🔍 Facebook Hashtag Search Scraper — Find Posts, Reels & Engagement by Hashtag

Search Facebook by hashtag and export every matching post with its text, author, direct URL, reaction breakdown, comment and share counts, video views, timestamp and full attachments — including enriched Reels metadata with soundtrack, duration and share links.

Enter plain hashtags or full Facebook hashtag URLs, in bulk, and set a per-hashtag post cap.

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What you get

📝 Post	❤️ Engagement	📎 Attachments
Post ID and direct URL	Top reactions breakdown	Photos and albums
Full post text	Comments count	Videos with playback URLs
Author / page details	Shares count	Reels with full metadata
Publication time + timestamp	Video view count	Soundtrack and track title
Originating hashtag		Shared links and previews
Run status		Thumbnails and durations

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Key features

• Hashtags or hashtag URLs. Type football, #travel, or paste https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/football — all three are accepted, in bulk, in the same list.
• Full Reels enrichment. Video attachments are enriched through Facebook's own Reels query, so you get playback URLs, duration, soundtrack information, track title, album art, original-audio flag, reshare context and shareable URL — not just a thumbnail.
• Reaction breakdown, not a single number. topReactions shows how a post was received, which distinguishes genuine enthusiasm from polite acknowledgement.
• Sticky residential networking. Once a fallback engages, the authenticated session stays on one stable residential IP for the whole run. Facebook's anti-abuse system expects a consistent IP for a logged-in session, and bouncing between IPs is what triggers "suspicious activity" account locks — this design specifically avoids that.
• Account-checkpoint detection. If Facebook has locked the account, the Actor detects it immediately and reports it instead of looping and making things worse.
• Never a failed run. Missing or expired cookies, or a locked account, produce a clearly-labelled diagnostic record and a SUCCEEDED run — not a crash. The diagnostic row is not charged.
• Live streaming output — each post is pushed to the dataset as it is scraped.
• Automatic proxy chain — none → datacenter → residential, with up to 3 retries.

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Use cases

• Campaign and hashtag tracking — measure reach and engagement on a branded hashtag.
• Trend research — see what is being posted under a topic right now, and how it performs.
• Competitor monitoring — track hashtags your competitors own or target.
• UGC discovery — find user-generated content mentioning your campaign hashtag.
• Content research — the best-performing posts for a hashtag show what works in that niche.
• Reels and audio trends — soundtrack metadata reveals which audio is driving reach.
• Event coverage — collect posts from an event hashtag as they appear.
• Lead generation — authors posting under commercial hashtags are often businesses worth contacting.

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How it works

1. You supply hashtags or hashtag URLs and your Facebook session cookies.
2. Each input is normalised to a hashtag slug (URLs are parsed and validated).
3. The hashtag feed is queried through Facebook's own GraphQL interface using your authenticated session.
4. Each post is extracted into a flat record with author, text, engagement and attachments.
5. Video attachments are enriched through the Reels query for full media metadata.
6. Rows stream into the dataset until your per-hashtag cap is reached; if cookies are invalid or the account is locked, a diagnostic record explains exactly what to fix.

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Quick start

1. Log in to facebook.com in your browser.
2. Open DevTools → Application → Cookies → www.facebook.com.
3. Copy c_user (numeric ID) and xs into the Actor's fields.
4. Enter your hashtags and set Max Posts Per Hashtag.
5. Click Start, then export the Output tab as JSON (recommended) or CSV.

Minimal input

{
  "searchQueries": ["football"],
  "maxItems": 25,
  "c_user": "<YOUR_C_USER_COOKIE>",
  "xs": "<YOUR_XS_COOKIE>"
}

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Input configuration

Field	Type	Default	Description
searchQueries	array	["football"]	Required. Hashtags (football, #travel) or full Facebook hashtag URLs (https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/football). Bulk input supported.
maxItems	integer	10	Maximum posts to scrape per hashtag.
c_user	string	—	Your Facebook c_user cookie — the numeric user ID. Needed to collect posts.
xs	string	—	Your Facebook xs cookie (URL-encoded session token) from the same session.
proxyConfiguration	object	no proxy	Runs without a proxy by default. On a rejection or rate limit, falls back to datacenter, then residential (3 retries). Once residential engages, it stays for the rest of the run.

⚠️ Cookies are credentials. c_user and xs grant access to that Facebook account. Use a dedicated secondary account, never share the values, and note that automated activity can lead Facebook to lock accounts. Both must come from the same session, and cookies rotate — refresh them if a run returns only a diagnostic record.

Cookies are not schema-required so the run always finishes cleanly with an actionable message rather than a hard failure — but you do need them to collect posts.

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Output data

One row per post.

Field	Type	Description
postId	string	Facebook post ID.
url	string	Direct link to the post.
text	string	Post text.
user	object	Author / page details.
topReactions	object	Reaction breakdown for the post.
commentsCount	number	Comments.
sharesCount	number	Shares.
videoViewCount	number	Video views, where applicable.
time	string	Human-readable publication time.
timestamp	number	Unix timestamp.
attachments	array	Photos, albums, videos, Reels and shared links (see below).
searchQuery	string	The hashtag that produced this row.
status	string	Row status — present on diagnostic records.
message	string	Explanatory message on diagnostic records.

Attachment types

Photos, albums, external link shares, life events, videos and Reels. Reels attachments carry enriched metadata: playback video URLs, duration, video owner, audio availability, soundtrack_info, track_title, music_album_art_uri, is_original_audio_on_facebook, first-frame thumbnail, reshare context, shareable_url and branded-content info.

Example output (trimmed)

{
  "searchQuery": "football",
  "postId": "1234567890123456",
  "url": "https://www.facebook.com/examplepage/posts/1234567890123456",
  "text": "What a finish to the season. Full highlights below 👇 #football",
  "user": { "name": "Example Sports", "id": "100064123456789" },
  "topReactions": { "LIKE": 4821, "LOVE": 1204, "WOW": 318 },
  "commentsCount": 612,
  "sharesCount": 240,
  "videoViewCount": 184000,
  "time": "2026-08-06T14:22:31Z",
  "timestamp": 1786451351,
  "attachments": [
    {
      "video": { "__typename": "Video", "id": "998877665544", "playable_duration_in_ms": 41000 },
      "track_title": "Original audio",
      "is_original_audio_on_facebook": true,
      "shareable_url": "https://www.facebook.com/reel/998877665544"
    }
  ],
  "status": "ok"
}

Illustrative values — a live run returns current Facebook data.

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Usage examples

Track a campaign hashtag

{
  "searchQueries": ["yourcampaign", "yourbrand"],
  "maxItems": 200,
  "c_user": "<YOUR_C_USER_COOKIE>",
  "xs": "<YOUR_XS_COOKIE>"
}

Several topics in one run

{
  "searchQueries": [
    "football",
    "https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/premierleague",
    "#transfernews"
  ],
  "maxItems": 100
}

Reels and audio trend research

Run any hashtag, then filter the export for rows whose attachments contain track_title — grouping by soundtrack shows which audio is spreading.

Find the best-performing posts

Export to CSV and sort by sharesCount and videoViewCount — shares in particular indicate content people actively pass on.

Event coverage

Save the event hashtag as a Task, attach an hourly Schedule during the event, and deduplicate on postId for a live feed.

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Run it from your own code

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN>")

run = client.actor("scraperx/facebook-hashtag-search-scraper").call(run_input={
    "searchQueries": ["football"],
    "maxItems": 100,
    "c_user": "<YOUR_C_USER_COOKIE>",
    "xs": "<YOUR_XS_COOKIE>",
})

for post in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    if post.get("postId"):
        print(post["sharesCount"], "|", post["url"], "|", post["text"][:60])
    else:
        print("DIAGNOSTIC:", post.get("message"))

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN>' });

const run = await client.actor('scraperx/facebook-hashtag-search-scraper').call({
    searchQueries: ['football'],
    maxItems: 100,
    c_user: '<YOUR_C_USER_COOKIE>',
    xs: '<YOUR_XS_COOKIE>',
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/scraperx~facebook-hashtag-search-scraper/runs?token=<YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchQueries":["football"],"maxItems":100,"c_user":"<YOUR_C_USER_COOKIE>","xs":"<YOUR_XS_COOKIE>"}'

Integrations

Push posts into Google Sheets, Airtable, Slack, Make, Zapier, Google Drive or your own endpoint via webhooks, and use Schedules for continuous hashtag monitoring.

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Pricing

Pay-per-event: a small Actor-start charge plus a charge per post row delivered. Diagnostic records are not charged — if a run cannot authenticate, you pay nothing for the explanation.

Current rates are on the Pricing tab of this Actor's page, and Apify shows an estimate before and during every run. Residential proxy traffic, when the fallback engages, is billed separately by the platform.

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Limits & good to know

• Cookies are needed to collect posts. Without valid ones you get a single diagnostic record explaining what to fix — a clean, un-charged outcome rather than a failure.
• maxItems is per hashtag, so three hashtags at 100 each can return up to 300 rows.
• Facebook hashtag feeds are finite. A narrow hashtag may return fewer posts than your cap.
• Use a dedicated secondary account. Facebook locks accounts that look automated; the sticky-IP design reduces that risk but does not eliminate it.
• If the account is locked, the Actor reports it immediately — resolve the checkpoint in a browser before running again.
• Public posts only. Posts restricted to friends or private groups are not accessible.
• Media URLs point at Facebook's CDN and expire — download assets promptly if you need the files.
• Default run options are 4 GB memory and a 1-hour timeout — raise the timeout for many hashtags at high caps.

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FAQ

Why do I need Facebook cookies? Facebook's hashtag feeds are not available to anonymous visitors. The Actor uses your session exactly as your browser does.

Where do I find c_user and xs? Log in to facebook.com → DevTools → Application → Cookies → www.facebook.com → copy both values.

Can I paste hashtag URLs instead of hashtags? Yes — plain hashtags, #hashtags and full Facebook hashtag URLs all work, mixed in the same list.

My dataset has one row with a message and no post. Why? That is the diagnostic record: cookies are missing, expired, or the account is locked. It is not charged, and the message says exactly what to fix.

Do I get Reels data? Yes — video attachments are enriched with playback URLs, duration, soundtrack, track title, album art and share links.

Will this get my account banned? Automated access always carries risk. Use a dedicated secondary account, keep caps modest, and let the sticky residential session work rather than forcing IP changes.

Do I need to configure a proxy? No. The Actor escalates automatically and then stays on a stable residential IP.

Which export format should I use? JSON — attachments, user and topReactions are nested. CSV works for text and engagement columns.

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Legal & responsible use

This Actor reads public Facebook hashtag feeds through your own logged-in session — the same posts you can see in your browser. It does not post, comment, or access private content. Post text, media, author names and profile pictures are personal data and remain the property of their authors. Ensure your use complies with Facebook's Terms of Service, copyright, and GDPR or comparable regulations. You are responsible for the account whose cookies you supply, including Facebook's restrictions on automated access.

Support

Need comment extraction, extra fields, or a custom Facebook monitoring pipeline? Open an issue on the Issues tab of this Actor.