TikTok User Scraper: follower and following lists

Two toggles that are really two line items

The profile URL is charged whether or not you get anything useful back, and each list you switch on adds its own query on top. Reading the input schema as a price list is the fastest way to understand a bill here.

• startUrls

  $0.005per URL

  No users included

  A profile URL, or a video or photo URL, a post link resolves to whoever posted it.

  https://www.tiktok.com/@a3k113

• getFollowers

  +$0.005per profile

  ~10 users free

  On by default. Adds a follower query per profile and walks that list with pagination.

  getFollowers: true

• Leave it on and a default run costs three queries

  getFollowing

  +$0.005per profile

  ~10 users free

  Also on by default. Its own query, its own allowance, and the one people forget is running.

  getFollowing: false

• maxItems

  ÷ $0.0005after the free tens

  Run-wide

  Caps users across the whole run. The listing treats it as the testing control.

  1000

The two toggles cannot both be off. The listing forbids it outright, because a run that fetches one account and no list is the single-item query it does not allow.

An audience, a network, or a creator you only have a video for

Three runs, distinguished by which toggles are on and what you put in startUrls. The third is the one most people do not know is possible.

{
  "startUrls": ["https://www.tiktok.com/@a3k113"],
  "getFollowers": true,
  "getFollowing": false,
  "maxItems": 1000
}

{
  "id": "7043896727212409862",
  "url": "https://www.tiktok.com/@a3k113",
  "username": "a3k113",
  "nickname": "لازم تعرف🤔",
  "followers": 94,
  "following": 1477,
  "likes": 38,
  "videos": 2,
  "verified": true
}

{
  "startUrls": ["https://www.tiktok.com/@a3k113"],
  "getFollowers": true,
  "getFollowing": true,
  "maxItems": 2000
}

{
  "bio": "🌺",
  "region": "SA",
  "language": "ar",
  "hasEmail": false,
  "hasPhone": false,
  "avatar": "https://p16-sign-sg.tiktokcdn.com/aweme/1080x1080/…"
}

{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.tiktok.com/@a3k113/video/7043896727212409862"
  ],
  "getFollowers": true,
  "getFollowing": false,
  "maxItems": 200
}

{
  "username": "a3k113",
  "nickname": "لازم تعرف🤔",
  "verified": true,
  "followers": 94,
  "likes": 38,
  "coverImage": "https://p77-sg.tiktokcdn.com/obj/tiktok-obj/1613727517271041"
}

One flat record per account

No nesting at all: sixteen fields on a single level, which is unusual in this family and makes the output drop straight into a spreadsheet or a CRM without flattening.

• 4

  Identity

  Always present

  • id
  • username, the handle
  • nickname, the shown name
  • url

• 4

  Reach

  The numbers that matter

  • followers
  • following
  • likes, lifetime, on the account
  • videos, lifetime post count

• 5

  Qualification

  Targeting and segmentation

  • bio
  • region, two letters
  • language
  • hasEmail, hasPhone

• 3

  Presentation

  Imagery and status

  • verified
  • avatar
  • coverImage

The followers-to-following ratio together with videos is what most audience audits run on: an account following thousands, followed by dozens and having posted twice is the shape of a follower you do not want to count.

The rules that make this a list tool

The listing’s usage note is unusually firm here, and two of its rules change what the actor is for rather than just how it runs.

• 01

  Single-account lookups are not allowed

  The listing states that you must not disable both getFollowers and getFollowing to fetch one user. If a single account’s stats is what you need, that is the Profile Scraper’s job, not this one.

• 02

  Ten users is the floor for a run

  Every run must fetch at least ten users. The listing says running with fewer creates unnecessary cost and may be blocked, which conveniently matches the free allowance on one list query.

• 03

  Both toggles start switched on

  getFollowers and getFollowing default to true. A run submitted without touching them is paying three query fees per profile, not one.

• 04

  A post URL is a valid input

  startUrls takes video and photo links as well as profile links, resolving them to the author. Useful when a viral post is all you have.

• 05

  The map function is for shaping, not filtering

  As across the family, using customMapFunction to drop items risks automatic blocking. Control volume with maxItems instead.

Free accounts run in demo mode: 5 runs a month, 10 items each.

Counting the queries first

Work out the fixed part before the variable one: $0.005 for every profile URL, plus $0.005 for each list you asked for. Only then does $0.0005 a user start to apply, and only past the roughly ten each list includes.

The first row is the shape worth remembering: twenty audiences sampled ten deep cost only query fees, because the free allowance covers every user returned. One note on the fourth row, the listing writes it as $0.505; the half cent rounds up here and in the estimator, and the arithmetic underneath is the same.

Who needs the graph rather than the account?

The listing points at influencer marketing, talent scouting, lead generation and network analysis. Each of them is asking a question about an audience, who is in it, where they are, whether they are real, that no single profile record can answer.

• Audience auditing

  Followers only, one account deep

  Check whether an influencer’s followers post at all, using videos and the follower-to-following ratio

  $0.51 per 1,000 followers

• Lead generation

  Followers only, then filter

  Pull a niche account’s audience and keep the ones whose bio and contact flags read like a business

  $0.30 per 550 users

• Network analysis

  Both lists, a seed set

  Map the graph in both directions from a handful of seed accounts to find the hubs between them

  $5.05 per 10,000 users

• Market sampling

  Followers only, ten deep, many accounts

  Sample twenty audiences for the price of the queries alone before choosing which to go deep on

  $0.20 per 20 accounts

• Creator discovery

  From a video URL

  Turn a viral post into a creator record and their audience in one run, without looking up the handle

  $0.03 per 50 users

Calling it without paying for the second list

The actor is apidojo/tiktok-user-scraper. The one habit worth building: set both toggles explicitly on every call, because the default is the expensive configuration.

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
ACTOR = "apidojo/tiktok-user-scraper"

def audience(urls, followers=True, following=False, cap=1000):
    # Always state both: they default to True, and each is its own $0.005.
    run = client.actor(ACTOR).call(run_input={
        "startUrls": urls,
        "getFollowers": followers,
        "getFollowing": following,
        "maxItems": cap,
    })
    return list(client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items())

users = audience(["https://www.tiktok.com/@a3k113"], cap=1000)

# Dormant accounts are the cheapest thing to strip out of an audience.
active = [u for u in users if u["videos"] > 0 and u["followers"] > 10]
print(f"{len(active)} of {len(users)} accounts actually post")

for u in active:
    ratio = u["followers"] / max(u["following"], 1)
    print(u["username"], u["region"], u["videos"], round(ratio, 2))

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });

// Two runs, one toggle each: the dataset then tells you which list it is.
const forList = (getFollowers) => client.actor('apidojo/tiktok-user-scraper').call({
  startUrls: ['https://www.tiktok.com/@a3k113'],
  getFollowers,
  getFollowing: !getFollowers,
  maxItems: 1000,
});

const [followersRun, followingRun] = await Promise.all([forList(true), forList(false)]);

const grab = async (run) => (await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems()).items;
const [followers, following] = await Promise.all([grab(followersRun), grab(followingRun)]);

const mutual = followers.filter((f) => following.some((g) => g.id === f.id));
console.log(mutual.length, 'mutual connections');

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/apidojo~tiktok-user-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"startUrls":["https://www.tiktok.com/@a3k113"],"getFollowers":true,"getFollowing":false,"maxItems":1000}'

The listing quotes 400–600 users per second. Export as JSON, CSV or Excel from the Storage tab, the flat record needs no reshaping before it reaches a spreadsheet.

TikTok User Scraper FAQ

Where TikTok User Scraper fits