TikTok Profile Scraper – Posts, Views & Followers

Scrape any public TikTok profile for what it has posted lately — caption, hashtags, mentions, views, likes, comments, shares, the video file, photo carousels, the sound used and the full account record with its exact follower count. Up to 13 latest posts per profile, newest first, 45 fields each. Built for social media monitoring, influencer research, competitor tracking and hashtag analysis across many accounts at once.

$0.50 per 1,000 profiles read — Apify platform usage and proxy included, nothing else to pay. The charge is per profile and does not depend on how many posts come back, so a full read and a check that finds one new post cost the same. A profile that cannot be read is never charged.

No login, no cookies, no API key, no account of yours involved. There is no session to keep alive and nothing of yours to get restricted.

Unofficial. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by TikTok or ByteDance.

Read this before you start: up to 13 posts per profile, usually 10 to 12. That is what TikTok shows a logged-out reader, not a setting — there is no cursor to ask for more. This is built to check many accounts often. If you need one creator's back catalogue, this is the wrong tool.

Features

• Latest posts per public profile — up to 13, newest first, 45 fields each.
• Full engagement metrics — play count, likes, comments and shares on every post.
• Exact follower counts — read from the profile page, not TikTok's rounded embed figure, with followersAreExact on every row saying which you got.
• Video and photo posts both handled — a video file URL and cover, or an images array for a photo carousel.
• Hashtags and mentions from TikTok's own entity list, not guessed from the caption — so a mention returns the handle actually tagged, not the display name TikTok writes into the text.
• The sound used — musicName on every post.
• On-screen sticker text — stickerTexts captures overlaid captions.
• Pinned posts flagged — isPinned, and rows sorted by real date, so an old pinned post never passes for the newest.
• Handles or URLs — bare nasa, @nasa, a profile link, or even a link to one of the account's videos.
• Incremental polling — onlyPostsNewerThan takes 3 days, 12 hours or an ISO date.
• A fast, light listing mode — turn post details off to skip one request per post.
• Runs stay green. A missing, private or mistyped account is a row, not a failed run.

Input

{
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.tiktok.com/@nasa" }],  // profile or video URLs
  "handles": ["nasa", "@natgeo"],   // or bare handles — both lists are read together
  "maxPosts": 13,                   // latest posts per profile (max 13)
  "onlyPostsNewerThan": "3 days",   // optional window: "12 hours", "3 days", "2026-08-01"
  "includePostDetails": true,       // one extra request per post for engagement counts
  "includeProfileDetails": true,    // read the profile page for exact follower counts
  "proxy": { "useApifyProxy": true }
}

Either input works alone, or both together:

Input	Type	Default	What it does
startUrls	array	—	Public TikTok profile URLs. A link to one of the account's videos works too — it is read as the account.
handles	array	—	Handles without the URL: nasa or @nasa. Read together with startUrls.
maxPosts	integer	13	Latest posts per account. Capped at 13 — TikTok renders one batch to a logged-out reader. Lowering it does not make the run cheaper.
onlyPostsNewerThan	string	—	Keep only posts after a window or ISO date.
includePostDetails	boolean	true	One extra request per post for likes, comments, shares, TikTok's own posted time, the sound, hashtags and carousel images.
includeProfileDetails	boolean	true	Read the profile page for exact follower and like counts instead of the embed's rounded figures.
proxy	object	Apify datacenter	Datacenter is enough — TikTok's embed served every datacenter request tested without a challenge.

Output

One row per post, newest first. Every row carries the full account record, so a row stands on its own.

{
  "id": "7675478347278863629",
  "url": "https://www.tiktok.com/@nasa/video/7675478347278863629",
  "type": "video",
  "caption": "Thanks a million! 🌖🚀",
  "hashtags": [],
  "mentions": [],
  "timestamp": "2026-08-18T20:56:38.000Z",
  "isPinned": false,
  "playCount": 1500000,
  "likeCount": 177100,
  "commentCount": 8831,
  "shareCount": 4208,
  "ownerUsername": "nasa",
  "videoUrl": "https://…",
  "coverUrl": "https://…",
  "musicName": "original sound - NASA",
  "stickerTexts": ["us realizing there's already 1M of you following us"],
  "author": {
    "username": "nasa",
    "nickname": "NASA",
    "followerCount": 1162398,
    "followersAreExact": true,
    "heartCount": 5432780,
    "postCount": 32,
    "isVerified": true
  }
}

Photo posts come back as "type": "photo" with an images array instead of a video file. Hashtags and mentions are read from TikTok's own entity list, not guessed from the caption — TikTok writes a mention into the caption using the account's display name, so a post tagging @wash_wizards reads "@Washington Wizards" in the text. The list gives you the handle that was actually tagged.

How to use

From Apify Console

1. Open the Actor and click Try for free / Start.
2. Paste profile links into Profile URLs, or a column of bare handles into Handles — the two lists are read together.
3. Leave Read each post's full detail and Read exact follower counts on unless you specifically want a fast listing; neither changes the price.
4. To poll for what is new, set Only posts newer than to a window shorter than the gap between your runs.
5. Click Start, then open the Dataset tab and export as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Batch your accounts — fifty handles in one run is much cheaper per profile than fifty runs of one.

From the API

curl -s "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/simple.actor~tiktok-profile-posts/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"handles": ["nasa"]}'

Monitoring a list of creators, with the JavaScript client:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('simple.actor/tiktok-profile-posts').call({
    handles: ['nasa', 'natgeo', 'nba'],
    onlyPostsNewerThan: '24 hours',
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

for (const row of items) {
    if (row.error) { console.warn(row.error, row.errorDescription); continue; }
    if (row.isPinned) continue;            // pinned posts can be months old
    console.log(row.ownerUsername, row.playCount, row.caption);
}

Use cases

• Monitor creator and competitor accounts — poll a list of handles on a schedule with onlyPostsNewerThan and see new posts and their engagement as they land.
• Influencer research and vetting — exact follower counts, total likes, post counts and recent engagement across a shortlist in one run.
• Engagement benchmarking — compare views, likes, comments and shares per post across accounts in the same niche.
• Hashtag and sound tracking — hashtags and mentions come from TikTok's own entity list, and musicName shows which sounds an account is riding.
• Campaign and brand-mention monitoring — check which accounts a creator actually tagged, by handle rather than display name.
• Media archiving — collect video files, covers and photo-carousel images (download promptly — the URLs expire within hours).

Usage notes

A pinned post is not the newest post. TikTok shows pinned posts first whatever their age — one account tested pins a post a month older than the rest. Rows are sorted by date and the pinned ones are flagged isPinned, so you can sort or filter without being caught by it.

videoUrl expires. TikTok signs its media links with a few hours' validity. Download the file promptly if you need it; store url as the permanent address.

Follower counts: exact or rounded. TikTok's embed rounds — it reports an account with 1,162,398 followers as "1,200,000", which will not move as the account grows. This Actor reads the profile page for the real figure, and every row says which it got in author.followersAreExact. If that is false, the counts are rounded to two significant figures.

Views are always rounded. TikTok itself rounds playCount; there is no source for an exact figure.

Posted times are exact when post details are read. With details off, the time is recovered from the post's own ID — accurate to about a minute, and flagged timestampIsApproximate.

Private accounts return an error, not an empty list. So do accounts that no longer exist. If you run several accounts at once, one that cannot be read becomes its own row carrying error and errorDescription, and the rest still deliver. An empty result always means "read fine, nothing to report".

The run succeeds even when an account cannot be read. An account that does not exist, one that is private, a string TikTok could never have issued as a handle, or a window reaching further back than one batch shows — each is an answer about that account, and each comes back as a row on a run that ends green. A run fails only if not one account could be reached at all, which means TikTok or the proxy rather than your accounts.

So the error rows are the failure channel, not the run status:

If your pipeline acts on emptiness — marking an account quiet, retiring a handle — key off the presence of an error row, never off whether the run succeeded.

error	what happened
not_found	no such account, or TikTok refused the handle
private	the account exists but its posts need a login
bad_input	the text given could never be a TikTok handle, or a date could not be read
window_too_wide	the window reaches further back than one batch shows — use a shorter window, or run more often
read_failed	TikTok could not be reached; this is the only kind that can fail a run

What it costs

$0.50 per 1,000 profiles read. One charge per profile, whatever the run finds. Posts are free: reading a profile costs the same whether thirteen posts come back or one, so charging for them would bill you for something that is not what costs.

Two things follow from that:

• Batch your accounts. Fifty handles in one run is much cheaper per profile than fifty runs of one, because each run pays for its own startup.
• Take all the posts. Asking for fewer saves you nothing; the price is for reading the profile.

Because the charge is per profile, what you pay per post depends on how many come back:

Posts returned	Works out at
13 — a full batch	$0.04 per 1,000 posts
11 — a typical account	$0.05 per 1,000 posts
1 — a poll that found one new post	$0.50 per 1,000 posts

If you are polling with Only posts newer than and most checks come back empty, budget by profiles checked, not posts collected — that is what you are billed on. A profile that cannot be read is never charged, so a list carrying dead or private accounts costs only for the live ones.

Turning off Read each post's full detail makes a run faster and lighter but does not change the price, so leave it on unless you genuinely only want a listing.

FAQ

Is scraping TikTok legal? This Actor reads posts that are publicly visible to anyone without logging in, through TikTok's own embed surface. It does not log in, use cookies, or reach private accounts. TikTok's Terms of Service restrict automated collection, so check the platform's ToS and your own obligations, particularly around personal data, before using it.

Do I need a TikTok login, cookies or an API key? No. There is no session to keep alive and nothing of yours to get restricted.

Can I scrape a creator's whole back catalogue? No. TikTok renders one batch to a logged-out reader — usually 10 to 12 posts, 13 at most — and offers no cursor to ask for more. This Actor is built to check many accounts often; for one creator's full history it is the wrong tool.

Does it support pagination? There is no next page to request, so no. Run the Actor on a schedule with onlyPostsNewerThan to follow an account over time instead.

Why is the follower count rounded? TikTok's embed rounds to two significant figures — it reports 1,162,398 as "1,200,000", which will not move as the account grows. includeProfileDetails is on by default and reads the profile page for the real figure. Every row says which it got in author.followersAreExact.

Are view counts exact? No. TikTok itself rounds playCount, and there is no source for an exact figure.

Why is the newest row not the account's newest post? It is — but pinned posts are the trap. TikTok shows them first whatever their age, so rows here are sorted by real date and pinned ones flagged isPinned. Filter on that field rather than taking the first row.

Can it read private accounts? No. A private account comes back as a row with error: "private", and the run still succeeds.

Why did my run succeed when an account was not read? By design. A missing account, a private one, a string TikTok could never have issued as a handle, or a window reaching further back than one batch shows are all answers about that account, not faults — each is a row on a green run. Only read_failed on every account fails a run, which means TikTok or the proxy rather than your accounts.

Do I save money by asking for fewer posts? No. The charge is per profile, so reading a profile costs the same whether thirteen posts come back or one. Take all the posts.