🐘 Mastodon Scraper — Any Instance: Profiles, Toots, Followers

What does Mastodon Scraper do?

Mastodon Scraper extracts public data from Mastodon and any Fediverse instance compatible with the Mastodon API. Give it a list of handles, a search query, or a specific account, and it returns structured profile data, posts (toots), followers, and following lists — no authentication or API key required.

Works with mastodon.social, fosstodon.org, hachyderm.io, infosec.exchange, and any of the 10,000+ Mastodon instances in the Fediverse.

Why use Mastodon Scraper?

• No auth needed — Mastodon's public REST API is open for public content by design
• Federated coverage — scrape any instance, not just mastodon.social. Track niche communities like tech, science, or activism instances
• Multi-handle batch scraping — pass hundreds of handles at once, paginated automatically
• Cross-instance followers — fetch follower graphs that span multiple servers
• Clean structured output — profiles with engagement stats, posts with boost/favourite counts, tags, and language detection
• Scheduling — run weekly to track follower growth, post frequency, and engagement trends over time
• Use cases: influencer research, academic analysis, brand monitoring, developer community tracking, community mapping

How to use Mastodon Scraper

1. Open the Input tab and choose what you want to scrape:
   • Handles: paste Mastodon handles like gargron@mastodon.social or user@fosstodon.org
   • Search query: find accounts by keyword on any instance
2. Choose a Scrape mode: Profile only, Posts only, Profile + Posts, Followers, or Following
3. Set Instance (default: mastodon.social) for handles without an explicit @instance
4. Set Max posts and Max followers limits to control run time and cost
5. Click Start and download results from the Output tab as JSON, CSV, or Excel

Input

Field	Type	Description
handles	string[]	Mastodon handles, e.g. ["gargron@mastodon.social", "user@fosstodon.org"]
instance	string	Default instance for handles without @instance (default: mastodon.social)
searchQuery	string	Search for accounts by keyword on the default instance
scrapeMode	string	profile, posts, profile_and_posts, followers, following
maxPostsPerProfile	integer	Max posts per account (default: 100)
maxFollowers	integer	Max followers/following per handle (default: 500)
maxItems	integer	Hard cap on total output items. 0 = no limit

Output

Each item is a profile, post, follower, or following record.

Profile example

{
  "type": "profile",
  "username": "Mastodon",
  "acct": "Mastodon@mastodon.social",
  "instance": "mastodon.social",
  "display_name": "Mastodon",
  "note": "Free, open-source decentralized social media platform.",
  "followers_count": 873588,
  "following_count": 3,
  "statuses_count": 2847,
  "bot": false,
  "created_at": "2016-11-23T00:00:00.000Z",
  "url": "https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon"
}

Post example

{
  "type": "post",
  "author_acct": "gargron@mastodon.social",
  "content": "Just released Mastodon 4.3 with major performance improvements...",
  "created_at": "2024-11-15T09:30:00.000Z",
  "language": "en",
  "replies_count": 42,
  "reblogs_count": 218,
  "favourites_count": 891,
  "tags": ["mastodon", "fediverse"],
  "url": "https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/123456789"
}

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

Data fields

Field	Type	Description
type	string	profile, post, follower, or following
username	string	Local username (no instance suffix)
acct	string	Full federated handle (user@instance)
instance	string	Mastodon instance hostname
display_name	string	Display name
note	string	Bio / profile description (HTML stripped)
followers_count	number	Follower count
statuses_count	number	Total posts (toots)
content	string	Post text content (HTML stripped)
reblogs_count	number	Number of boosts
favourites_count	number	Number of favourites/likes
replies_count	number	Number of replies
tags	string[]	Hashtags in the post
language	string	Detected language code
created_at	string	Timestamp (ISO 8601)
url	string	Direct link to profile or post

Pricing / Cost estimation

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing — you only pay for what you scrape.

• Scraping 100 profiles: ~$0.05
• Scraping 1,000 posts from 10 accounts: ~$0.10
• Fetching 5,000 followers: ~$0.25

The free tier includes enough compute units to evaluate the Actor before committing.

Tips

• Use user@instance format in handles to scrape accounts from any Fediverse server
• Set maxItems to control total cost on large accounts or broad searches
• For follower graph analysis, combine scrapeMode: followers with multiple handles
• The fields output contains pinned profile links and custom metadata set by the account owner
• Mastodon rate limits are generous on public endpoints; the Actor includes automatic delays

FAQ and support

Is this legal? This Actor only accesses publicly available data via Mastodon's official public REST API. No authentication is bypassed. Always comply with individual instance rules and applicable data protection laws (GDPR, etc.).

Does it work on non-Mastodon Fediverse instances? It works on any instance running Mastodon-compatible API (Pleroma, Akkoma, Glitch-soc, etc.). Misskey/Calckey use a different API and are not supported.

Some accounts have fewer followers than expected. Some instances hide follower lists. In that case, the API returns an empty list, which is expected behavior.

Found a bug or need a feature? Open an issue in the Issues tab. Custom data extraction across specific Fediverse networks is available on request.