Facebook Search Scraper

Search public Facebook posts by keyword and get one row per post: the text, who posted it and in which group, the link, the exact time, the media and the reaction, comment, share and view counts.

Type a word or phrase and the actor returns the public posts Facebook's own search finds for it, without signing in. The catch: Facebook ends one search after about 65 to 100 posts. Give it a date window and it goes through the dates a week or so at a time, which is how you get hundreds of posts for a busy topic.

🔍 What Facebook Search Scraper does

It searches Facebook's public posts the way the search box does for someone who isn't signed in: posts from Pages, public groups and public profiles. Each search term is its own search.

Every post is checked before it goes into your dataset:

• The words. A post is kept when every word you searched appears in its text, its author's name or its group's name. Facebook also returns looser matches, and those are left out unless you switch the check off.
• The dates. Facebook applies a date window loosely, and on some searches its Recent posts filter mixes in old posts. Each post's time is checked: anything outside your dates, or older than a week with recent posts, is dropped.
• Videos. With videos only, anything that isn't a video post is dropped.

When Facebook has nothing that matches, it still returns posts, just unrelated ones: a search for gibberish gets about ten. So if none of the first page's posts contain your words, the search stops there with a free note.

📋 What data you get from each Facebook post

▶️ How to scrape Facebook posts by keyword

1. Open Facebook Search Scraper and click Try for free. 2. Type one or more words or phrases into Search terms, one per line. 3. Set Posts per search term. For more than about 100 posts on one term, fill in Posted from. 4. Tick Recent posts or Videos only if you want them. 5. Click Start, then download the rows as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read them through the Apify API.

Start it with every field empty to see the row shape first: one labelled sample post, not charged.

💰 How much does it cost to scrape Facebook posts?

$0.46 per 1,000 posts. Flat on every Apify plan, no volume tiers. On the free plan, the $5 Apify gives you each month covers about 10,800 posts.

You pay for posts that come back. The sample row and every note row are free, and so are posts the checks left out (missing words, outside your dates, not a video) and posts that turn up twice. If you set a maximum charge for the run, it stops before the first post it couldn't pay for.

📥 What you give it

{
  "searchTerms": ["electric car", "coffee"],
  "maxPostsPerSearch": 300,
  "startDate": "2026-08-01",
  "endDate": "2026-09-30"
}

Dates have to be YYYY-MM-DD. Anything else, like "last week", stops the run before it searches, with a free note saying what to write. So do a start date in the future, a start after the end, and recent posts together with dates.

📤 What you get back

A real row from a test run on 3 October 2026 (search "coffee"), image link shortened:

{
  "recordType": "post",
  "postId": "1083580981083414",
  "url": "https://www.facebook.com/firstbloomcoffee/posts/pfbid0AbckUBKoknuamg6NpvW9rjTVBHfTxBWjsg9jaLM2VV1GYdWch6sP8YNWzzoUV3j6l",
  "text": "👻 Announcing Cleveland’s first ever coffee crawl!\n\n🎃 Mark your calendars for the last week of October when all your favorite coffee shops in town will be featuring a special $5 drink!\n\nIt’s like trick-or-treating for grown-ups. 😜",
  "time": "2026-10-01T14:29:12.000Z",
  "timestamp": 1790864952,
  "authorName": "First Bloom Coffee and Bakery",
  "authorId": "100082945672195",
  "authorUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/firstbloomcoffee",
  "groupName": null,
  "groupId": null,
  "groupUrl": null,
  "mediaType": "photo",
  "isReel": false,
  "imageUrls": ["https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.99422-6/828831765_...n.png?..."],
  "videoUrl": null,
  "videoThumbnailUrl": null,
  "videoDurationSeconds": null,
  "sharedPostUrl": null,
  "reactionsCount": 871,
  "commentsCount": 223,
  "sharesCount": 279,
  "videoViewsCount": null,
  "searchTerm": "coffee",
  "position": 5,
  "containsSearchWords": true,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-03T16:28:56.833Z"
}

🧾 Reading the output

Every real post has recordType: "post". Filter on that and you have only the posts you paid for.

An empty run gives one sample row with _sample: true and recordType: "sample". Notes have _diagnostic: true, ok: false, an errorCode and a plain message, and are never charged:

The key-value store also holds RUN_REPORT: each term's status, posts returned, pages read and what the checks left out.

💡 What people use it for

• Hearing what people say about a brand or product. A shop owner searching their own name finds the group posts nobody tagged them in.
• Topic research. What people post about electric cars, a diet or a new phone, with the counts showing which posts landed.
• Daily monitoring. Recent posts on a schedule, keeping only post ids you haven't seen.
• Finding the groups where a topic lives. groupName across a few hundred posts shows which public groups talk about it most.

A recipe with our other Facebook actors: search a topic here, keep the posts with the most commentsCount, then pass their url values to the Facebook Comments Scraper to read the conversation under each.

🚧 What it does not do

• No private posts, private groups or friends-only posts. Only what Facebook shows people who aren't signed in.
• A plain search ends after about 65 to 100 posts, however many exist. Dates are the way past that.
• Results lean towards what a visitor in the United States sees, so English words bring mostly American posts.
• No photos-only filter. Facebook doesn't show photo results to people who aren't signed in.
• With dates or recent posts, videos only keeps the video posts among the normal results, so it reads more pages for fewer posts.
• No comments, only their count. Those come from the Facebook Comments Scraper.
• No follower counts or contact details for the authors. Those come from the Facebook Pages Scraper.

🧭 Which Facebook scraper do you need?

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need a Facebook account to search Facebook posts?

No. It reads the public posts Facebook shows people who aren't signed in. Nothing of yours is used and nothing is posted.

Why are the posts different from what I see when I search on Facebook?

Your own search is shaped by your friends, groups, language and country. A run sees what Facebook shows an anonymous visitor, leaning towards one in the United States. A private window won't let you check, because Facebook doesn't open its search page there, but every post link in the dataset does open in one.

How do I get more than about 100 posts for one search term?

Fill in Posted from, and Posted until if you want an end, then raise Posts per search term. The window is searched in slices, newest first, and each slice brings its own posts. In a test, "pizza" from January to September 2026 reached the 1,000-post cap within the window's last 19 days, every post inside the dates.

Why did my search return a note instead of posts?

NO_MATCHES means Facebook's results didn't contain your words, which is what it does when it has nothing on a topic. NO_RESULTS means nothing was left after your dates, the recent check or the videos filter. Neither is charged.

Can I call it from code or connect it to an AI assistant?

Yes. The API tab has code for Python, JavaScript and the command line. For Claude, ChatGPT or another MCP client, connect https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,dami_studio/facebook-search-scraper. Either way it runs on your Apify account at the same price.

Is scraping Facebook posts legal?

It reads public posts only. Names and posts are still personal data under laws such as GDPR, and Facebook has its own terms, so have a reason and read them. Apify's write-up on scraping and the law is a starting point; we are not lawyers.

🆘 If something breaks

Open an issue on the Issues tab with the run link and the search terms you used. A note row's errorCode and message help too.