Pixelfed Scraper — Posts & Profiles from Any Instance

Scrape Pixelfed — the fast-growing federated Instagram alternative — across any instance: pixelfed.social, pixelfed.de, metapixl.com and 200+ federated servers. Accepts user@instance handles or plain profile/post URLs.

Modes

Mode	Auth needed	What you get
author	❌ none	Latest ~10 posts per account — caption, media URLs, date (platform Atom feed cap)
profile	❌ none	Bio, follower/following/post counts, avatar, join date — any instance
post	❌ none	Full post detail: caption, all media + alt text, hashtags, timestamps
timeline	✅ token	Full post history with pagination + minPostDate
hashtag	✅ token	Posts under a hashtag, paginated — includes federated content
search	✅ token	Account & hashtag discovery (Pixelfed does not index post text)
comments	✅ token	Reply threads on any post
explore	✅ token	The instance's live local feed — every new public post

Why this scraper

• Cross-instance — the only Pixelfed actor that works on the whole federation, not just one server
• No login for public data — profiles, recent posts and post details work fully anonymously
• Optional deep mode — add an accessToken to unlock full timelines, search, hashtags & comments
• Structured output — normalized records ready for JSON/CSV/Excel export and API integration

Input

• handle — dansup, user@pixelfed.de, or https://pixelfed.social/dansup (author / profile / timeline)
• url — post URL like https://pixelfed.social/p/dansup/1234 (post / comments)
• query — keyword (search) · hashtag — without #
• instance — default instance for bare handles & authed modes (default pixelfed.social)
• maxResults — item cap (anonymous author mode is limited to ~10 posts by Pixelfed's feed)
• accessToken — optional; unlocks authed modes

Getting an access token (for deep modes)

Pixelfed uses standard OAuth. Create an app via POST https://{instance}/api/v1/apps, complete the authorization-code flow for your account, and paste the resulting access_token here. Tokens are long-lived (~1 year).

Pricing

Pay-per-event: $1.00 per 1,000 results, discounted to $0.40/1,000 on Gold plans and above. No per-run fee.

Example output

{
  "type": "post",
  "url": "https://pixelfed.social/p/dansup/1011533737994993323",
  "content": "Test Post for FEP-6757 support.",
  "createdAt": "2026-10-02T07:13:56.000Z",
  "authorUsername": "dansup",
  "authorAcct": "dansup@pixelfed.social",
  "mediaUrls": [
    "https://pxscdn.com/public/m/_v2/2/0e0206425-c6ee71/FOiZ1giLPk5R/QkJPKO4DGd9HcPTLgjuaRoS8ubj0Qc5IsOmyaYn5.jpg"
  ],
  "id": "1011533737994993323",
  "source": "atom"
}

FAQ

Does Pixelfed 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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