🐦 Twitter (X) User Scraper

Scrape public Twitter / X user profiles, followers, following counts and retweeter networks at scale — no login or API key required. Powered by the Apify platform with built-in auto proxy escalation, live result streaming and a smart fallback strategy for blocked requests.

⚡ Get clean, structured user data straight from x.com — verified status, follower/following counts, bio, location, account age, profile pictures, banners, professional badges, and an enriched about payload.

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✨ Why this actor

	Other scrapers	🐦 This actor
Login required	Often	❌ Never (optional)
Block handling	Manual	✅ Auto direct → datacenter → residential
Live results	❌ End-of-run only	✅ Streamed per-user
Pricing	Subscription	💸 Pay-per-event
Outputs	Single dataset	📦 Dataset + per-section KVS files

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🚀 Key features

• 🔗 Bulk URLs — paste a list of profile URLs or plain usernames.
• 🌐 No-proxy by default — automatically escalates to Apify DATACENTER then RESIDENTIAL proxies (with 3 retries) only when X blocks the connection.
• 📡 Live streaming — every captured user is pushed to the dataset immediately, so a crash mid-run never wipes your progress.
• 🪪 Rich profile mode — toggle 🪪 Include rich 'about' profile to fetch verification info, profile image shape, account creation source, etc.
• 👻 Unavailable users — optionally surface suspended / protected accounts.
• 📚 Per-section output — each input URL writes its own grouped JSON file to the run’s key-value store, plus a combined OUTPUT key.

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📥 Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
🔗 startUrls	array	–	Profile URLs or @usernames. Bulk supported.
🔁 getRetweeters	bool	true	Capture retweeters / related users from the timeline.
👥 getFollowers	bool	true	Include follower count on each record.
🤝 getFollowing	bool	true	Include friends (following) count.
🪪 getAbout	bool	true	Enrich with verification / account metadata.
👻 includeUnavailableUsers	bool	false	Surface suspended / protected accounts.
🎯 maxItems	int	100	Cap users collected per source URL.
⏱️ requestDelay	number	1.0	Float seconds between pagination requests.
🔐 authToken	string (secret)	–	Optional X auth_token cookie.
🛡️ csrfToken	string (secret)	–	Optional X ct0 cookie.
🌐 proxyConfiguration	object	direct	Defaults to no proxy. Overrides auto-escalation.

Example input

{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://twitter.com/elonmusk",
    "https://x.com/openai"
  ],
  "getRetweeters": true,
  "getFollowers": true,
  "getFollowing": true,
  "getAbout": true,
  "includeUnavailableUsers": false,
  "maxItems": 100,
  "requestDelay": 1.0,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": false }
}

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📤 Output

Each record is pushed live to the default dataset.

{
  "inputSource": "https://twitter.com/elonmusk",
  "type": "user",
  "userName": "elonmusk",
  "url": "https://x.com/elonmusk",
  "twitterUrl": "https://twitter.com/elonmusk",
  "id": "44196397",
  "name": "Elon Musk",
  "isVerified": true,
  "hasNftAvatar": false,
  "profilePicture": "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/.../m8mdWZCG_normal.jpg",
  "coverPicture": "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_banners/44196397/1774145451",
  "description": "https://t.co/dDtDyVssfm",
  "location": "",
  "followers": 239969983,
  "following": 1332,
  "protected": false,
  "createdAt": "Tue Jun 02 20:12:29 +0000 2009",
  "statusesCount": 102639,
  "mediaCount": 4489,
  "favouritesCount": 227779,
  "listedCount": 169028,
  "about": {
    "accountBasedIn": "",
    "locationAccurate": false,
    "profileImageShape": "Circle",
    "avatarUrl": "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/.../m8mdWZCG_normal.jpg",
    "usernameChangeCount": "0",
    "accountCreatedAt": "Tue Jun 02 20:12:29 +0000 2009",
    "accountSource": "",
    "verifiedSince": "-156836000000000"
  }
}

The run also writes a per-section JSON to the key-value store (source_01_elonmusk.json, source_02_openai.json, …) and a combined OUTPUT.json that mirrors the legacy grouped-by-name format.

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🚀 How to use (Apify Console)

1. Log in at https://console.apify.com → Actors.
2. Open 🐦 Twitter (X) User Scraper.
3. Paste your profile URLs into 🔗 Profile URLs.
4. Pick which networks / fields you want (🔁, 👥, 🤝, 🪪).
5. (Optional) Drop in an authToken + csrfToken for tougher targets.
6. Hit Start.
7. Watch the live log — it will tick 📥 @username — N followers per user.
8. Open the Dataset or Key-value store tab when the run completes.
9. Export to JSON / CSV / XLSX.

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🤖 Use via API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/<ACTOR_ID>/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{
       "startUrls": ["https://twitter.com/elonmusk"],
       "maxItems": 50
     }'

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🎯 Best use cases

• 🧠 Audience research — analyze who is engaging with a brand or person.
• 📈 Influencer discovery — find creators by exploring a competitor's retweeter / quoter graph.
• 🏷️ Lead generation — extract bios and external links from prospects.
• 🛡️ Brand safety — monitor verified status changes on managed accounts.

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💸 Pricing

This actor uses Apify's pay-per-event (PPE) model:

Event	When it fires
apify-actor-start	Once at run start (synthetic; Apify covers the first 5s).
row_result	One charge per user record written to the default dataset.

• No data → no charge. If a source fails or returns nothing, no row_result events are emitted, so you are not billed for empty runs.
• Skipped unavailable users and the per-section KVS mirror copies are not chargeable events — only successful default-dataset writes are.
• When your spend cap (ACTOR_MAX_TOTAL_CHARGE_USD) is reached, the actor stops pushing further items and exits cleanly — never with a failed-run.

Configure the row_result event's USD price (and any tiered discounts) in Apify Console → Actor → Publication → Monetization.

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❓ FAQ

Do I need an X account? No. The actor runs in guest mode out of the box. You can paste an auth_token + ct0 for harder cases — both stay encrypted in Apify Secrets.

Why does the first run take a few seconds? The actor warms up by fetching the X web client bundle so it can stay in sync with the latest GraphQL schema. After that, throughput is steady.

How do you handle rate limits? On a block we escalate proxies (direct → datacenter → residential) and rotate residential IPs up to three times before failing the source.

Will protected / suspended accounts appear? Only if you enable 👻 includeUnavailableUsers. They are tagged with isUnavailable: true and an unavailableReason.

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🛟 Support & feedback

• 🐞 Issues — open a ticket on the Apify Store actor page.
• 💬 Questions / feature requests — ping the maintainer via Apify chat.

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⚖️ Legal

Data is collected only from publicly available profile information. End users are responsible for compliance with applicable laws (GDPR, CCPA), the X Terms of Service and robots.txt.

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