /sp/, /biz/ and a few others
• No search API exists on 4chan natively — watch mode is the keyword-search substitute

Pricing

$1.00 per 1,000 results (pay-per-event). A /biz/ catalog scan (~150 threads) costs ~$0.15.

Example output

{
  "recordType": "thread",
  "board": "g",
  "threadId": 105076684,
  "postId": 105076684,
  "subject": null,
  "text": "This board is for the discussion of technology and related topics. \r\n \r\nReminder that instigating OR participating in flame/brand wars will result in a ban. ...",
  "authorName": null,
  "date": "2025-04-25T20:24:10+00:00",
  "replies": 3,
  "images": 3,
  "isOP": true,
  "sticky": true,
  "closed": true,
  "capcode": "mod"
}

FAQ

Does 4chan Scraper need a login or API key? No — every row comes from public endpoints. Provide a proxy only if your network is heavily rate-limited.

How do I monitor on a schedule? Attach the actor to an Apify Schedule (daily/weekly) and use the watch/monitor mode if present — each run emits a fresh, diff-able dataset.

What does each row contain? See the output fields table above; every row carries a scrapedAt timestamp so datasets can be deduped across runs.

Is it legal to scrape this data? The actor only accesses publicly available data — the same pages/APIs a browser sees. Scraping public data for research, monitoring, and analysis is common practice, but platform Terms of Service and the rules in your jurisdiction still apply to how you use it. Consult legal counsel for your specific case.

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