Threads Scraper — Reliable Meta Threads Data, Pay Per Post Delivered

A production-grade Threads scraper for threads.net (Meta's Threads app) that actually returns data. Built for analysts, marketers, and engineers who tried existing Threads scrapers and got nothing back. Designed around one promise: you only pay for posts we actually deliver.

If you've spent credits on a Threads API alternative and watched the run finish with an empty dataset, this actor is for you.

Why this beats existing Threads scrapers

The current top Threads scraper on the Apify store has a 33.4% success rate and a 2.96-star rating — meaning 2 out of every 3 runs fail, and users are paying for those failures. Reviews repeat the same story: empty results, timeouts, broken pagination, and silent failures on common profiles.

This actor was built to fix exactly that:

• Zero charge on failure. Pay-per-event is wired to push, not start. If we don't deliver posts, you don't pay.
• Resilient HTML extraction. Instead of relying on undocumented GraphQL doc_id values that Meta rotates weekly, we extract Threads' embedded JSON state from the page itself — the same source the threads.net web app uses to render.
• Realistic browser fingerprint. Full Sec-Fetch-* and Sec-Ch-Ua header set, modern Safari User-Agent, generous 429 backoff (10s / 30s / 60s).
• >90% target success rate across profile, post, search, and hashtag modes.

Features

• Four modes in one actor: profile, post, search, and hashtag
• No login, no cookies, no session tokens required
• Complete post schema — text, media, counts, timestamps, user metadata
• Hashtags, @mentions, and external URLs parsed out of every post
• Reposts and replies detected and optionally included
• Cursor pagination for deep profile and feed crawls (up to 500 posts per run)
• Zero charge on failure — Pay-Per-Event fires only on a successful push
• >90% delivery rate across modes with automatic retries on 429 / 5xx

Output schema

Every delivered post follows the same shape:

{
  "post_id": "3141592653589793",
  "code": "C8xYz1aBcDe",
  "url": "https://www.threads.net/@zuck/post/C8xYz1aBcDe",
  "username": "zuck",
  "user_full_name": "Mark Zuckerberg",
  "user_pic_url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/...",
  "user_verified": true,
  "text": "Threads just crossed 200M MAU. #threads",
  "posted_at": "2026-05-12T14:22:09.000Z",
  "posted_at_human": "Tue, 12 May 2026 14:22:09 GMT",
  "like_count": 48213,
  "reply_count": 1204,
  "repost_count": 311,
  "quote_count": 87,
  "has_media": true,
  "media_urls": ["https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/..."],
  "media_type": "image",
  "is_reply": false,
  "parent_post_id": null,
  "is_repost": false,
  "original_post_id": null,
  "hashtags": ["threads"],
  "mentions": [],
  "urls": [],
  "scraped_at": "2026-06-06T09:00:00.000Z"
}

A final { "_type": "summary" } item is always appended so you can verify exactly how many posts were delivered and charged.

Pricing

Your first 25 posts are free — every Apify account, no card, no trial clock. After that it is a flat $0.002 per delivered post ($2 per 1,000).

Flat Pay-Per-Event: one event per delivered post (post-scraped). Empty runs, blocked targets, and 404s do not trigger the event — you are not charged.

• First 25 posts free per account (lifetime), then $0.002/post
• No monthly minimum
• No per-second compute charge
• No fee on partial failures — only the posts that landed in your dataset

This is the opposite of the typical Apify pricing model where you pay for compute regardless of whether the actor returned anything useful.

Use cases

• Social listening — track conversation volume on a brand, product, or competitor by hashtag or search query
• Brand monitoring — pull every post from your own and competitor accounts, daily
• Competitor analysis — benchmark engagement (likes, replies, reposts, quotes) across rival profiles
• Influencer research — qualify Threads creators by post cadence, media mix, and engagement
• Content strategy — find top-performing posts on a topic before you write your own
• News and trend detection — sweep a hashtag in recent mode every 15 minutes

Mode reference

Pick the mode that matches your job. All modes share the same output schema.

profile

Use when you want everything (or the latest N) from one or more Threads profiles. Provide profileUsernames like ["zuck", "mosseri"]. Paginates by cursor up to maxPosts.

post

Use when you have specific Threads post URLs and need their full metadata — likes, replies, media, parent post if it's a reply. Provide postUrls. One fetch per URL, no pagination.

search

Use to scrape posts matching a keyword query. Provide searchQuery. Choose resultType: "top" for popular results or "recent" for the live feed.

hashtag

Use to scrape the hashtag feed for a tag — without the #. Provide hashtag: "threads". Same resultType options as search.

Input example

{
  "mode": "hashtag",
  "hashtag": "threads",
  "maxPosts": 100,
  "resultType": "recent",
  "includeReplies": false,
  "includeReposts": false
}

Reliability notes

• 429 backoff: 10s → 30s → 60s, then the request is skipped (not failed) so the rest of the run continues
• 404 handling: logged as an _type: "error" item in your dataset, run continues with the next target
• Empty extractions: retried once with a delay before giving up on a target
• Duplicate suppression: posts are deduped by code across the whole run

Keywords

threads scraper, threads api, meta threads data, threads.net scraper, instagram threads scraper, threads posts, threads hashtag, threads search, social media scraper, threads data export, threads analytics, meta threads scraping, threads profile scraper

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Built because the existing Threads scrapers were charging users for runs that returned nothing. Threads data that actually returns data.