Facebook Post Scraper for Apify

Scrape public Facebook posts from pages, groups, and profiles with this Apify Actor.
This Facebook scraper extracts top-level post data like text, date, post URL, likes, shares, comment count, and profile details.

What this Facebook scraper does

• Scrapes top-level Facebook posts from public URLs.
• Supports Facebook page scraping, group scraping, and profile scraping.
• Supports optional in-run enrichment (enrichmentMode) so you can keep one Actor and toggle depth per run.
• Uses a resilient two-step strategy: scrapling first, pydoll-python fallback.
• Saves structured results to the Apify dataset for API use, JSON, CSV, Excel, and integrations.

Typical use cases

• Social media monitoring and brand tracking
• Competitor content analysis on public Facebook pages
• Lead research from public Facebook groups and creators
• Building datasets for BI dashboards and trend analysis

Input

• targets (array): Facebook URL, page name, or group name
• startUrls (array): one or more public Facebook URLs (backward-compatible)
• maxPosts (integer): maximum posts to return per URL (1-200)
• maxScrollRounds (integer): optional override for dynamic scrolling depth (0-40, 0 means auto)
• performanceMode (string): fast (default), balanced, or maxCoverage
• enrichmentMode (string): none (default), basic, or deep
• maxEnrichedPosts (integer): max posts per URL to process with enrichment (0-200)
• maxCommentsPerPost (integer): max comment text samples per post in deep mode (0-200)
• maxCommentExpansionRounds (integer): maximum expand/scroll passes for comment and reply loading in deep mode (1-20)
• includeReplies (boolean): when true, deep-mode browser extraction attempts to expand replies as well as top-level comments
• emitCommentItems (boolean): when true, recovered comment samples are also emitted as separate dataset items with itemType=comment
• failOnCommentBlock (boolean): when true, deep-mode runs fail if Facebook login-wall blocking prevents comment extraction for enriched posts
• facebookCookieHeader (string, optional): raw Facebook cookie header from your logged-in browser session (c_user=...; xs=...) to improve post coverage when anonymous access is blocked
• proxyConfiguration (object, optional): Apify Proxy / custom proxy settings (recommended: residential proxy group)

Output fields

Each dataset item includes:

• itemType
• sourceUrl
• postAuthor
• postTimestamp
• postText
• postUrl
• postId
• postOwnerId
• likes
• shares
• commentCount
• likesCount
• sharesCount
• commentCountValue
• profileName
• profileUrl
• profileUsername
• profileId
• profileImageUrl
• profileFollowers
• profileFollowersCount
• targetType
• targetTitle
• targetDescription
• targetImageUrl
• targetFollowers
• targetFollowersCount
• targetUrl
• enrichmentMode
• commentExtractionStatus
• commentExtractionMethod
• isEnriched
• externalUrls
• mediaUrls
• mediaCount
• commentSamples
• commentSamplesCount
• parentPostId
• parentPostUrl
• commentText
• commentAuthor
• commentAuthorUrl
• commentTimestamp
• commentId
• commentUrl
• commentSampleIndex
• scrapedWith
• scrapedAt

Example output item

{
  "inputTarget": "NASA",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/NASA",
  "postAuthor": "NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration",
  "postTimestamp": "2d",
  "postText": "Post text...",
  "postUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/NASA/posts/...",
  "postId": "pfbid02abc...",
  "postOwnerId": "NASA",
  "likes": "728",
  "shares": "42",
  "commentCount": "61",
  "likesCount": 728,
  "sharesCount": 42,
  "commentCountValue": 61,
  "profileName": "NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration",
  "profileUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/NASA",
  "profileUsername": "NASA",
  "profileId": null,
  "profileImageUrl": null,
  "profileFollowers": "26,879,175",
  "profileFollowersCount": 26879175,
  "externalUrls": ["https://example.com"],
  "mediaUrls": ["https://..."],
  "mediaCount": 1,
  "scrapedWith": "pydoll",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-03-09T10:40:00+00:00"
}

Important scope

• Base mode (enrichmentMode=none) scrapes posts only.
• Deep enrichment mode adds best-effort comment extraction from post permalinks.
• Deep-mode comment extraction now tries plain HTTP first, then a Playwright browser pass, then a pydoll browser fallback.
• Deep-mode browser extraction can run multiple expansion rounds and optionally expand visible replies before sampling comments.
• If emitCommentItems=true, those recovered comment samples are also pushed as separate dataset items linked back to the parent post.
• Full comment-thread completeness is not guaranteed due Facebook privacy/auth walls and anti-bot behavior.

Reliability notes

• Engagement metrics (likes, shares, commentCount) are best-effort and can be missing on restricted views.
• Facebook anti-bot behavior changes by page, region, and IP quality.
• If plugin/page requests are redirected to facebook.com/login, anonymous scraping is being restricted for that IP.
• For higher coverage, provide facebookCookieHeader and use high-quality proxies (ideally residential) in proxyConfiguration.

Recommended production settings

For the highest practical post and comment coverage on Apify:

{
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.facebook.com/NASA" }],
  "maxPosts": 20,
  "performanceMode": "balanced",
  "enrichmentMode": "deep",
  "maxEnrichedPosts": 10,
  "maxCommentsPerPost": 25,
  "maxCommentExpansionRounds": 8,
  "includeReplies": true,
  "emitCommentItems": true,
  "failOnCommentBlock": false,
  "facebookCookieHeader": "c_user=...; xs=...",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"],
    "apifyProxyCountry": "US"
  }
}

• Use emitCommentItems=true if you want comments as separate dataset rows.
• Increase maxCommentExpansionRounds if you want the actor to spend more time opening additional comments and replies on each post.
• Keep includeReplies=true if replies matter; disable it if you want slightly faster deep-mode runs.
• Use failOnCommentBlock=true when comment extraction is mandatory and you prefer a failed run over empty comment output.
• Expect better results with a valid logged-in cookie header than with anonymous scraping.