Mastodon Posts by Hashtag, Account, Thread & Trends (no login)

Public Mastodon data as clean rows, straight from the REST API of the mastodon.social server: every post under a hashtag (with boolean tag combinations), the public posts of the accounts you name, the whole reply tree under one post, what the network trends on right now (hashtags, shared news links, popular posts), which hashtags exist for a keyword and how much they are used, and follower/post counts for a watch list. Because that server federates, authors from thousands of other fediverse servers show up too, and every row says which server its author is on. No API key, no token, no cookie, no browser — and all timestamps are UTC ISO-8601.

Need it tailored to your workflow? Missing a field, a filter, another source or a different output format? Open an issue and describe what you need — we read every request and adapt the actor.

Use cases

• Replace a closed forum feed: follow #opensource, #selfhosted or your product name on an open network with sinceHours + onlyNew on a schedule, and get only what was posted since the last run.
• Brand and press monitoring: export the public posts of an organisation's accounts (accountPosts) with favourites, boosts and replies, and archive announcements with their links and media.
• Community management: turn one announcement into its full discussion (threadReplies) — every reply the server knows, with its depth, author and server, so you can read or summarise a reaction in one pass.
• Newsroom and PR monitoring: trending + links gives the articles the network is sharing right now with publisher, publication date and how many accounts shared them today and over the week.
• Dashboard planning: hashtagSearch shows which spelling of a topic is alive (climate vs climatechange vs climatecrisis) with seven days of usage, before you commit a monitoring run to the wrong tag.
• Research and scouting: profiles keeps follower, following and post counts of a list of local and remote handles fresh; authorInstances lets you study one community inside a worldwide hashtag.
• Agents and LLM pipelines: public social text and trend lists without any credential — call the actor over the Apify API or MCP and narrow the columns with fields.

Input

Every field is optional; each mode uses the fields of its own section. Example values in the editor are prefills (you can change or clear them), defaults only switch behaviour.

Field	Type	Default	Allowed values / notes
mode	string	hashtagPosts	hashtagPosts, accountPosts, threadReplies, trending, hashtagSearch, profiles — see Modes
hashtags	string[]	prefill opensource, linux	Hashtags to read in hashtagPosts, with or without #, case ignored. The row limit is split evenly over them
alsoTagged	string[]	–	hashtagPosts: keep posts carrying the main tag or any of these (source parameter any)
mustAlsoBeTagged	string[]	–	hashtagPosts: keep only posts carrying the main tag and all of these (all)
excludeTagged	string[]	–	hashtagPosts: drop posts that also carry one of these (none)
localOnly	boolean	false	hashtagPosts: keep only posts written on mastodon.social itself
accounts	string[]	prefill Mastodon, MastodonEngineering	accountPosts and profiles. Forms: name, name@server, profile link — see Handles
excludeReplies	boolean	true	accountPosts: leave out the replies the account wrote
includeReblogs	boolean	false	accountPosts: also keep posts the account boosted (isReblog: true, booster in rebloggedBy)
postUrls	string[]	prefill one post link	threadReplies: mastodon.social post links or bare numeric ids — see Post links
includeAncestors	boolean	true	threadReplies: also write the posts above the given one (negative replyDepth)
trendType	string	tags	trending: tags, links or posts — see Trend types
searchQuery	string	prefill climate	hashtagSearch: one word; matches hashtag names, not post text
languages	string[]	all	Keep posts whose declared language is one of these 20 codes — see Languages
minFavourites	number	–	0–1 000 000. Keep posts with at least this many favourites at fetch time
minReblogs	number	–	0–1 000 000. Same floor for boosts
excludeSensitive	boolean	false	Drop posts flagged sensitive or behind a content warning
onlyWithMedia	boolean	false	Keep only posts with an image, video or audio attachment
authorInstances	string[]	all	Keep posts whose author lives on one of these servers, e.g. fosstodon.org
sinceHours	number	–	1–8760. Rolling window in UTC hours. A timeline stops paging once it passes the window; the trending-posts list is ranked by popularity, so older posts there are dropped one by one instead
onlyNew	boolean	false	Write only posts that earlier runs of the same actor or task did not write
maxItems	number	50	1–1000. Hard cap on rows, split over the hashtags or accounts you named. The run also stops at your Maximum cost per run (see Limits)
fields	string[]	all	Keep only these columns, in this order. rowType, sourceMode and the row's id column (statusId+found, tag, url or handle+found) are always kept. Column names are free text: case does not matter and one near miss such as favoriteCount is corrected, both noted in the status message; a name no row has is reported and ignored, and a list in which no name exists fails the run with the valid names

Filters are applied after the source answers, except localOnly, onlyWithMedia and the three tag combinations, which the source itself applies before paging. languages, minFavourites, minReblogs, excludeSensitive, onlyWithMedia, authorInstances, sinceHours and onlyNew only affect post rows; trending with tags or links, hashtagSearch and profiles ignore them and say so in the status message.

Reference

Modes

mode	One row per	Needs	Writes
hashtagPosts	public post carrying one of your hashtags, newest first	hashtags	post rows, matchedHashtag filled
accountPosts	public post of the accounts you name	accounts	post rows
threadReplies	post in the discussion under a post	postUrls	post rows with replyDepth, threadRootStatusId
trending	trending hashtag, shared news link or popular post	trendType	tag, link or post rows with trendRank
hashtagSearch	hashtag whose name matches your word	searchQuery	tag rows with seven days of usage
profiles	account, with its public counts	accounts	profile rows

Trend types

trendType	Source list	Row type	Rows per run
tags	hashtags the server currently promotes	tag	20 per request, paged
links	articles being shared right now	link	20 per request, paged
posts	individual posts the server promotes	post	40 per request, paged

Handles

accounts accepts three shapes, mixed freely in one list:

You write	Means
Mastodon or @Mastodon	the account on mastodon.social
pluralistic@mamot.fr	an account on any other fediverse server
https://fosstodon.org/@kev	the same, from a profile link you pasted

Case does not matter. An account the server has never federated with cannot be resolved and yields one row with found: false and the reason in notFoundReason.

Post links

postUrls accepts mastodon.social links and bare ids: https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/117156549508722805, https://mastodon.social/@hackernews@robot.villas/117367636517428091, https://mastodon.social/users/Mastodon/statuses/117156549508722805 or 117156549508722805.

Post ids are numbered per server, so a link on another server (https://mastodon.online/@someone/1171565933…) is refused with a message instead of a wrong answer. Every post row of every mode carries the mastodon.social link of the same post in localUrl — take that value and threadReplies will accept it.

Languages

The language column is what the posting app declared, not a guess of ours. Codes offered by the filter: en English, de German, fr French, es Spanish, pt Portuguese, it Italian, nl Dutch, ja Japanese, zh Chinese, ko Korean, ru Russian, uk Ukrainian, pl Polish, cs Czech, sv Swedish, fi Finnish, nb Norwegian, da Danish, tr Turkish, ca Catalan. Send one of these 20 two-letter codes exactly: the platform checks the list before the run starts, so a language name (German), a three-letter code (deu) or a code outside the list is refused with the list of allowed values. Regional variants count as their language (en-GB is en), and nb (Norwegian) also keeps posts declared no (Norwegian) or nn (Nynorsk); the language column still shows what the post declared. Many posts from other fediverse software declare no language at all — those are dropped while this filter is set.

Row types

rowType says what a row is: post, tag (from trending+tags and hashtagSearch), link (from trending+links) or profile. One run writes one row type, so a dataset never mixes them.

Examples

Follow two topics for the last two days, without sensitive posts

{ "mode": "hashtagPosts", "hashtags": ["opensource", "linux"], "sinceHours": 48, "excludeSensitive": true, "maxItems": 20 }

One cheap request for a niche: Linux AND open source, but no AI crossposts

{ "mode": "hashtagPosts", "hashtags": ["linux"], "mustAlsoBeTagged": ["opensource"], "excludeTagged": ["ai"], "maxItems": 20 }

Export what two organisation accounts published

{ "mode": "accountPosts", "accounts": ["Mastodon", "MastodonEngineering"], "excludeReplies": true, "includeReblogs": false, "maxItems": 20 }

Read the whole discussion under one announcement

{ "mode": "threadReplies", "postUrls": ["https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/117156549508722805"], "includeAncestors": true, "maxItems": 25 }

What is trending right now, and which articles are being shared

{ "mode": "trending", "trendType": "tags", "maxItems": 20 }

{ "mode": "trending", "trendType": "links", "maxItems": 20 }

Find the hashtag spelling that is actually used, then watch one community inside it

{ "mode": "hashtagSearch", "searchQuery": "climate", "maxItems": 20 }

{ "mode": "hashtagPosts", "hashtags": ["climatechange"], "authorInstances": ["fosstodon.org", "mastodon.social"], "languages": ["en"], "maxItems": 20 }

Keep a watch list of accounts up to date

{ "mode": "profiles", "accounts": ["Mastodon", "MastodonEngineering", "pluralistic@mamot.fr"], "maxItems": 10 }

Output

One real row of a cloud run ({"mode": "hashtagPosts", "hashtags": ["opensource", "linux"], "sinceHours": 48, "excludeSensitive": true, "maxItems": 20}, run 9A6iUYc6Nh7L8lnMA):

{
  "rowType": "post",
  "sourceMode": "hashtagPosts",
  "statusId": "117367721941465389",
  "url": "https://mastodon.social/@joelindien/117367721941465389",
  "localUrl": "https://mastodon.social/@joelindien/117367721941465389",
  "createdAt": "2026-10-01T21:15:11.852Z",
  "editedAt": null,
  "language": "fr",
  "visibility": "public",
  "sensitive": false,
  "contentWarning": null,
  "text": "🐧 Actu logiciel libre du 01/10/2026\n• Fedora 45 Beta Performance: The Satisfyingly Boring Benchmarks\n[Phoronix] https://www.phoronix.com/review/fedora-45-beta-benchmarks\n#LogicielLibre #OpenSource #Libre",
  "authorHandle": "joelindien",
  "authorFullHandle": "joelindien@mastodon.social",
  "authorDisplayName": null,
  "authorInstance": "mastodon.social",
  "authorUrl": "https://mastodon.social/@joelindien",
  "authorFollowers": 14,
  "authorPosts": 2927,
  "authorIsBot": false,
  "replyCount": 0,
  "reblogCount": 0,
  "favouriteCount": 0,
  "quoteCount": 0,
  "hashtags": [
    "logiciellibre",
    "opensource",
    "libre"
  ],
  "matchedHashtag": "opensource",
  "mentions": [],
  "linkUrls": [
    "https://www.phoronix.com/review/fedora-45-beta-benchmarks"
  ],
  "cardUrl": "https://www.phoronix.com/review/fedora-45-beta-benchmarks",
  "cardTitle": "Fedora 45 Beta Performance: The Satisfyingly Boring Benchmarks",
  "cardPublisher": null,
  "mediaCount": 0,
  "mediaTypes": [],
  "mediaUrls": [],
  "isReblog": false,
  "rebloggedBy": null,
  "inReplyToStatusId": null,
  "replyDepth": null,
  "threadRootStatusId": null,
  "threadRootUrl": null,
  "applicationName": "bot news",
  "sourceRef": "opensource",
  "found": true,
  "notFoundReason": null,
  "fetchedAt": "2026-10-01T21:19:14.212Z"
}

Post row (rowType: "post")

Field	Type	Meaning
rowType	string	post
sourceMode	string	The mode that produced the row
statusId	string	The post id on mastodon.social — feed it back into threadReplies
url	string	The post as its own server links it (the canonical link)
localUrl	string	The same post on mastodon.social; always usable in postUrls
createdAt	string	When the post was written, ISO 8601 UTC
editedAt	string	When it was last edited, or null
language	string	Language declared by the posting app (often null for other software)
visibility	string	public or unlisted — what the public API serves
sensitive	boolean	Flagged sensitive by its author, or carrying a content warning
contentWarning	string	The warning text, or null
text	string	Post text as a reader sees it: markup removed, links written out in full
authorHandle	string	Author name without the server, lowercased
authorFullHandle	string	name@server for every author, so rows can be compared
authorDisplayName	string	Name the author shows
authorInstance	string	Server the author lives on, e.g. fosstodon.org
authorUrl	string	Author's profile link
authorFollowers, authorPosts	number	Public counts of the author at fetch time
authorIsBot	boolean	The account marks itself as automated
replyCount, reblogCount, favouriteCount, quoteCount	number	Engagement at fetchedAt
hashtags	string[]	Every hashtag of the post, lowercased
matchedHashtag	string	The hashtag of your input that produced this row (hashtagPosts)
mentions	string[]	Handles mentioned in the post
linkUrls	string[]	URLs the post links to
cardUrl, cardTitle, cardPublisher	string	Link preview the server built, when there is one
mediaCount	number	Number of attachments
mediaTypes	string[]	image, video, gifv, audio
mediaUrls	string[]	File links of the attachments (linked, never downloaded)
isReblog	boolean	The row came from a boost (accountPosts with includeReblogs)
rebloggedBy	string	Who boosted it
inReplyToStatusId	string	The post this one replies to, or null
replyDepth	number	threadReplies: 0 for the post you asked for, 1, 2… for replies, negative above it
threadRootStatusId, threadRootUrl	string	threadReplies: the post the thread was read from
applicationName	string	App that published the post, when the server knows it
sourceRef	string	The exact input value this row came from
found	boolean	false on the one row that explains an unknown handle, id or opt-out
notFoundReason	string	Why that input gave no data
fetchedAt	string	Fetch time, ISO 8601 UTC — engagement counts are a snapshot of this moment

Tag row (rowType: "tag")

Field	Type	Meaning
tag	string	Hashtag name as the server spells it
url	string	Tag page on mastodon.social
usesToday, accountsToday	number	Uses and distinct accounts on the newest day the server reports
uses7d, accounts7d	number	Sum over the seven days the server sends
history	object[]	{ day (UTC date), accounts, uses }, newest first
trendRank	number	Position in the list the source returned, from 1
sourceRef	string	trending-tags, or your searchQuery

Link row (rowType: "link")

Field	Type	Meaning
title, description	string	Article title and teaser as the server read them
url	string	The article itself
publisherName, authorName	string	Publisher and author, when the page declares them
publishedAt	string	Publication date, ISO 8601 UTC
language	string	Language of the article
imageUrl	string	Preview image the server cached
usesToday, accountsToday, uses7d, accounts7d	number	How often and by how many accounts it was shared
trendRank	number	Position in the trending list

Profile row (rowType: "profile")

Field	Type	Meaning
handle, fullHandle	string	mastodon and mastodon@mastodon.social
displayName	string	Name the account shows
instance	string	Server the account lives on
bio	string	Profile text, markup removed
followersCount, followingCount, postsCount	number	Public counts (the lists are never collected)
createdAt	string	Join date, ISO 8601 UTC
lastPostAt	string	Date of the last post the server knows (UTC date)
isBot, isLocked, isDiscoverable	boolean	Flags the account set itself
profileFields	object[]	{ name, value, verified } of the links next to the bio
avatarUrl, url	string	Avatar file and profile link
found, notFoundReason	boolean, string	false for an unknown handle or an account that opted out

Dataset views: Posts (author, server, text, posted, language, favourites, boosts, replies, hashtags, matched tag, link), Trending tags and links (kind, tag, article, publisher, daily and weekly counts, link), Trending and searched hashtags (rank, hashtag, uses and accounts today and over seven days, list or search word, tag page), Trending news links (rank, article, publisher, published, language, shares today and over seven days, link), Profiles (handle, name, server, followers, following, posts, joined, last post, link). The dataset schema describes every column with a title, a description and an example, for agents and MCP clients.

Every run also writes a SUMMARY record into the default key-value store (linked from the run's output as summary): the mode and the filters it ran with, the number of requests, the rate-limit budget the source reported and whether its limit stopped the run, rows read and written, rows per hashtag/account/thread, inputs that were not served, inputs without rows, a counter per filter that dropped something, and why the run stopped early when it did (your spending limit, the run timeout).

Use it from code / agents

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/yadroo~mastodon-public-posts/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"mode":"hashtagPosts","hashtags":["opensource"],"sinceHours":24,"maxItems":20,"fields":["authorFullHandle","text","favouriteCount","createdAt","url"]}'

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('yadroo/mastodon-public-posts').call({ mode: 'trending', trendType: 'links', maxItems: 20 });
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
for (const row of items) console.log(row.publisherName, row.usesToday, row.url);

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
# 1) read a hashtag, 2) take the localUrl of the loudest post, 3) read its thread
posts = client.actor("yadroo/mastodon-public-posts").call(
    run_input={"mode": "hashtagPosts", "hashtags": ["opensource"], "minFavourites": 5, "maxItems": 20}
)
rows = client.dataset(posts["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items
loudest = max(rows, key=lambda r: r.get("favouriteCount") or 0)
thread = client.actor("yadroo/mastodon-public-posts").call(
    run_input={"mode": "threadReplies", "postUrls": [loudest["localUrl"]], "maxItems": 25}
)

Chaining works the same way in the other direction: a trending + tags run gives you tag values to put straight into hashtagPosts. For schedules, set sinceHours to the interval and onlyNew: true — each run then holds only what is new, and an empty run means nothing was posted. Narrow rows with fields when an LLM reads them.

MCP: add https://mcp.apify.com to Claude / Cursor / any MCP client and call the yadroo/mastodon-public-posts tool with the same JSON input.

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.001 per run start + $0.0015 per dataset row. The start event is charged on every run, including runs that write no row.

Run	Rows	Cost
Trending hashtags, one request	20	$0.001 + 20 × $0.0015 = $0.031
Hashtag monitoring, last 24 h	50	$0.001 + 50 × $0.0015 = $0.076
Thread of a busy announcement	200	$0.001 + 200 × $0.0015 = $0.301

Platform usage is included: you pay only these two events, never compute or proxy on top. A 50-row run needs 2–3 HTTP requests and finishes in well under a minute at 256 MB. Bronze −10 %, Silver −20 %, Gold and above −30 % on the row price; the start event is the same on every plan.

Limits & FAQ

• No full-text post search. The source serves post search only to callers with a login: type=statuses answers empty arrays without one. Topics are therefore reached by hashtag, by account or through the trending lists — and hashtagSearch exists to find the right hashtag first. This is a limit of the source, not something a token of ours could widen.
• No "everything" mode. The anonymous public timeline of the server answers HTTP 422, so there is no firehose of all posts. Every run names hashtags, accounts, a post or a trend list.
• One server's federated view. Data comes from mastodon.social. Posts and accounts of other fediverse servers appear through it — which is most of the network for popular tags — but a post only exists here if this server has seen it, and authorInstance tells you where each author actually lives. Replies that live only on a server this one does not follow are not part of a thread.
• Trends are that server's view. The trending lists are computed by mastodon.social from what it sees, and they can be short or empty for a while; trending + links sometimes returns fewer than 20 entries. The lists are served 20 (tags, links) or 40 (posts) entries per request and paged from there.
• Post ids are server-local. threadReplies needs a mastodon.social link or id; a link on another server is refused with a message. Use the localUrl column of any post row.
• Hashtag search is capped at 40. The source answers at most 40 hashtags per search and refuses paging without a login, so maxItems above 40 cannot be filled in hashtagSearch.
• Accounts that opted out are skipped. An account hosted on mastodon.social that asked not to be indexed is not exported in accountPosts or profiles; you get one row with found: false instead. Posts it puts under a hashtag are still read in hashtagPosts, because adding a hashtag is a request to be found.
• No follower lists, no contact harvesting. Only public posts, public profile text and the public follower/following/post counts are read. Follower and following lists, e-mail addresses and phone numbers are never collected. Media files are linked, never downloaded.
• Engagement counts are a snapshot. Favourites, boosts, replies and quotes are the values at fetchedAt and keep growing afterwards.
• Rate limit. The source allows 300 requests per five minutes per IP address for callers without a login, and Apify IPs are shared with other callers. The actor sends one request at a time, below one per second, and reads the remaining budget from every answer (X-RateLimit-Remaining, X-RateLimit-Reset): with 10 or fewer left it spreads its next requests over the rest of the window, and when the budget is used up (or the server answers HTTP 429) it waits for the window to reset if the run has time for that. If it has not, the run ends with the rows it has and the status "Stopped at the source's rate limit … run again after HH:MM UTC" — or fails with that message when nothing was written. It never switches IPs or User-Agents to get past the limit. A typical run needs 2–6 requests.
• Your spending limit and the run timeout. Rows are written as each page is read. When your Maximum cost per run is reached the run stops and ends with "Stopped at your spending limit: N rows delivered"; near the run timeout it stops starting new requests and ends with "Stopped before the run timeout: N rows saved". Rows already written stay, are billed once, and with onlyNew only the rows really written are remembered.
• Empty results vs errors. An unknown hashtag with no posts, a quiet account or an empty trend list is a successful run with a note in the status message; an unknown handle or deleted post gives one row with found: false and a reason; a source that misbehaves without producing a single row makes the run fail with that reason.
• Why a post is missing a language. Posts coming from other fediverse software often declare none. They are kept unless you set languages, which can only keep posts that declare one.
• If the server closes these endpoints. A Mastodon server can switch on authorized fetch, which would close the public API for anonymous callers. Should that happen, this actor is marked paused here instead of trying to work around it.

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Made by Yadroo. Sibling actors: bluesky-public-posts, hackernews-search, stackexchange-search, google-news-search, rss-to-json.