Threads API in 2026: what the official API won't give you, and how to get public Threads data

Threads keeps growing, and brand-monitoring, influencer and social-listening teams want its data. The first stop is Meta's official Threads API — and that's where many projects stall.

What the official API is good at

It's built for accounts that connect to your app: publishing, reading your own posts and replies, and insights on your own content. For a scheduler or a single-brand dashboard, it's the right tool.

Where it stops

• Reading other accounts' public posts at scale is not what it's for.
• Keyword search beyond your own test users needs advanced access through Meta's App Review, often with business verification.
• Competitor tracking, creator discovery and market-wide keyword monitoring are exactly the use cases that need data from accounts you don't control.

That's why several social-listening tools today say Threads support is limited to "owned profiles".

Getting public Threads data as rows

The Threads Scraper on Apify returns public Threads data without a login. One input field, mode, picks what you get:

• Posts / Replies / Reposts of any public account
• Profile: followers, bio, links
• Search: public posts for keywords and hashtags
• Thread: one post with all its replies
• Accounts: people and brands matching a keyword

Every post is a flat row with text, media, links, likes, replies and reposts, so it goes straight into a spreadsheet or a database.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/lergassy~threads-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"mode":"search","keywords":["your brand"]}'

For ongoing monitoring there's Threads Monitor: it checks accounts or keywords on a schedule and returns only posts it hasn't seen before, so you pay for new posts, not re-downloads. A ready n8n workflow sends each new mention to Telegram.

Cost

$0.002 per post and $0.004 per full profile. No per-run fee; rows that fail are free. 10,000 brand mentions = $20.

From an AI agent

Agents can call it through the Apify MCP server, or pay per run with x402 — useful if you're building a research agent that needs to "check what people say about X on Threads".

Limits

• Only public content: private accounts stay private.
• Threads search returns what Threads itself ranks for a keyword, not a full historical archive.

If you're choosing between the official API and a scraper: use the official API for your own account, and public data tools for everything outside it.

Disclosure: links to Apify in this post use my referral code.