STEP 01
Point it at public pages
Profile URLs, a public hashtag page, or a keyword search. Agent actions fill the search and set filters before the robot starts reading, all on the logged-out view.
Social Media Scraping: A Social Media Scraper for Public Profiles, Posts, and Engagement
Social media scraping turns public profiles and posts into structured rows: handle, bio, follower count, post text, hashtags, likes, comments, and dates. WebRobot does it with an AI agent. Point it at a public profile or search page, describe the fields you want, and it reads each page, paginates, and delivers clean rows to a spreadsheet or your data stack on a schedule.
Public data only, and official APIs where they exist. The robot stores what you asked for, not a fragile CSS path, so it keeps reading after a platform reshuffles its markup.
Last updated July 2026
Robot console · WR-01
Standing by Running · s Complete · rows
1 · Pick a target
3 · Fields to extract
Agent log
Crawl graph
Extracted data · rows
Want this data fresh every morning, without lifting a finger?
01 / SCOPE
FIG. 1 · PUBLIC DATA ONLY
What a social media scraper can and cannot collect
The line that keeps you safe and useful is simple: public, logged-out data yes, anything behind a login
no. Here is where that line falls.
| Fair game (public) | Off limits |
|---|---|
| Public profile: name, handle, bio, link | Private or protected accounts |
| Public follower and following counts | Direct messages and inboxes |
| Public post text, captions, hashtags | Anything requiring a login to view |
| Public like, share, and comment counts | Private audience and platform analytics |
| Public comment text and dates | Personal data with no lawful basis to process |
| Public hashtag and keyword search results | Content the platform gates behind approval |
Publicly posting to be seen is different from private. Even so, treat any personal data under CCPA and GDPR, and prefer official APIs when a platform offers one. The legal landscape in full is in is web scraping legal.
02 / TWO ROUTES
FIG. 2 · API OR PUBLIC PAGE
Official API versus collecting the public page
Most platforms offer an API, and most of them restrict it. Knowing which route fits your fields keeps
you sanctioned where you can be and covered where you cannot.
| Official platform API | Public-page collection | |
|---|---|---|
| Access | Often gated behind app review and approval | Anything visible when logged out |
| Fields | What the platform chooses to expose, often trimmed | The full public view of a profile or post |
| Rate limits | Strict, and priced or capped by tier | Governed by polite, low-frequency crawling |
| Terms | Sanctioned use within the API terms | Automated access sits against most site terms; use judgment |
| Best for | Sanctioned data you can get approved for | Public fields no API exposes, or when access is denied |
The honest approach is the API for what it covers, careful public collection for what it does not. If you are watching a brand or a set of competitors rather than pulling raw rows, a dedicated website change monitoring setup or the web scraping tool pillar may fit better.
03 / PROCEDURE
FIG. 3 · SETUP
How to scrape social media in four steps
The first watchlist takes about ten minutes. Every refresh after that runs itself.
STEP 02
Describe the row
Plain English: "handle, bio, follower count, latest post text, hashtags, likes, comments, date." The robot reads each field from the public page. No CSS selectors to maintain.
STEP 03
Set the schedule
Daily or hourly. Each run appends new public posts and updates follower and engagement counts, so you track movement over time instead of one manual snapshot.
STEP 04
Deliver into your stack
Google Sheets, Slack for a daily digest, or the REST API into a dashboard or a sentiment model. The data lands where your team already works.
04 / USE CASES
FIG. 4 · WHO RUNS THIS
Where public social data pays for itself
Brand and social listening
Track public mentions, hashtags, and comment sentiment about your brand across platforms, and catch a spike (good or bad) the morning it starts rather than the week after.
Competitor content research
Log a rival's public posting cadence, hashtags, and which posts get the most public engagement. Over a few weeks you see what their audience actually responds to, in a sheet.
Influencer discovery and vetting
Pull public follower counts, engagement rates, and recent post themes for a shortlist of creators, so you compare reach and fit on real numbers before you reach out.
Market and trend research
Watch a hashtag or keyword to see which products, topics, or complaints are gaining traction in a niche, and feed the raw public posts to your own analysis.
Campaign measurement
Collect the public engagement on your own campaign posts and hashtags across accounts into one place, so reporting is not a manual copy job at the end of every month.
Lead signals
Public posts that signal intent (a company announcing a launch, a role, or a tool) are timed outreach reasons. Feed the public signals into your pipeline alongside your lead generation data.
Pricing is flat: plans on pricing start at $79 per month with no per-record fee. For the underlying engine on any structured page, see the data extraction tool.
05 / FAQ
FIG. 5 · FIELD QUESTIONS
Social media scraping questions, answered
Social media scraping is the automated collection of public data from social platforms: profile
details, post text, hashtags, engagement counts, and public comments. Instead of scrolling and
copying by hand, an agent opens the public pages you point it at, reads the fields you describe, and
delivers structured rows to a spreadsheet or your data stack on a schedule so a feed of profiles or
posts refreshes itself.
Only what is publicly visible without logging in: a public profile name, bio, follower and
following counts, post text and captions, hashtags, public like and comment counts, post dates, and
public comment text. You cannot collect private accounts, direct messages, or anything behind a
login, and you should not collect personal data you have no lawful basis to process.
Collecting public data is generally treated as lawful in the US, and courts have declined to treat
scraping public profiles as computer fraud. Two real limits apply: most platforms prohibit
automated access in their terms and enforce it, and privacy laws such as CCPA and GDPR govern any
personal data you collect and store. The safe posture is public data only, official APIs where they
exist, and a lawful basis for anything personal.
Use the official API whenever the platform offers one that covers your fields, because it is
sanctioned and stable. Reach for careful public-page collection when no API exists, when the API
omits fields you need, or when access is gated behind approval you cannot get. Many teams use the
API for sanctioned data and a scraper only for public fields the API does not expose.
Point the robot at the public profile or search URL, describe the fields in plain English ("handle,
bio, follower count, latest post text, likes, comments, date"), and let it read each page and
paginate. Schedule it, and each run appends new posts or updates follower counts, so you track
movement over time instead of taking a single manual snapshot.
WebRobot is flat-priced: Launch at $79 per month ($63 yearly) covers 5 robots and 10,000 records,
enough to watch a set of profiles or a campaign hashtag. Scale at $249 ($199 yearly) adds hourly
schedules, agent actions for search and filter forms, and 100,000 records. There is no per-record
fee, so tracking thousands of public posts does not change the bill.
You can collect the public side of a competitor account: post text, cadence, hashtags, and public
engagement counts, which is standard competitive research. You cannot see their private analytics,
audience data, or anything behind a login. Tracking a rival's public posting pace and top-performing
content over time is a legitimate, public-data use that many brand teams run weekly.
FINAL ASSEMBLY
Public profiles, posts, and engagement, tracked in one spreadsheet
Point the robot at the public pages, describe the row, and get a fresh dataset on a schedule.