🔍 Facebook Hashtag Search Scraper

Scrape Facebook hashtag search results at scale — posts, reels, reactions, comments, shares, attachments and full Reels metadata. Bulk hashtag input, automatic proxy fallback, and live streaming output. Built for marketers, growth teams, researchers and trend hunters.

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🌟 Why Choose Us?

• ⚡ Blazing fast — async-first scraper with batched per-video enrichment.
• 🧱 Production grade — proxy fallback chain (none → datacenter → residential) keeps you collecting even when Facebook tightens up.
• 📡 Live output — every post lands in your dataset the moment it's scraped; a mid-run failure never costs you the data you already paid for.
• 🎬 Rich Reels metadata — Video posts are auto-enriched with full FB Shorts metadata (DRM info, muted segments, thumbnails, soundtracks, owners and more).
• 🏷️ Bulk hashtags — run dozens of hashtags in a single execution.
• 🎨 Beautiful dataset view — output table renders with labeled columns and emoji headers in the Apify Console.

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🎯 Key Features

• 🔎 Hashtag and hashtag-URL input (mix and match)
• 📦 Per-hashtag max-post limit
• 🍪 Cookie-based authentication
• 🌐 Automatic proxy escalation if Facebook starts blocking
• 🎞️ Full Reels / FB Shorts metadata for video attachments
• ❤️ Reactions, comments, shares, views per post
• 🕒 Post timestamps and authors with avatars
• 💾 Live dataset streaming — every post pushed as soon as it's extracted

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📥 Input

{
  "searchQueries": ["football", "travel"],
  "maxItems": 50,
  "c_user": "YOUR_C_USER",
  "xs": "YOUR_XS_TOKEN",
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": false }
}

Field	Type	Description
searchQueries	string[]	🏷️ One or more hashtags (football) or hashtag URLs (https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/football).
maxItems	integer	📦 Max posts to collect per hashtag. Default 50.
c_user	string	🍪 Your Facebook c_user cookie (numeric user ID). Required.
xs	string	🍪 Your Facebook xs cookie (URL-encoded session token). Required.
proxyConfiguration	object	🌐 Apify proxy config. Default = no proxy. The actor automatically falls back to datacenter → residential if Facebook starts blocking.

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📤 Output

Each pushed dataset record:

{
  "searchQuery": "football",
  "postId": "1017535753998725",
  "user": {
    "name": "খেলাযোগ",
    "id": "100072269304011",
    "url": "https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100072269304011",
    "avatar": "https://scontent.../profile.jpg"
  },
  "url": "https://www.facebook.com/1017535753998725",
  "text": "আর নয় অপেক্ষা…",
  "topReactions": { "Like": 269, "Love": 89, "Care": 14, "Haha": 3 },
  "commentsCount": 15,
  "sharesCount": 0,
  "videoViewCount": 1435,
  "time": "2026-05-14 13:30:39",
  "timestamp": 1778743839,
  "attachments": [
    {
      "deduplication_key": "",
      "target": { "__typename": "Video", "id": "2193122174769647" },
      "__typename": "StoryAttachment",
      "style_list": ["fb_shorts_creation", "video", "fallback"],
      "styles": { /* full Reels metadata */ },
      "media": { /* video media blob */ },
      "all_subattachments": { "nodes": [] }
    }
  ]
}

Field	Description
searchQuery	🏷️ The hashtag that produced this post.
postId	🆔 Facebook post ID.
user	👤 Post author (name, id, profile url, avatar).
url	🔗 Canonical post URL.
text	📝 Post caption / message.
topReactions	❤️ Reaction counts keyed by reaction name.
commentsCount / sharesCount	💬🔁 Engagement counts.
videoViewCount	👁️ Total video views (videos / Reels only).
time / timestamp	🕒⏰ Post creation time (formatted + unix).
attachments	📎 Full attachments array, including rich Reels metadata for videos.

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🚀 How to Use (Apify Console)

1. 🔐 Log in at console.apify.com → Actors.
2. 🔎 Find Facebook Hashtag Search Scraper in your actor list and open it.
3. 🍪 Paste your Facebook cookies (use Cookie-Editor or EditThisCookie to export — at minimum c_user and xs).
4. 🏷️ Enter one or more hashtags or hashtag URLs.
5. 🌐 Leave proxy on default (no proxy) unless you specifically need one — the actor escalates automatically if needed.
6. ▶️ Click Start.
7. 📊 Watch logs stream live with engagement stats per scraped post.
8. 💾 Open the Output tab and export to JSON / CSV / XLSX.

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🤖 Use via API / MCP

Start a run:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/<ACTOR_ID>/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{
       "searchQueries": ["football"],
       "maxItems": 50,
       "cookies": [
         { "name": "c_user", "value": "..." },
         { "name": "xs", "value": "..." }
       ]
     }'

Run and wait (sync) — get the dataset back immediately:

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 '{"searchQueries":["travel"], "maxItems":20, "cookies":[...]}'

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💡 Best Use Cases

• 📈 Trend & topic research — capture what people post under any hashtag right now.
• 🎯 Audience analysis — pull reaction / comment patterns for content benchmarking.
• 🧠 Content ideation — see what top-performing posts in your niche look like.
• 📰 Real-time monitoring — track breaking-topic hashtags and surface viral posts.
• 🎬 Creator research — pull full Reels metadata for short-form video studies.

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💰 Pricing

This actor uses pay-per-event billing. You pay for:

Event	Description
Actor start	One-time platform start charge.
Scraped post	One charge per post written to the output dataset.

Runs stop cleanly when your charge limit is reached — you keep everything scraped up to that point.

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Where do I get the cookies? Use a Chrome / Firefox cookie-export extension (Cookie-Editor, EditThisCookie). Open facebook.com while logged in, export cookies for the facebook.com domain, and paste them into the cookies input. Only c_user and xs are strictly required.

Why do I need cookies at all? Facebook's hashtag search results are only returned to authenticated sessions. Without valid cookies the search endpoint returns no usable data.

My run shows "switching to datacenter proxy" / "switching to residential proxy". That's the automatic fallback chain at work — Facebook blocked the direct request and the actor escalated. Output continues normally. You can also start at residential directly via the proxy input.

Can I run multiple hashtags in one run? Yes — provide them all in searchQueries. Each hashtag is processed sequentially, with a clear log section per hashtag and live output to the same dataset.

Will my data survive a crash? Yes. Every post is pushed to the dataset the moment it's scraped. A mid-run failure leaves a partial dataset, never an empty one.

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🛟 Support & Feedback

🐞 Found a bug? Have a feature request? Open an issue on the actor's Apify page — we read every report.

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⚖️ Legal & Compliance

• 📂 Only public hashtag-search results are collected.
• 🔒 Never scrape behind authentication you haven't been authorized to use.
• 🌐 You are responsible for complying with Facebook's Terms of Service, GDPR / CCPA, and any local data-protection laws applicable to your use case.