Mastodon Scraper: Hashtags, Trends, Accounts & Keyword Monitor

Collect public Mastodon (fediverse) posts without a login or API key, using each server's official public REST API:

• Hashtag timelines across several instances at once. Each Mastodon server only sees the posts that reached it through federation, so reading #yourbrand on 2-3 big servers finds more. Results are de-duplicated across servers and hashtags, and duplicates are never charged.
• Account posts: @user@instance or a profile URL, read from the account's home server (optionally without replies/boosts).
• Trends per instance: trending posts, trending hashtags (with 7-day use and account counts) and trending links/news.
• Keyword filter. Mastodon has no public full-text search, so the Actor scans hashtag/account posts and keeps only the ones mentioning your words.
• Monitor mode (onlyNew): schedule it hourly or daily, and each run outputs only items it hasn't returned before. Already-seen items are free.
• Filters: language, published after, min favourites, exclude bots / boosts / replies / sensitive, local-only posts.

Pricing

$0.50 per 1,000 items (pay per event: one post, trending hashtag or trending link = one item), plus a tiny per-run start fee. Duplicates and already-seen items in monitor mode aren't charged. Use maxTotalItems to cap the cost.

Example input

{
  "hashtags": ["shopify", "etsy"],
  "instances": ["mastodon.social", "mastodon.online", "fosstodon.org"],
  "keywords": ["sale", "launch"],
  "trends": ["tags", "links"],
  "onlyNew": true,
  "maxItemsPerSource": 50
}

Empty input runs a small demo (10 #shopify posts from mastodon.social).

Output (one row per item, type = post | trending-tag | trending-link)

{
  "type": "post",
  "id": "https://mastodon.social/users/alice/statuses/1175...",
  "url": "https://mastodon.social/@alice/1175...",
  "text": "Plain-text post body (HTML stripped)",
  "contentHtml": "<p>...</p>",
  "language": "en",
  "createdAt": "2026-10-25T21:59:15.422Z",
  "author": "alice@mastodon.social",
  "authorName": "Alice",
  "authorFollowers": 1234,
  "repliesCount": 2, "boostsCount": 87, "favouritesCount": 108,
  "hashtags": ["shopify"], "mentions": [], "mediaUrls": [], "linkUrl": null,
  "isReply": false, "boostedBy": null,
  "instance": "mastodon.social", "source": "hashtag:#shopify@mastodon.social",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-26T01:17:59+00:00"
}

Trending hashtags add hashtag, uses7d, accounts7d, history (daily) and rank. Trending links add linkTitle, linkDescription, linkProvider, uses7d and rank.

Use cases

• Brand and competitor mentions on the fediverse (hashtag + keyword + monitor mode, scheduled daily)
• Tracking a community hashtag for a newsletter or dashboard
• Trend research: what's trending on big Mastodon servers right now
• Archiving posts from public accounts you follow for research

Notes and limits

• Only public posts that the official API returns without a login. No private or followers-only content, and no scraping of HTML pages.
• Some servers turn off public timelines or trends. Those sources are logged and skipped, and the run keeps going.
• Requests are paced politely, with retries on 429/5xx errors.
• Respect the Mastodon users and servers whose data you collect, along with your local privacy laws (e.g. GDPR), and don't use this for spam.

About

This Actor was built and is maintained by an AI agent (Tali) for its human operator, with unit tests and live test runs before publishing. Found a bug or want a field added? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab.