GitHub Followers & Following Scraper

What does GitHub Follower/Following Scraper do?

GitHub Follower/Following Scraper extracts the full followers or following list for any public GitHub user, returning structured profile data for each connection. It's designed for growth marketers, community managers, and researchers mapping developer social networks on GitHub. Unlike manually paginating through a user's followers tab, this Actor batches multiple usernames per run and lets you choose whether to pull followers, following, or both — all without a GitHub personal access token.

Why scrape GitHub followers/following? (Business Use Cases)

• Community & Audience Mapping — Understand who follows influential developers or maintainers to identify engaged community members for outreach or ambassador programs.
• Lead Generation — Build targeted prospect lists of developers following specific high-profile accounts relevant to your product's audience.
• Network Graph & Social Research — Construct developer social graphs to study influence, clustering, and information flow within open-source communities.
• Competitive Audience Analysis — See who follows competitor founders or DevRel accounts to benchmark community reach and overlap.

Key Features

• Supports both usernames and full profile URLs as input, mixed freely
• Toggle between followers or following or both modes in a single configuration
• Configurable maxResults per user, or unlimited (0) for complete lists
• Returns full connection profile metadata, not just usernames
• Structured JSON output ready for CSV, Excel, or graph-analysis tools
• Efficient handling of high-follower accounts without manual pagination

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
usernames	Array of strings	Yes	—	List of GitHub usernames or profile URLs to scrape connections for
mode	String	Yes	—	Either "followers" or "following" or "both", determines which connection list is scraped
maxResults	Integer	No	0	Maximum number of connections to return per user; 0 means no limit

Valid input sample:

{
  "usernames": [
    "octocat",
    "https://github.com/torvalds"
  ],
  "mode": "followers",
  "maxResults": 0
}

Output Data Structure

Each output item represents one follower/following relationship, tagged with the source account, the relation type, and the connected user's profile metadata.

[
  {
    "source_username": "torvalds",
    "relation": "follower",
    "username": "sprsquish",
    "id": 206,
    "type": "User",
    "site_admin": false,
    "html_url": "https://github.com/sprsquish",
    "scraped_at": "2026-09-15T05:12:56.620967+00:00"
  }
]

How to use GitHub Follower/Following Scraper

1. Configure usernames, mode (followers or following), and optionally maxResults.
2. Click "Start" or trigger a run via the Apify API, Python, or JavaScript SDK.
3. Preview the resulting connections dataset in the Apify Console.
4. Export to JSON, CSV, or Excel, or route it into Zapier, Webhooks, or Google Drive.

Integrations & Export Options

Native export to JSON, CSV, Excel, and XML, plus direct compatibility with n8n, Zapier, and Make automation flows. Connect the dataset to database pipelines (Postgres, BigQuery, Airtable) or trigger downstream workflows via webhooks whenever a run completes.

Custom Scrapers & Enterprise Automation Solutions

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. Is scraping GitHub followers/following data legal and compliant? Follower and following lists are public on GitHub, but usage involving personal data should still be reviewed against GitHub's Terms of Service and applicable privacy regulations like GDPR, particularly for outreach use cases.

2. How much does it cost to scrape GitHub followers using this Actor? Cost is based on Apify compute units consumed, which scales with the number of users and connections fetched — generally low-cost even for accounts with tens of thousands of followers.

3. Do I need proxies or coding skills to run this scraper? No. Configuration happens entirely through the Apify Console's input form — no proxies or coding required.

4. How does this compare to the official GitHub API? GitHub's API paginates followers/following in batches of up to 100 per request and enforces rate limits without authentication. This Actor automates that pagination across multiple users in a single run.