Bluesky Search Scraper

Search Bluesky posts, find user profiles, or export any account's feed as clean structured data. Built on Bluesky's AppView API. Author feeds and profile search need no login; for keyword post search, add a free Bluesky app password (see below) so it works from any IP.

Who is this for?

• Brand & social listening: track mentions of your product, competitors or campaign hashtags
• Journalists & researchers: collect public conversation around breaking news or topics over time
• Marketers: find relevant creators and measure engagement (likes, reposts, replies, quotes)
• Data teams: feed dashboards and sentiment pipelines with fresh Bluesky data

Modes

Mode	What it does	Required input
searchPosts	Full-text post search, sorted by latest or top	query
searchUsers	Profile search by name/handle/bio	query
authorFeed	Export one account's posts and reposts	authorHandle

query supports Bluesky's search operators: "exact phrase", from:handle.bsky.social, #hashtag, etc.

Input example

{
    "mode": "searchPosts",
    "query": "climate change",
    "sort": "latest",
    "sinceDate": "2026-07-01",
    "untilDate": "2026-07-20",
    "maxItems": 500,
    "blueskyIdentifier": "me.bsky.social",
    "blueskyAppPassword": "xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx"
}

Post search and the datacenter-IP block (read this if a search run fails with HTTP 403)

Bluesky's unauthenticated search backend blocks requests from datacenter IPs — which includes Apify's servers. Two ways to make searchPosts work reliably:

1. Recommended — free: add blueskyIdentifier (your handle or email) and blueskyAppPassword to the input. Create an app password in the Bluesky app under Settings → Privacy and security → App passwords (never use your main password; the field is stored encrypted by Apify). Authenticated search works from any IP.
2. Alternatively, set the Proxy configuration input to Apify residential proxy (paid Apify plans). The actor also auto-tries this escalation when it hits a 403.

authorFeed and searchUsers are not affected and work without login or proxy.

Output

Post item (modes searchPosts and authorFeed):

{
    "uri": "at://did:plc:6kos45lixtga3pdwuncvh32x/app.bsky.feed.post/3mqc36slinc2m",
    "url": "https://bsky.app/profile/paretooptimizer.bsky.social/post/3mqc36slinc2m",
    "authorHandle": "paretooptimizer.bsky.social",
    "authorDisplayName": "Pareto Optimizer",
    "authorDid": "did:plc:6kos45lixtga3pdwuncvh32x",
    "text": "I know this guy has a Bluesky account.",
    "createdAt": "2026-07-10T11:46:11.858Z",
    "likeCount": 6565,
    "repostCount": 544,
    "replyCount": 152,
    "quoteCount": 14,
    "langs": ["en"],
    "embeds": [{ "type": "quote", "url": "https://bsky.app/profile/dexerto.bsky.social/post/3mqbs2zzdi22y" }],
    "timestamp": "2026-07-24T12:00:00.000Z"
}

User item (mode searchUsers):

{
    "did": "did:plc:wmho6q2uiyktkam3jsvrms3s",
    "handle": "nbcnews.com",
    "url": "https://bsky.app/profile/nbcnews.com",
    "displayName": "NBC News",
    "description": "News updates from around the world, all day, every day.",
    "followersCount": null,
    "createdAt": "2023-05-31T01:09:28.017Z",
    "verifiedStatus": "valid",
    "timestamp": "2026-07-24T12:00:00.000Z"
}

embeds summarizes attachments: external (link cards, with URL/title), image (full-size CDN URL + alt text), video, and quote (link to the quoted post).

Pricing

The actor charges per item returned (result-item event). A run that finds 300 posts costs 300 events — you pay only for delivered data.

Honest limitations

• Only public posts and profiles indexed by Bluesky's AppView are returned; blocked/private data is not accessible.
• searchUsers results come from the profile search endpoint, which does not include follower counts (followersCount is null there). authorFeed and post authors do not include follower counts either.
• sinceDate/untilDate are applied server-side for post search; for authorFeed they are applied client-side while paginating (the API has no date filter there).
• Bluesky search relevance and hitsTotal are approximate; deep pagination of huge result sets may be truncated by the API.
• authorFeed includes reposts, marked with "isRepost": true — filter them out downstream if you only want original posts.
• The public AppView applies IP-based rate limits. The actor throttles itself (sequential requests with delays) and backs off on HTTP 429, but very large maxItems runs will be slow by design.

Usage tips

• Track a hashtag daily: schedule { "mode": "searchPosts", "query": "#buildinpublic", "sort": "latest" }
• Find influencers in a niche: { "mode": "searchUsers", "query": "machine learning" }
• Archive an account: { "mode": "authorFeed", "authorHandle": "bsky.app", "maxItems": 5000 }