Search Mastodon accounts and hashtags

Try in Playground

Search a Mastodon server for accounts or hashtags. Returns up to 40 accounts with profiles and counters, or up to 40 hashtags with daily usage.

GET/v1/mastodon/searchx-api-key

Headers

Get your API key

x-api-keystringrequiredheader

Your ScrapeAtlas customer key. Create one on /account/ and set SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY.

Query parameters

querystringrequiredquery

Required search text, 1–200 characters.

min 1 chars · max 200 chars

Exampleopen source

typeenumquery

Optional: accounts (default) or hashtags.

one of: accounts, hashtags

Exampleaccounts

serverenumquery

Optional Mastodon server whose public view to read; default mastodon.social. One of the supported servers listed in the schema.

one of: mastodon.social, mastodon.online, mstdn.social, mas.to, mastodon.world, mstdn.jp, fosstodon.org, hachyderm.io, infosec.exchange, techhub.social, universeodon.com, mastodon.art, social.vivaldi.net, mastodon.cloud, sfba.social, chaos.social, piaille.fr, mastodon.gamedev.place, toot.community, ioc.exchange, indieweb.social, masto.ai, journa.host, newsie.social, social.coop, mastodon.scot, aus.social, kolektiva.social

Response fields

requestIdstring

Request correlation UUID.

Upstream requests, decoded response bytes and elapsed milliseconds.

accounting.upstreamRequestsinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.responseBytesinteger

Always included.

≥ 0

accounting.durationMsnumber

Always included.

≥ 0

successboolean

True when usable data is returned; inspect status and coverage for omissions.

statusenum

success, partial, failed or challenged. HTTP 200 can be partial.

one of: success, partial

sourceUrlstring

Public Mastodon page the data describes.

absolute HTTPS URL

fetchedAtstring

UTC retrieval time.

serverstring

Optional Mastodon server whose public view to read; default mastodon.social. One of the supported servers listed in the schema.

min 1 chars

complete is false when a warning names an omission, such as federated_view, counters_hidden or reply_limit.

coverage.sourcestring

Always included.

coverage.completeboolean

Always included.

coverage.warningsstring[]

Always included.

type=accounts: matching accounts, at most 40, with the profile fields of the profile endpoint.

up to 40 items

accounts.idstring

Always included.

accounts.usernamestring

Always included.

min 1 chars

accounts.acctstring

Always included.

min 1 chars

accounts.handlestring

Always included.

min 3 chars

accounts.display_namestring

Always included.

accounts.lockedboolean

Always included.

accounts.botboolean

Always included.

accounts.created_atstring

Always included.

accounts.notestring

Always included.

accounts.urlstring

Always included.

accounts.avatarstring

Always included.

accounts.headerstring

Always included.

accounts.followers_countintegernullable

Always included.

accounts.following_countintegernullable

Always included.

accounts.statuses_countintegernullable

Always included.

accounts.fieldsobject[]

Always included.

type=hashtags: matching hashtags, at most 40, with name, url and daily history.

up to 40 items

hashtags.namestring

Always included.

min 1 chars

hashtags.urlstring

Always included.

Optional.

hashtags.history.daystring

Always included.

hashtags.history.usesstring

Always included.

hashtags.history.accountsstring

Always included.

HTTP 200 returns the success variant. Check status: partial means usable data with warnings, and failed or challenged requests carry a failure object described in Errors & responses.

Error codes

HTTP	failure.code	Meaning
200	`partial`	Usable data with federated_view, counters_hidden, reply_limit, ancestor_limit, activity_unavailable or unsupported_*_omitted warnings.
400	`invalid_request`	Missing, duplicate, unsafe or unsupported parameters, a post URL outside the supported servers or an invalid cursor.
401	`unauthorized`	Missing or invalid worker API key.
403	`restricted_page`	The server does not share this data without login, or the account hides its followers and following.
404	`not_found`	Unknown or removed account, post or hashtag.
429	`upstream_rate_limited`	The server’s rate limit is exhausted for every available network identity.
502	`upstream_challenged`	The server answered with a challenge or non-JSON page.
502	`unsupported_page`	Malformed, mismatched or looping source data.
502	`response_too_large` `payload_too_complex`	Response exceeded byte or parsing limits.
502	`unsafe_redirect` `request_limit` `upstream_error`	Bounded source retrieval could not complete.
503	`busy`	All worker slots and queue places are occupied.
504	`timeout`	Total request deadline expired.

Code example

curl "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/mastodon/search?query=open+source&type=accounts" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/mastodon/search?query=open+source&type=accounts",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"
    }
  }
);

const data = await response.json();
console.log(data.status, data);

type Result = {
  status: "success" | "partial" | "failed" | "challenged";
  requestId: string;
  [field: string]: unknown;
};

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/mastodon/search?query=open+source&type=accounts",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": process.env.SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY!
    }
  }
);

const data = (await response.json()) as Result;
if (data.status === "failed" || data.status === "challenged") {
  throw new Error(`Mastodon request failed: ${data.requestId}`);
}
console.log(data);

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/mastodon/search",
    headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
    params={
        "query": "open source",
        "type": "accounts"
    },
    timeout=60,
)
data = response.json()
print(data["status"], data)

package main

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"fmt"
	"net/http"
)

func main() {
	req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/mastodon/search?query=open+source&type=accounts", nil)
	req.Header.Set("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
	resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	defer resp.Body.Close()

	var data map[string]interface{}
	json.NewDecoder(resp.Body).Decode(&data)
	fmt.Println(data["status"], data)
}

import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpClient;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        var client = HttpClient.newHttpClient();
        var request = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
            .uri(URI.create("https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/mastodon/search?query=open+source&type=accounts"))
            .GET()
            .header("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
            .build();
        var response = client.send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());
        System.out.println(response.body());
    }
}

Use your sa_live_… customer key at https://api.scrapeatlas.com.

Responses

Successful result. Synthetic example validated against the runtime contract.

{
  "success": true,
  "status": "success",
  "requestId": "00000000-0000-4000-8000-000000000001",
  "sourceUrl": "https://mastodon.social/search?q=open%20source",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-09-29T00:00:00.000Z",
  "server": "mastodon.social",
  "coverage": {
    "source": "public_api",
    "complete": true,
    "warnings": []
  },
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 1,
    "responseBytes": 18000,
    "durationMs": 420
  },
  "accounts": [
    {
      "id": "1001",
      "username": "example",
      "acct": "example",
      "handle": "example@mastodon.social",
      "display_name": "Example",
      "locked": false,
      "bot": false,
      "discoverable": true,
      "group": false,
      "created_at": "2024-01-01T00:00:00.000Z",
      "note": "<p>Synthetic profile</p>",
      "url": "https://mastodon.social/@example",
      "uri": "https://mastodon.social/users/example",
      "avatar": "https://files.example.test/avatar.png",
      "avatar_static": "https://files.example.test/avatar.png",
      "header": "https://files.example.test/header.png",
      "header_static": "https://files.example.test/header.png",
      "followers_count": 1200,
      "following_count": 180,
      "statuses_count": 3400,
      "last_status_at": "2026-09-28",
      "hide_collections": false,
      "emojis": [],
      "roles": [],
      "fields": [
        {
          "name": "Site",
          "value": "<a href=\"https://example.test\">example.test</a>",
          "verified_at": "2025-01-01T00:00:00.000+00:00"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Missing, duplicate, unsafe or unsupported parameters, a post URL outside the supported servers or an invalid cursor.

{
  "requestId": "9d2f1c0a-6b1e-4c7d-9a8e-2f3b4c5d6e7f",
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 0,
    "responseBytes": 0,
    "durationMs": 0
  },
  "success": false,
  "status": "failed",
  "failure": {
    "code": "invalid_request",
    "message": "Invalid request: missing, duplicate, unsupported or malformed parameters."
  }
}