TikTok Profile Scraper — Python SDK

Real-time TikTok profile data without an API key: followers, likes, videos count, bio, verification status, avatar URL, plus 6 derived creator-tier signals — all in one call.

Python client for the TikTok Profile Scraper Apify Actor — extract structured profile data from any public TikTok account at $0.001 per profile, with built-in residential-proxy rotation and retries.

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What it does

For any public TikTok username, this actor fetches the profile page, extracts the embedded JSON state and returns a single rich record combining all profile metadata + 6 derived creator-tier signals computed by the SDK.

A direct, pay-per-use alternative to:

• TikTok Business / Research API (rate-limited, app review required, US-only research access)
• Manual TikTok scraping (heavy WAF, breaks weekly)
• Generic influencer-discovery platforms ($99-$499/mo)

Pricing: $0.001 per profile. No subscriptions, no expiring credits, no rate limits.

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Quick start

from tiktok_profile_scraper import TikTokProfileClient

client = TikTokProfileClient(api_token="apify_api_xxxxxx")

profile = client.scrape_one("khaby.lame")

print(f"Name:        {profile['nickname']}")
print(f"Verified:    {profile['verified']}")
print(f"Followers:   {profile['stats']['followers']:,}")
print(f"Likes:       {profile['stats']['likes']:,}")
print(f"Videos:      {profile['stats']['videos']:,}")
print(f"Tier:        {profile['creator_tier']}")
print(f"Engagement:  {profile['engagement_rate_pct']}%")
print(f"Influence:   {profile['influence_score']}/100")

Output:

Name:        Khabane lame
Verified:    True
Followers:   160,327,702
Likes:       2,567,849,339
Videos:      1,311
Tier:        mega
Engagement:  1601.63%
Influence:   81/100

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Installation

pip install git+https://github.com/apivault-labs/tiktok-profile-scraper-python.git

Or clone and use directly:

git clone https://github.com/apivault-labs/tiktok-profile-scraper-python.git
cd tiktok-profile-scraper-python
pip install -r requirements.txt

Requires Python 3.9+ and the requests library.

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Get your API token (free)

1. Sign up at apify.com — free tier includes $5 monthly credits, no card required
2. Go to Account → Integrations
3. Copy your Personal API token

export APIFY_API_TOKEN=apify_api_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Or pass it explicitly:

client = TikTokProfileClient(api_token="apify_api_xxxxxx")

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What you get for $0.001 per profile

👤 Core profile fields (real-time, no cache)

• username, uniqueId, nickname, id, secUid
• verified — blue checkmark status
• privateAccount — private profile flag
• signature — full bio text
• avatar — full-resolution profile picture URL

📊 Statistics block

• stats.followers — follower count
• stats.following — following count
• stats.likes — total likes (heart count) across all videos
• stats.videos — total videos posted
• stats.friends — mutual-follow count

🧠 Derived creator-tier signals (added by the SDK)

• creator_tier — mega / macro / mid / micro / nano / starter (industry-standard buckets)
• influence_score (0-100) — composite of followers × engagement, log-scaled
• engagement_rate_pct — total likes ÷ followers × 100
• avg_likes_per_video — total likes ÷ videos count
• likes_per_follower — alt engagement metric
• is_verified — typed boolean
• profile_url — canonical TikTok URL

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Examples

See the examples/ folder for full code:

File	What it does
quickstart.py	Scrape one profile, print key metrics
bulk_scrape.py	Scrape 100+ profiles in one batch
find_micro_influencers.py	Filter creators by tier and engagement
verified_only.py	Keep only verified accounts
export_to_csv.py	Save flat profiles to CSV / Excel
competitor_overlap.py	Compare two creators side-by-side
influencer_outreach_list.py	Build a ranked outreach shortlist

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API reference

TikTokProfileClient(api_token=None, timeout=600)

Param	Type	Description
api_token	str	Apify API token. Falls back to APIFY_API_TOKEN env var.
timeout	int	Max seconds to wait for the actor run. Default 600 (10 min).
poll_interval	float	Seconds between status polls. Default 3.

client.scrape(usernames, **kwargs)

Scrape multiple profiles synchronously.

Param	Type	Default	Description
usernames	list[str]	required	TikTok usernames (with or without @)
max_retries	int	3	Retry attempts per profile with new proxy IP
proxy_group	str	"RESIDENTIAL"	"RESIDENTIAL" or "DATACENTER"
use_proxy	bool	True	Disable proxy entirely if False
actor_timeout_secs	int	300	Actor runtime hint passed to Apify
enrich	bool	True	Add client-side creator_tier, engagement_rate_pct, etc.

Returns: list[dict] — one record per username. Failed records contain {"username": ..., "error": ...} instead of profile fields.

client.scrape_one(username, **kwargs)

Convenience wrapper for a single profile. Returns one dict or raises ActorRunError.

client.estimate_cost(profile_count)

Returns the estimated USD cost (profile_count × 0.001).

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Sample output

{
  "username": "khaby.lame",
  "id": "6974449150902150149",
  "nickname": "Khabane lame",
  "uniqueId": "khaby.lame",
  "verified": true,
  "privateAccount": false,
  "signature": "Se vuoi ridere sei nel posto giusto\ud83d\ude0e",
  "secUid": "MS4wLjABAAAAwAg0rSzO65WQfz4RzQ...",
  "avatar": "https://p16-sign-va.tiktokcdn.com/...",
  "stats": {
    "followers": 160327702,
    "following": 85,
    "likes": 2567849339,
    "videos": 1311,
    "friends": 0
  },
  "creator_tier": "mega",
  "influence_score": 81,
  "engagement_rate_pct": 1601.63,
  "avg_likes_per_video": 1958695.1,
  "likes_per_follower": 16.02,
  "is_verified": true,
  "profile_url": "https://www.tiktok.com/@khaby.lame"
}

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Use cases

🎯 Influencer Marketing

Build creator shortlists by exact criteria:

• creator_tier == "micro" — proven engagement at affordable rates
• engagement_rate_pct > 5 — filter out follower-bot accounts
• verified == True — brand-safe partners only
• stats.videos > 50 — active creators with content history

🏷️ Brand Safety & Vetting

Pre-screen UGC partners before signing contracts:

• Verify follower counts (no buy-followers fraud)
• Check privateAccount status
• Inspect signature for blacklisted brands or redirects
• Validate verified badge

📊 Competitive Intelligence

Track competitor profiles over time:

• Daily snapshots of follower / likes / videos
• Detect viral spikes via stat deltas
• Benchmark engagement_rate_pct across category leaders
• Map verified-vs-unverified positioning

🔍 Talent Discovery

Find rising creators in specific niches:

• Filter nano and micro tiers by engagement rate
• Look for verified accounts with low follower count (early breakouts)
• Cross-reference avatar / bio text for niche keywords

📈 Analytics Dashboards

Pipe profile snapshots into:

• Power BI / Tableau / Looker
• Internal CRMs and ATS systems
• Custom influencer-relationship management tools

🤖 AI / LLM Training Data

Populate datasets for:

• Influencer category classification
• Bio-text NLP / topic modeling
• Profile-quality scoring models

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Pricing

Pay only for what you scrape:

Volume	Cost
1 profile	$0.001
1,000 profiles	$1.00
10,000 profiles	$10.00
100,000 profiles	$100.00

Free Apify tier includes ~$5 monthly credit — scrape up to 5,000 TikTok profiles per month for free.

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How it works

All data comes from public TikTok pages — no logins, no session cookies, no TikTok API key:

1. HTTP fetch of https://www.tiktok.com/@{username} via Apify residential proxy
2. JSON extraction from the embedded <script id="__UNIVERSAL_DATA_FOR_REHYDRATION__"> block
3. Fallback to legacy <script id="SIGI_STATE"> for older pages
4. Retry rotation — up to 3 retries with a fresh proxy IP on each WAF block
5. Client-side enrichment — SDK adds creator-tier and engagement signals from the raw stats

Influence-score formula:

followers_score = min(50, log10(followers) × 7)
engagement_score = min(50, log10(likes/followers + 1) × 25)
influence_score = followers_score + engagement_score    # 0-100

A 1M-follower creator with healthy engagement scores ~75; bot accounts with empty content score under 25.

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Speed & reliability

• 5–15 seconds per profile (HTTP only, no rendering)
• Residential proxy by default — survives TikTok's WAF reliably
• 3 retries per username with fresh IP rotation
• Graceful failure — if all retries exhaust, the record contains {"username": ..., "error": ...} instead of crashing the whole run

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FAQ

Q: Do I need a TikTok API key? A: No. This actor uses public TikTok profile pages, not the official API. No app review, no rate quota, no US-only access restrictions.

Q: How fresh is the data? A: 100% real-time. No caching layer. Each call hits TikTok's live profile page.

Q: Can it scrape video lists? A: Not in this actor — it returns profile metadata only (faster + cheaper). For video-level data, see the companion TikTok Shop Scraper or watch this repo for a future tiktok-videos-scraper.

Q: What about private accounts? A: Private profiles return limited data (no stats, no signature) but the call still succeeds with whatever public fields are available.

Q: Will it work on every username? A: Any public TikTok account. Banned / deleted accounts return an error field. Username typos return error="No user info found".

Q: Is the engagement_rate_pct reliable? A: It's the lifetime ratio of total likes to current followers. For a more granular per-post engagement rate, you'd need a video-level scrape — but this lifetime ratio is the standard quick-screen metric used by influencer agencies.

Q: Can I run this without Apify? A: This package is a thin wrapper around the hosted actor. The actor handles the residential proxy, retries and TikTok WAF mitigation. Self-hosted TikTok scraping at scale requires premium proxies + JS rendering — usually not worth building yourself.

Q: Is this allowed by TikTok's ToS? A: This actor only reads publicly accessible profile pages, the same data any browser sees. As with any scraping, use responsibly and respect TikTok's Terms of Service for your jurisdiction.

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Related Apify actors

• TikTok Shadow Ban Checker — instant indexEnabled check for any video
• TikTok Shop Scraper — product listings from TikTok Shop
• Instagram Profile Scraper — same pattern for Instagram
• Reddit Profile Scraper — Reddit user metadata

See all actors by apivault_labs.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.

This client is open source. The underlying Apify actor is a paid service ($0.001/profile).

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Keywords

tiktok-scraper tiktok-api tiktok-profile-scraper tiktok-followers-api tiktok-without-api-key tiktok-no-key tiktok-research-api-alternative influencer-marketing influencer-discovery creator-tier engagement-rate-api social-media-scraper social-media-analytics creator-economy ugc-vetting brand-safety tiktok-bio-scraper tiktok-stats-api web-scraping apify apify-actor python-sdk