Threads Scraper and API: Posts, Replies, Profiles and Keyword Search

Scrape Threads (Meta) at scale. This Threads scraper returns posts, full reply trees with conversation depth, profiles, and keyword search results as clean, structured JSON, CSV or Excel.

No login. No cookies. No account pool. No session tokens to supply.

New: only new posts since the last run. Put it on a schedule, turn on monitoring mode, and each run returns and bills only posts you have not received before, with follower change for every profile. How it works

Sample output (real run, keyword "anthropic")

Author	Post	Likes	Replies	Reposts
@bodylikeseafoam	In case you need another reason to hate AI, OpenAI just scraped...	11,305	182	2,049
@novaramedia	An artificial intelligence researcher has quit Anthropic, accusing...	287	17	89
@aditijain.ai	Former OpenAI and Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who publicly...	10	1	1

Every row also carries the post URL, timestamp, language, media, quoted post, and the keyword that found it.

Why choose this Threads scraper

Feature	This Actor	Official Threads API	Typical Store alternative
Keyword searches	Unlimited	About 500 per 7 days	Varies
Login or Meta token	None	App review plus token	Often none
Reply trees with conversation depth	Yes, up to 6 levels	Limited	Rarely
Profile posts beyond the first page	Yes	Limited	Rarely
Price per 1,000 posts	$1.80, no start fee	Free, capped	$2.50 to $20, often plus $0.02 per run

What it costs: 1,000 posts cost $1.80. Monitoring 10 brand keywords at 200 posts each is about $3.60 per run.

A Threads API alternative: no login, no weekly search cap

Meta's official Threads API allows roughly 500 keyword searches per rolling seven days. That is unusable for social listening, brand monitoring, or lead generation, and it is why teams look for a Threads scraper in the first place.

This Actor reads the same public pages a logged-out visitor sees. There is no weekly search quota, nothing to authenticate, and nothing to keep alive.

It also handles the three things other Threads scrapers get wrong:

Area	Typical Threads scraper	This Actor
Reply trees	Flat list, or fails outright	Full tree with conversation depth
Profile posts	First page only, about 25	Pages through to your limit
Quote posts with no added text	Row with empty text, looks broken	Quoted post resolved inline
Only new posts on scheduled runs	Rarely	Built in
Login required	Often	Never
Breaks when Meta ships an update	Often	Built to keep working

What you can scrape

Keyword search: every public post matching a term, by relevance or recency, each result tagged with the keyword that found it.

Profiles: handle, display name, bio, bio links, follower count, verification and privacy status, profile pictures, plus that account's posts well beyond the first page.

Posts and reply trees: the post plus its replies, each carrying its depth in the conversation, so you can reconstruct who answered whom and how deep the thread went.

Input

Provide at least one of searchQueries, profiles, or postUrls. You can combine them in one run.

{
  "searchQueries": ["openai", "claude ai"],
  "profiles": ["@zuck", "https://www.threads.com/@mosseri"],
  "postUrls": ["https://www.threads.com/@zuck/post/DdCYWl7GktV"],
  "searchSort": "both",
  "includeReplies": true,
  "replyDepth": 3,
  "maxPostsPerProfile": 200,
  "maxRepliesPerPost": 300,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Running with no input. If you start a run without setting anything, the Actor returns a small live sample so you can see the output shape immediately. Set your own keywords, profiles, or post URLs for a real run.

Handles are accepted as zuck, @zuck, or a full URL. Posts are accepted as a full URL or a bare shortcode.

searchSort accepts default (relevance), recent (reverse chronological), or both. The two orderings return overlapping but different sets, so both gives the widest coverage at twice the request cost.

replyDepth controls how far down the reply tree the Actor walks. 1 returns the first page of replies, and higher values (up to 6) open each reply's own page to pull replies to replies. The total stays capped by maxRepliesPerPost.

Output

One record per post, reply, or profile. Post records look like this:

{
  "type": "post",
  "id": "3981852126213720917_63055343223",
  "pk": "3981852126213720917",
  "code": "DdCYWl7GktV",
  "url": "https://www.threads.com/@zuck/post/DdCYWl7GktV",
  "text": "Mostly superintelligence and MMA takes",
  "language": "en",
  "createdAt": "2026-09-08T14:56:24.000Z",
  "takenAtTimestamp": 1788893784,
  "likeCount": 2715,
  "replyCount": 1602,
  "repostCount": 231,
  "quoteCount": 142,
  "reshareCount": 293,
  "isReply": false,
  "replyToAuthor": null,
  "rootPostCode": null,
  "replyDepth": 0,
  "isQuotePost": false,
  "quotedPost": null,
  "mediaType": "text",
  "media": [],
  "linkPreview": null,
  "author": {
    "id": "63055343223",
    "username": "zuck",
    "fullName": "Mark Zuckerberg",
    "isVerified": true,
    "profilePicUrl": "https://...",
    "profileUrl": "https://www.threads.com/@zuck"
  },
  "authorUsername": "zuck",
  "source": "profile",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-10T04:31:00.000Z"
}

Five details that matter if you are moving this into a database:

• pk is a string. Threads primary keys exceed 2^53, so any pipeline that reads them as JSON numbers silently corrupts the last digits. This Actor derives them from the string id and never emits them as numbers.
• Missing counters stay null, never 0. You can tell "no likes" apart from "not published by Threads".
• replyDepth is 0 for the conversation root, 1 for a direct reply, and deeper for nested replies.
• authorUsername is the flat copy of author.username. Spreadsheet and table views cannot read nested paths, so use the flat field for CSV exports and the nested author object in code.
• Filter on type, not source. A run can mix posts and profiles in one dataset. type is "post" or "profile", while source tells you which surface a post came from (search, profile, post, or replies), and a profile's own posts are tagged source: "profile" too.

Monitoring mode: only new posts since the last run

Turn on Only new since last run (onlyNewSinceLastRun) and put the Actor on a schedule, hourly or daily. The first run returns everything it finds and remembers it. Every run after that returns only the posts it has not delivered before, so you pay only for what is new and your sheet, Slack channel or pipeline receives only fresh items.

• Applies to keyword search and profile posts. Post URLs and reply trees are always returned in full.
• On profiles it also reports previousFollowerCount and followerChange since the last run.
• Memory is kept per keyword and profile, in a key-value store named threads-monitor-… in your own Apify account. Nobody else can see it.
• Running several schedules? Give each one its own Monitor name (monitorName), one per client or campaign for example, and they keep separate memory.
• Every run writes a SUMMARY record to its key-value store with the number of new and skipped items, which suits integrations and AI agents.
• To start over, change the monitor name.

{
  "searchQueries": ["your brand"],
  "profiles": ["@competitor"],
  "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true,
  "monitorName": "weekly-report"
}

Pricing

Pay per result, not per minute. A run that returns nothing costs nothing.

Event	What it covers
Post scraped	One post from search or a profile, with engagement, media, and any quoted post
Reply scraped	One reply, with its depth in the conversation
Profile scraped	One profile with follower count, bio, links, and verification

Replies are billed separately because deep reply traversal is the expensive path. If you only want search results, you never pay for it.

Limits, stated plainly

Reply depth. By default the Actor returns the first page of replies (about 25 to 30, at depth 1). Raise replyDepth up to 6 to walk replies to replies, bounded by maxRepliesPerPost.

Profile posts. The Actor pages through a profile's posts up to maxPostsPerProfile, well beyond the first page Threads shows.

Keyword search depth. Threads serves the first page of search results to logged-out visitors, about 25 per keyword and ordering. Deeper search pages are only returned to logged-in sessions, and this Actor runs without login, so run both orderings to widen coverage per term.

Proxies. Threads rate-limits single IP addresses quickly. Residential proxies are strongly recommended for anything beyond a handful of requests. The Actor warns you if it is running without one.

Public data only. Private accounts, direct messages, and anything behind a login are out of scope by design.

Legal and compliance

This Actor reads only public Threads pages, the same ones any logged-out visitor can open. It does not log in, does not bypass an access control, and does not touch private accounts.

Threads posts and profiles contain personal data. If you are in the EU or UK, GDPR applies to what you collect and what you do with it, and having a lawful basis is your responsibility as the data controller. Do not resell profile-level personal data as a lead list without the regional carve-outs that apply to you.

FAQ

Do I need a Threads or Instagram account? No. Nothing in this Actor authenticates, and there is nowhere to enter credentials.

Does it break when Meta ships an update? Less often than most. Meta changes Threads often, and many scrapers break with each change. This Actor is engineered to keep working through those changes, so your runs and integrations stay stable.

Can I get more than 25 replies on a post? Yes. By default (replyDepth = 1) you get the first page of replies, roughly the top 25, with accurate tree depth. Raise replyDepth to open each reply's own page and pull replies to replies: 2 adds the replies under each top-level reply, 3 goes one level deeper, and so on up to 6. The total is still capped by maxRepliesPerPost, and a reply is billed the same whatever depth it was found at.

Can I get more than 25 posts from a profile? Yes. The Actor follows the profile's post feed page by page up to maxPostsPerProfile, so you can pull hundreds of posts from a single handle.

How do I monitor a keyword continuously? Schedule the Actor and give it your keywords. Each result carries searchQuery and scrapedAt, so appending runs to one dataset and de-duplicating on id gives you a time series.

Why is text empty on some records? Those are quote posts where the author added no words of their own. The post they quoted is in quotedPost, with its text and author. The record is complete, not broken.

Does this work with threads.net links? Yes. Threads moved from threads.net to threads.com, and both forms are accepted, as are bare handles and bare post shortcodes. You do not need to rewrite old links.

How is this different from the official Threads API? Meta's Threads API needs an app, an access token, and it caps keyword search at roughly 500 queries per rolling seven days. This Actor needs none of that and has no weekly quota, because it reads the same public pages a logged-out visitor sees.

Can I use it from Make, Zapier, n8n, or a script? Yes. Every Apify Actor is callable over the REST API and through Apify's integrations, and results come back as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

Is Threads the same as Instagram? Threads runs on Instagram's infrastructure and shares its account system, but the content is separate. This Actor scrapes Threads only.

Use it as an API

Run it from your own code and get the results back in one call. Replace YOUR_TOKEN with your Apify API token.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/headply~threads-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchQueries": ["openai"], "maxPostsPerQuery": 100}'

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run_input = {'searchQueries': ['openai'], 'maxPostsPerQuery': 100}
run = client.actor("headply/threads-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

It also works from Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, and as a tool for AI agents through the Apify MCP server.

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