🐘 Mastodon Trends Scraper

🚀 Pull trending Mastodon posts, hashtags, and links in seconds. Built on the official Mastodon REST API used by every instance in the Fediverse.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-27 · 📊 19 fields per record · Any public Mastodon instance · Statuses, tags, and links

The Mastodon Trends Scraper pulls trending content from any public Mastodon instance (mastodon.social, fosstodon.org, mas.to, hachyderm.io, and thousands more) using the official /api/v1/trends/ endpoints. It returns one structured record per trending post, hashtag, or link - with account, engagement, media, and language metadata fully parsed.

Coverage: every Mastodon-compatible instance on the Fediverse. Three trend types: statuses, tags, links. Up to 1,000,000 records per run on the paid plan.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Social listening teams	Track decentralized social conversations
Journalists & researchers	Spot emerging stories outside corporate networks
Brand monitoring	Detect mentions and trending hashtags
Open-source community	Build Fediverse analytics dashboards

📋 What the Mastodon Trends Scraper does

• Queries the official /api/v1/trends/statuses, /trends/tags, and /trends/links endpoints
• Strips HTML, extracts media, and normalizes account + engagement fields
• Works against any public Mastodon instance - no API key required
• Outputs to tabular records via Apify dataset
• Auto-limits to 10 items on the free plan; up to 1,000,000 on paid

💡 Why it matters: Mastodon's distributed nature means there's no single "trending" page. This Actor lets you collect trends from any instance, any time.

🎬 Full Demo (🚧 Coming soon)

⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description
instance	string	Mastodon instance domain (e.g. mastodon.social)
trendType	enum	statuses, tags, or links
maxItems	integer	Cap on rows (free: 10)

{ "instance": "mastodon.social", "trendType": "statuses", "maxItems": 50 }

{ "instance": "fosstodon.org", "trendType": "tags", "maxItems": 25 }

⚠️ Good to Know: Each Mastodon instance manages its own trends - results from mastodon.social differ from fosstodon.org. Some smaller instances disable trends entirely.

📊 Output

Field	Type	Description
🖼 imageUrl	string	First media attachment or account avatar
📌 title	string	Cleaned status text (first 200 chars)
🔗 url	string	Canonical post URL
🆔 id	string	Status / tag ID
👤 account	string	@username@instance
👤 accountDisplayName	string	Display name
🔗 accountUrl	string	Profile URL
👥 accountFollowers	number	Followers count
📝 content	string	Full plain-text content
🌐 language	string	Post language
🔞 sensitive	boolean	NSFW flag
👁 visibility	string	public / unlisted / private
💬 repliesCount	number	Replies
🔁 reblogsCount	number	Reblogs (boosts)
⭐ favouritesCount	number	Favourites
🕒 createdAt	string	ISO post timestamp
🖼 mediaCount	number	Number of media attachments
🏷 tags	array	Hashtags
🕒 scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp
❌ error	string | null	Error message if extraction failed

✨ Why choose this Actor

• Direct Mastodon API source, no third-party caching
• Real-time data, never stale
• Pay-per-result pricing; only charged for what you keep
• Works with Make, Zapier, n8n, Airbyte, GitHub Actions, Google Sheets

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Maintenance	Coverage
Manual instance browsing	Free	High (per instance)	One trend at a time
Build your own Mastodon client	Dev cost	High	Custom
This actor	Pay per result	None	Any instance, three trend types

🚀 How to use

1. Create a free Apify account w/ $5 credit
2. Open the Mastodon Trends Scraper actor page
3. Set instance (default: mastodon.social), trendType, and maxItems
4. Click Start and wait for the run to finish
5. Open the dataset as tabular / spreadsheet / tabular / tabular

💼 Business use cases

Social listening

Need	How this Actor helps
Detect emerging stories	Pull trending statuses hourly
Cross-instance signal	Compare trends across 10+ instances

Brand monitoring

Need	How this Actor helps
Hashtag tracking	Pull trending tags daily
Owned-media visibility	Detect when your domain trends in links

Research

Need	How this Actor helps
Fediverse studies	Bulk pull trending content for analysis
Misinfo tracking	Snapshot trends as they evolve

Product & marketing

Need	How this Actor helps
Content ideation	Surface what's getting reblogged today
Influencer discovery	Find high-engagement accounts on a topic

🔌 Automating Mastodon Trends Scraper

Run on a schedule and forward results to Make, Zapier, n8n, Slack, Airbyte, GitHub Actions, or Google Drive. Use Apify's webhook to push fresh trends into your analytics warehouse.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

Research

Academic studies of decentralized social networks rely on consistent trending snapshots. This Actor produces them on demand.

Personal

Build a "trending elsewhere" feed showing what's hot on instances you don't have an account on.

Non-profit

Activist groups can track movement-related hashtags across the Fediverse.

Experimentation

Build a TUI dashboard that polls 5 instances and shows real-time differences.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

• ChatGPT
• Claude
• Perplexity
• Microsoft Copilot

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I need a Mastodon account? No. The trends endpoints are fully public.

Q: Which instance should I pick? mastodon.social is the largest, but each instance has different trends. Try fosstodon.org for tech, mas.to for media, hachyderm.io for developers.

Q: Why are some instances empty? Trends are opt-in per instance. Smaller servers may have them disabled.

Q: Are private posts included? No. Only public visibility statuses appear in trends.

Q: Can I get trends from .social (Threads via ActivityPub)? Threads' federation is read-only and does not expose a trends API.

Q: How fresh is the data? Live - every request hits the instance directly.

Q: Rate limits? Mastodon's anonymous API allows ~300 requests per 5 minutes per IP. The Actor stays well under that.

Q: Can I scrape replies to a trending post? Not in this Actor; use a status-detail scraper.

Q: Why is content sometimes empty? Some content-warning posts mask the body; check spoilerText and sensitive.

Q: Does it work for trending links? Yes - set trendType: "links" to get article URLs, authors, and provider names.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Apify's integrations let you push results to Slack, Discord, Sheets, Airtable, BigQuery, S3, and 100+ more.

🔗 Recommended Actors

Actor	What it does
GitHub Trending Scraper	Daily trending repos
Hacker News Scraper	Top tech stories
Reddit Subreddit Scraper	Subreddit posts
Bluesky Posts Scraper	Bluesky feed

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form

⚠️ Disclaimer: independent tool, not affiliated with the Mastodon project or any specific instance. Only publicly available data is collected.