Mastodon Scraper — Profiles, Followers, Bios & Creator Contacts

The fastest way to scrape Mastodon profiles, followers and creator contacts across the fediverse — no login, no coding. This Mastodon scraper pulls structured accounts from any Mastodon instance: handle, display name, bio, follower / following / post counts, profile link fields, bot flag, account age, and the website, email and social links embedded in each profile. Search by keyword, look up handles, scrape any account's followers or following, or pull a server's public directory.

Export every result to JSON, CSV, Excel, or API.

Built for growth marketers building lead lists, recruiters and sales teams sourcing contacts, journalists and OSINT researchers mapping communities, and creator-economy analysts tracking the open social web.

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🔎 Why scrape Mastodon?

Mastodon is the largest network in the fediverse — a decentralized, open-source alternative to Twitter/X made of thousands of independently run servers ("instances") like mastodon.social, fosstodon.org and mas.to. Millions of people post there publicly, and unlike closed platforms, Mastodon exposes an open, keyless API. That makes it one of the very few major social networks you can legitimately read at scale without an app key or a login — which is exactly why a Mastodon scraper is so useful.

Each public Mastodon profile is a small, clean data record: a globally unique handle, a bio, follower / following / post counts, an account creation date, and — crucially — a set of structured profile link fields where creators list their website, GitHub, shop or portfolio. That link layer turns Mastodon into a surprisingly good source of creator contacts and sales leads, because the people most worth reaching are exactly the ones who publish a website or GitHub on their profile.

Collecting this by hand is painful. There is no built-in export, search is federated and paginated behind max_id cursors and Link headers, follower lists can run into the hundreds of thousands, and the contact links are buried inside HTML fields. This Mastodon scraper handles the pagination, de-duplication and contact extraction for you and hands back one flat row per account, ready for a spreadsheet or CRM.

Common reasons people scrape Mastodon:

• Build a lead list from the followers (or following) of any relevant account.
• Discover creators by topic across the fediverse with keyword search.
• Enrich a CRM with handles, bios, follower counts and website links.
• Map a community — who follows, or is followed by, a given account.
• Track niche instances (tech, science, art, journalism) with scheduled runs.
• Feed outreach / recruiting pipelines with developers, writers and designers who link a GitHub or portfolio.
• Monitor reach and activity of the accounts you care about over time.

✨ What this Mastodon scraper does

• ✅ Four discovery modes — keyword search (federated account search), direct handle lookups, followers of / following of any account, and the instance directory of active profiles. Mix them freely in a single run.
• ✅ Automatic pagination — walks the directory by offset and the follower / following graphs by max_id cursor (read from the API Link header), collecting hundreds to thousands of accounts page after page until the end or your limit.
• ✅ De-duplicated output — every account is keyed by profile URL / handle, so the same person is never returned twice even when they appear in several sources. A recent 500-account run returned 0 duplicates.
• ✅ Rich account fields — handle, username, acct, displayName, bio, followersCount, followingCount, statusesCount, instance, createdAt, lastStatusAt, avatar, header, profileUrl.
• ✅ Signals — bot, locked, discoverable, plus the structured fields table and verifiedLinks (every URL the account lists in its profile fields, each with its own verified flag).
• ✅ Built-in contact extraction — pulls email, website, and socials (instagram, twitter, youtube, tiktok, github, linkedin, twitch, patreon) from each bio and profile field.
• ✅ Any instance — point instance at any Mastodon server to scrape the community that lives there.
• ✅ Fast & reliable — HTTP-only against the public API with retries, proxy rotation and 429 back-off. 500 accounts in ~30 seconds, no browser, no login, no CAPTCHA.
• ✅ Export anywhere — JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or the Apify API; wire it to Google Sheets, webhooks, Make or Zapier.

🎯 Use cases

• Lead generation — scrape a competitor's or community's followers, filter by reach, and export website / verifiedLinks for outreach.
• Creator & influencer discovery — find and rank fediverse accounts by topic, follower count and activity.
• Recruiting & developer sourcing — surface accounts that link a GitHub or portfolio in their profile fields.
• Journalism & OSINT — map who follows or is followed by an account and track public activity across instances.
• Community & audience research — understand the makeup of a niche instance or a key account's network.
• CRM enrichment — append handles, bios, counts and links to existing contact records.
• Market & trend analysis — monitor the growth of creators and communities on the open social web.
• Social-media monitoring — schedule recurring runs to watch a topic or instance over time.

📥 Input

Provide at least one discovery source. All fields are optional, but you must supply searchTerms, handles, followersOf, followingOf, or enable includeDirectory.

Field	Type	Description
instance	string	Mastodon instance to query (e.g. mastodon.social). Keyword search is federated across instances. Default mastodon.social.
searchTerms	array	Keywords to find accounts by name, handle or bio (e.g. "journalist", "photographer"). Each term returns up to 40 accounts.
handles	array	Specific accounts to look up — Gargron, user@another.instance, or a full profile URL.
followersOf	array	Accounts whose followers you want to scrape — the fastest route to a targeted audience list.
followingOf	array	Accounts whose following list you want to scrape.
includeDirectory	boolean	Also pull accounts from the instance's public directory of active profiles. Default false.
includeContacts	boolean	Extract email, website and socials from each bio and profile field. Default true.
maxItems	integer	Maximum accounts to return. 0 = no limit.
maxPagesPerSource	integer	Pagination cap per search term / seed account. Default 20.
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy. The API is public, so datacenter is enough (enabled by default).

Example input

{
  "instance": "mastodon.social",
  "searchTerms": ["journalist", "photographer", "developer"],
  "followersOf": ["Gargron"],
  "includeDirectory": true,
  "includeContacts": true,
  "maxItems": 500,
  "maxPagesPerSource": 20,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true }
}

📤 Output

Each account is returned as one clean, flat record. Below is a real item from a fresh keyword run — a developer who lists multiple links in their profile fields:

{
  "id": "110264569437137765",
  "username": "sid",
  "acct": "sid@masto.twooter.org",
  "handle": "@sid@masto.twooter.org",
  "displayName": "Sid O'Knee",
  "bio": "Developer. #html #javascript #vba #vbscript #css #php And many more 😎",
  "followersCount": 27189412,
  "followingCount": 34146,
  "statusesCount": 1,
  "instance": "masto.twooter.org",
  "bot": false,
  "locked": true,
  "discoverable": true,
  "createdAt": "2000-01-28T00:00:00.000Z",
  "lastStatusAt": "",
  "avatar": "https://files.mastodon.social/cache/accounts/avatars/110/264/569/437/137/765/original/avatar.png",
  "header": "https://files.mastodon.social/cache/accounts/headers/110/264/569/437/137/765/original/header.png",
  "fields": [
    { "name": "Github",   "value": "https://github.com/sidoKnee",   "url": "https://github.com/sidoKnee",   "verified": false },
    { "name": "Website",  "value": "https://twooter.co.uk/",        "url": "https://twooter.co.uk/",        "verified": false },
    { "name": "CodePen",  "value": "https://codepen.io/sidoKnee",   "url": "https://codepen.io/sidoKnee",   "verified": false }
  ],
  "verifiedLinks": ["https://github.com/sidoKnee", "https://twooter.co.uk/", "https://codepen.io/sidoKnee"],
  "website": "https://twooter.co.uk/",
  "github": "sidoKnee",
  "email": "",
  "instagram": "",
  "twitter": "",
  "youtube": "",
  "tiktok": "",
  "linkedin": "",
  "twitch": "",
  "patreon": "",
  "profileUrl": "https://masto.twooter.org/@sid",
  "source": "search:developer",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-01T10:00:00.000Z"
}

Field reference

Field	Description
id	Account ID (unique per instance).
username	Local username (no instance).
acct	Full user or user@instance account string.
handle	Globally unique fediverse handle @user@instance.
displayName	Human-readable display name.
bio	Profile description (HTML stripped to plain text).
followersCount / followingCount / statusesCount	Follower, following and post counts.
instance	The account's home server.
bot / locked / discoverable	Account-type and visibility signals.
createdAt / lastStatusAt	Account creation date and last-post date.
avatar / header	Profile image and banner URLs.
fields	Structured profile fields, one object each: name, value, url, and a per-field verified flag.
verifiedLinks	Every URL the account lists in its profile fields (website / GitHub / shop / portfolio). Check the matching fields[].verified flag for which are instance-verified.
website	Primary non-social website, extracted from bio and fields.
email / emails	Email(s) found in the bio/fields (uncommon on Mastodon).
instagram, twitter, youtube, tiktok, github, linkedin, twitch, patreon	Social handles parsed from links.
profileUrl	Canonical profile URL (the de-duplication key).
source	Which query found the account (search:..., directory, followersOf:..., etc.).
scrapedAt	ISO timestamp of the scrape.

Coverage is honest and data-dependent. In a fresh 500-account run (keyword search + directory), the core identity fields were present on 100% of records — handle, profileUrl, username, instance, followersCount and createdAt — with displayName 99.8%, bio 98.6% and statusesCount 98.8%. Contact fields depend on the source: searched and directory accounts are real creators and exposed website on ~65% and verifiedLinks on ~58% of records, while a large raw follower list is a mix of everyday accounts with sparse bios, so its contact fill is lower. Raw email is rare on Mastodon (~12%) — creators link a website or GitHub instead — so website and verifiedLinks are the primary contact paths.

🔁 Pagination & scale

The actor paginates every source automatically and returns large, de-duplicated result sets:

• Directory — offset pagination (offset += 80 per page) until an empty or short page, capped by maxPagesPerSource.
• Followers / following — cursor pagination via the Mastodon max_id value read from the response Link header, page after page until the list ends or the cap is hit.
• Keyword search — the unauthenticated search endpoint returns a single page of up to 40 accounts per term (the public API rejects the offset parameter), so add more searchTerms for breadth.

Every source stops at the maxPagesPerSource cap and the whole run stops at maxItems (0 = no limit). Accounts are de-duplicated by profile URL / handle across all sources, so a follower list of hundreds of thousands can be collected safely, bounded only by your limits. The latest verification run collected the full 500-account cap in 32 seconds with zero duplicates.

⚙️ How to use

1. Open the actor on the Apify Console and fill in the input — pick an instance, then add searchTerms, handles, followersOf / followingOf, or enable includeDirectory.
2. Set maxItems and click Start.
3. Watch results stream into the dataset live.
4. Export as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or pull via the Apify API.
5. Automate — run on a Schedule, or connect the dataset to Make, Zapier, Google Sheets or a webhook to push new accounts into your stack.

Run it via the API or client as well:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("haketa/mastodon-scraper").call(run_input={
    "followersOf": ["Gargron"],
    "maxItems": 2000,
})
for a in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(a["handle"], "·", a["followersCount"], "·", a["website"] or a["email"])

💡 Tips

• followersOf is the fastest way to build a targeted audience list from a relevant account's network.
• searchTerms + includeDirectory maximises creator discovery — these accounts carry the richest website and verifiedLinks fields (~65% / ~58% in testing).
• verifiedLinks holds every website / GitHub / shop link an account publishes — use it as the primary contact signal, and read the matching fields[].verified flag when you only want instance-verified links.
• Set instance to the server where your niche lives (e.g. fosstodon.org for developers, journa.host for journalists) to reach the right community.
• Use multiple searchTerms to broaden a search, since each term returns a single page of up to 40 accounts.
• Schedule recurring runs to track a niche or an account's growth over time.

❓ FAQ

Is scraping Mastodon legal? This actor reads only public profile data via Mastodon's official public API — no private content and no login. As with any scraping, use the data responsibly and in line with applicable laws such as GDPR, and respect each instance's rules.

Do I need a Mastodon account, API key or login? No. The Mastodon public API is open — no account, key, login or CAPTCHA. This Mastodon scraper works out of the box.

How many accounts can I get, and how fast? As many as your maxItems allows. Follower/following and directory sources paginate into the thousands; keyword search returns up to 40 per term. Runs are HTTP-only — a 500-account run finished in about 32 seconds in our latest test.

Do I need proxies? Datacenter proxies (enabled by default) are enough because the Mastodon API is public. The actor rotates proxies and handles rate limits (429 back-off) automatically.

Is there a Mastodon API for this? Yes — the actor itself is callable via the Apify API, and under the hood it uses Mastodon's public REST API. You get results as a dataset you can pull as JSON/CSV or via API.

What export formats are supported? JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or via the Apify API — plus Google Sheets, webhooks, Make and Zapier integrations.

Can I scrape followers from any instance? Yes — set instance. Note that for a remote account an instance only knows the followers it has already seen; for a local account the list is complete.

Why is the email field often empty? Mastodon profiles rarely contain a raw email address; creators link a website or GitHub in their profile fields instead. Use website and verifiedLinks as the primary contact paths.

What is a handle here? The full fediverse handle @user@instance — globally unique across the entire network, unlike a bare username.

How fresh is the Mastodon data? Every run fetches live from the instance API, so results reflect the current state of each profile at scrape time (see scrapedAt).

🔗 Related scrapers

• YouTube Contact Scraper — pull creator emails and contact links from YouTube channels.
• Patreon Scraper — scrape Patreon creators, tiers and audience data.
• YouTube Comments Scraper — extract comments and commenter data from YouTube videos.
• WeChat Official Account Scraper — collect WeChat official-account articles and profiles.
• Xiaohongshu (RedNote) Scraper — scrape posts and creators from Xiaohongshu / RedNote.
• Bilibili Scraper — extract videos, creators and stats from Bilibili.

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Ready to map the fediverse? Click Start, point this Mastodon scraper at an instance, and export clean creator profiles and contacts in seconds.

Legal & responsible use

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Mastodon gGmbH. It reads only public profile data exposed by the Mastodon API. Use the data responsibly and in line with applicable terms and data-protection laws (e.g. GDPR).