Mastodon Scraper — Posts, Hashtags, Accounts & Trends

Scrape Mastodon (any instance) using the official public REST API — no account, no API key, no proxy spend required. Mastodon is federated, so you can point this actor at mastodon.social (default) or any other instance.

What it does

• Hashtag timeline — pull recent public posts for any #tag, paginated, with an optional media-only filter
• Account — fetch a user's profile plus their posts (with reply/reblog filters)
• Trends — what's trending now: trending statuses, hashtags, or news links
• Search — find accounts or hashtags by keyword
• Unified output — statuses, accounts, tags and links in one dataset with consistent field names and both raw-HTML and plain-text bodies, ready for analysis or AI pipelines

Why use this actor

Competitor actor	Problem	This actor
newpo/mastodon-scraper (~122 users)	Single-instance assumptions, subscription pricing	Any instance, pay-per-result
Generic single-mode scrapers (2–4 users)	Hashtags or accounts, not both	Hashtag + account + trends + search in one
Roll-your-own API calls	Pagination, HTML stripping, charge logic to maintain	One input, clean schema, plain-text + HTML, pay per result

The Fediverse is a fast-growing, open social network — a natural input for social listening, brand monitoring, academic research, and RAG pipelines that want public discourse without platform lock-in.

Output fields

Statuses (type: "status"): id, url, uri, created_at, edited_at, language, visibility, text (plain), content_html, spoiler_text, sensitive, is_reblog, in_reply_to_id, replies_count, reblogs_count, favourites_count, author_id, author_acct, author_username, author_display_name, author_url, author_followers, tags[], media_count, media_urls[], card_url

Accounts (type: "account"): id, acct, username, url, display_name, note (plain), note_html, created_at, last_status_at, bot, locked, discoverable, followers_count, following_count, statuses_count, avatar_url, header_url, fields[]

Tags (type: "tag"): name, url, total_uses, total_accounts, history[]

Links (type: "link"): url, title, description, provider_name, author_name, published_at, image, total_uses, total_accounts, history[]

Usage examples

Recent posts for two hashtags:

{
  "mode": "hashtag",
  "instance": "mastodon.social",
  "searchTerms": ["ai", "opensource"],
  "maxResultsPerTerm": 500
}

A user's profile + original posts (no replies/boosts):

{
  "mode": "account",
  "instance": "mastodon.social",
  "accounts": ["Gargron"],
  "excludeReplies": true,
  "excludeReblogs": true,
  "maxResultsPerTerm": 200
}

What's trending right now:

{ "mode": "trends", "trendType": "statuses", "maxResultsPerTerm": 40 }

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.003 per result.

Example: 5,000 items ≈ $15.

Technical notes

• Uses each instance's official Mastodon REST API (/api/v1/timelines/tag, /api/v1/accounts, /api/v1/trends/*, /api/v2/search) — free, public, no key
• Zero proxy cost — official API, no anti-bot bypass
• Polite rate limiting; max_id / offset pagination handled for you
• Status/account text is returned both as raw content_html and stripped plain text
• Automatically stops when the user's spending limit is reached — charge respected per result, no overrun

Honest scope / limits

• Public timeline mode is intentionally absent: most instances (including mastodon.social) return 422 for the anonymous local/public timeline. Use hashtag mode for a topic feed.
• Search is accounts + hashtags only. Full-text status search requires an authenticated account on a server that has opted in to search — not available keyless. Use hashtag mode for posts on a topic.
• Account mode resolves handles known to the chosen instance. For a remote user, set instance to that user's home server.

Common use cases

• Social listening / brand monitoring — track a hashtag or competitor across the Fediverse
• RAG pipelines — feed fresh, open public discourse into retrieval systems
• Trend monitoring — daily pulls of trending statuses/tags/links for a dashboard
• Academic / network research — collect public posts and account metadata at scale

Data compliance

This actor accesses only public Mastodon data through each instance's official, publicly documented REST API. No login credentials are used. Public posts and profiles are intentionally public; suitable for research and business use. Respect each instance's terms and the authors' content.