Mastodon Hashtag & Account Scraper

Scrape public Mastodon instances for hashtag and account timelines without authentication. Multi-instance fallback covers federated reach gaps, and every status row includes engagement counts, media attachments, and language tags.

Useful for brand monitoring, social listening, journalism, and OSINT — particularly post-2026 as Twitter/X has fully closed its free API.

Compliance & intended use

This actor uses only the Mastodon public API (/api/v1/timelines/tag, /api/v1/timelines/public, /api/v1/accounts/{id}/statuses, /api/v1/accounts/lookup). No authentication required, no private content accessed, no AGPL obligation imposed (AGPL applies to server software, not API consumers — see docs/source-compliance.md).

Rate-limit handling: the actor paces requests at ≥ 250 ms per instance to stay within the public 300 requests / 5 minutes ceiling documented by Mastodon.

Per-instance ToS may vary. The actor surfaces a coverage_warning when an instance returns 401/403/404/5xx on a public endpoint (admin may have disabled it) instead of retrying or pretending to have data.

Quickstart

Provide one or more of instances, accounts, or hashtags. Results land in the Apify Dataset (or POST to a webhook).

{
  "instances": ["fosstodon.org", "hachyderm.io"],
  "hashtags": ["fediverse", "rustlang"],
  "maxStatusesPerSource": 40
}

Input examples

Example 1 — hashtag scan across 3 instances (federated coverage)

{
  "instances": ["fosstodon.org", "hachyderm.io", "infosec.exchange"],
  "hashtags": ["security", "ciso"],
  "maxStatusesPerSource": 40,
  "delivery": "dataset"
}

Example 2 — track a specific account

{
  "accounts": ["Gargron@mastodon.social"],
  "maxStatusesPerSource": 50,
  "delivery": "dataset"
}

Example 3 — instance public timeline + webhook delivery

{
  "instances": ["fosstodon.org"],
  "maxStatusesPerSource": 40,
  "delivery": "webhook",
  "webhookUrl": "https://your-listener.example.com/mastodon"
}

Output

Each row is a normalized status:

Field	Type	Description
statusId	string	Mastodon status ID on the source instance.
instanceHost	string	The instance that served this status.
accountHandle	string	user@instance form.
accountDisplayName	string	Display name.
content	string	HTML content.
contentText	string	Plain-text convenience extract.
createdAt	string	ISO timestamp.
language	string | null	BCP-47 tag declared by the author.
repliesCount / reblogsCount / favouritesCount	integer	Engagement counts (per-instance, not federated total).
mediaAttachments	array	Each attachment: { type, url, description }.
tags	array	Hashtag strings.
mentions	array	Mentioned account handles.
visibility	string	public / unlisted (private/direct never reached).
url	string	Canonical status URL.
coverage_warning	object | null	Set when an instance / endpoint was unreachable; explains why this row is degraded or absent.

Sample output

{
  "meta": {
    "generatedAt": "2026-05-08T09:00:00.000Z",
    "instanceCount": 3,
    "statusCount": 87,
    "warnings": []
  },
  "statuses": [
    {
      "statusId": "111234567890123456",
      "instanceHost": "fosstodon.org",
      "accountHandle": "alice@fosstodon.org",
      "accountDisplayName": "Alice",
      "content": "<p>Just published a write-up on <a href=\"https://fosstodon.org/tags/security\">#security</a>...</p>",
      "createdAt": "2026-05-08T08:42:11.000Z",
      "language": "en",
      "repliesCount": 3,
      "reblogsCount": 12,
      "favouritesCount": 28,
      "mediaAttachments": [],
      "tags": ["security"],
      "mentions": [],
      "visibility": "public",
      "url": "https://fosstodon.org/@alice/111234567890123456"
    }
  ]
}

Federated coverage caveats

• A hashtag query on instance A only returns statuses that A has federated. To approximate global coverage, query 3–5 active instances (Mastodon does not have a centralised hashtag index).
• Different Fediverse software (Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, GoToSocial) exposes the same v1 surface but with implementation differences. The actor targets the Mastodon-compatible subset; non-compliant responses surface as coverage_warning.
• Instance admins may disable public endpoints. The actor records this rather than guessing.
• Reblog/favourite counts are per-instance, not Fediverse-wide.

Tips

• For brand monitoring, query 3–5 instances most active in your audience's region (e.g. mstdn.jp for Japanese audiences, fosstodon.org for tech, infosec.exchange for security).
• Hashtag timelines are richer than account-only scans for trend detection.
• Use webhook delivery to push aggregates into research / analytics pipelines.

Related actors

Social listening cluster — adjacent Apify scrapers from this account:

• Subreddit & Comment Scraper — Public Reddit content with a similar query/result shape.

Compliance reference

See docs/source-compliance.md for full rate-limit, AGPL, and per-instance ToS handling.

⭐ Was this helpful?

If this actor saved you time, please leave a ★ rating on Apify Store.

Bug report or feature request? Open an issue on the Issues tab.