How to Scrape Tweets from Twitter (No Code) - 2024 Edition

Shehriar Awan●

February 21, 2024

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8 min read

Contents

Why scrape Tweets from Twitter?

Is it legal to scrape Tweets?

Why not use the X/Twitter API?

How to scrape Tweets data without coding

Step by step guide to scrape Tweets using Lobstr.io

FAQs

Conclusion

Want to extract all tweets from a Twitter profile? Imagine seeing ALL someone said on X (formerly Twitter)! Opinions, threads, tweets, retweets – yours to explore!

But how? Complex coding and costly APIs seem the only way, right?

Wrong! In this article, we'll learn how to scrape all tweets from any X account without coding and APIs, that too for absolutely free.

But why’d anyone want to scrape tweets from X? Let’s explore some key use cases of scraping tweets.

Why scrape Tweets from Twitter?

X has 421 million monthly active users. Which makes it a goldmine of insights for Data Analysis, AI training, marketing and other business use cases. Some of them include:

Competitor analysis
AI training and machine learning
Brand monitoring
Content creation
Influencer Marketing
Sentiment analysis

But is it legal to scrape tweets data? Let’s address that too.

Is it legal to scrape Tweets?

Tweets or posts on X are publicly accessible data. You can access them with a single Google search, they don’t contain any private information.

In the Linkedin vs HiQ Labs case, the judgment made it clear that scraping publicly available data doesn’t violate privacy laws.

This means scraping publicly available tweets with respectful limits and ethical data use is fully legal. However, double-check local laws to confirm legality of web scraping in your country.

Also remember, don't scrape private data and don't overload Twitter's servers.

Speaking of limits, you may also have another question in your mind.

Does X ban Twitter scrapers?

Since September 2023, X strictly forbids any type of crawling without prior consent. Before September, Twitter’s terms did allow limited crawling of their data.

Elon also sued some individuals for ‘flooding X’s login page with automated requests’. Dude even threatened to sue Microsoft for training ChatGPT over Twitter data.

Since the US 9th Circuit of Appeals ruled that scraping doesn’t violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, this case could face some legal challenges.

But X does have an API, why shouldn’t we use that API for accessing Tweets data?

Why not use the X/Twitter API?

X does offer a really well-documented developer API. You can sign up for a Twitter developer account and get your API key.

But like other official APIs, it also has limitations.

Too expensive pricing
Limited Tweet cap volumes
Requires coding experience

Starting with pricing, X API offers basic and pro plans ranging from $100 to $5000 per month. But after agreeing to this hefty price tag, you’ll have to deal with the rate limits.

With the Pro plan, you can only read 1 million tweets a month. This means using X API will cost you $5 per 1000 tweets. This is super expensive 💸.

Another issue with APIs is that you need coding skills to interact with them. You need strong programming knowledge to get the data you need using an API.

But not everyone’s a nerd. How can you scrape Tweets without coding?

How to scrape Tweets data without coding

For this tutorial, we’ll be a free no-code scraper – Twitter User Tweets Scraper by Lobstr.io. This tweet scraping tool is tailor-made to scrape tweets data at scale.

Key features

Launch in less than 2 minutes
Extract 25+ data points
Scrape 250+ tweets per minute
Cloud-based, no installation required
Has schedule feature
Export to Google Sheets, Amazon S3, and Webhook.
Developer-ready API access for nerds

But how much does it cost?

Pricing

Free plan: Up to 112,500 tweets per month
Premium plan: €0.04 per 1000 tweets
Business plan: €0.02 per 1000 tweets
Enterprise plan: €0.018 per 1000 tweets

Scrape Tweets from Twitter for Free

Now let’s see the tool in action. Let me show you how to scrape Tweets data without coding using Lobstr.io

Step by step guide to scrape Tweets using Lobstr.io

We’re going to scrape Elon Musk’s last 100 tweets in 6 simple steps.

Sync account
Create Squid
Add tasks
Adjust behavior
Launch scraper
Enjoy ✨

Let’s go 🏃

Step 1 - Sync X account

First step is to sync your X account to Lobstr. You don’t need to add your login credentials. All you have to do is – download Lobstr account sync Chrome addon.

Elon restricted access to X tweets to ‘stop AI data scraping’ last year. You can access tweets data only if you’re logged in. That’s why we need you to sync your account.

Next, log in to your Lobstr.io dashboard. Don’t have an account yet? Sign up now! It’s completely free.

Once logged in, go to the accounts menu and click the new accounts button. Scroll down and select Add twitter account.

In the pop-up Window, click Yes I want to sync, and ta-da ✨, your account is synced.

Now let’s move to the next step.

Step 2 - Create a Squid

Saying ‘crawler’ or ‘scraper’ sounds boring. That’s why we call them Squids. To create a new squid, from your Lobstr dashboard, click new squid and search ‘Twitter User Tweets’...

Select Twitter User Tweets Scraper and you’re ready to configure the scraper.

Next, we’ll add the input.

Step 3 - Add tasks

In this case, a task means X profile URL or username. You can add the profile URL or username of the account you want to scrape tweets from.

Let’s copy Elon’s X profile username and add it as a task.

After copying username or profile URL, paste it in the text field and click Add+. You can add as many tasks as you want plus you can also upload tasks in bulk.

After adding tasks, click save and you’ll see the settings.

Step 4 - Adjust behavior

Let’s make some tweaks. We have basic and advanced settings in this menu. First setting is Max Results. You can use this option to set a maximum tweets limit.

You can choose to extract a certain number of tweets or leave it blank to scrape all tweets from an X profile. In our case, we’re going to extract Elon’s last 100 tweets.

Next option is when to end the run. You have 2 choices here;

End run when no credits left
End run when all tasks completed

If you want to scrape fresh results every time the crawler runs, select the first option. This will end the run when you’ve consumed all your daily credits.

But what if I want to scrape all tweets from thousands of X accounts?

In this case, the second option fits your needs perfectly. This will pause your run when you’ve consumed all daily credits and resume it the next day.

You can learn more about how ‘when to end run’ works on this help page.

In advanced settings, the first option is JSON. This is for nerds. If set to true, this option will retrieve raw JSON related to the tweet.

Next is concurrency, which means number of bots deployed per job. The formula is simple;

more number of bots = faster scraping + better performance

You can remove duplicate results by toggling Unique Results, and for a better output in Excel, remove the line breaks from text using the No Line Breaks _option.

Set real-time notifications

You can opt to receive real-time email notifications when a run completes successfully or is paused due to any error.

Now we’re set to launch our crawler and start collecting those hot tweets by Elon.

Step 5 - Launch

We can launch the Squid manually and start collecting tweets data instantly. Just click the save and extract button and boom! Launch initiated 🚀

Or we can skip the manual effort and automate our extraction using the schedule feature. This can turn our scraper into a tweet monitoring machine.

But why would I need this feature?

Suppose we want to track how often our competitor brands publish content on X and how their content performs, this feature can be helpful and save a lot of time.

You can adjust the scraper to extract the latest 50 tweets from certain X accounts, every Friday or every last day of the month, or even every hour.

Choose your launch preference and launch the scraper.

Step 6 - Enjoy

Here we go, the live console shows you extraction progress and live results.

You can download the extracted data as a csv file or export them to Google Sheets, Amazon S3, Webhook, or SFTP using the delivery option.

Here we go. We just collected 100 tweets data in less than 30 seconds.

Here are Elon’s last 100 tweets with 40+ data attributes providing all key insights about every tweet.

If you prefer MS Excel, you can convert the csv file to Excel.

That’s it. Now let’s answer some questions you might have in your mind.

FAQs

Is there any limitation?

Yes, you can scrape a maximum of 1000 tweets per day. This limit is set by X, they only allow you to read 1000 tweets per day.

Can X suspend my account for web scraping tweets?

Syncing your X account with Lobstr is safe. We’ve applied measures like delay, IP rotation, support for multiple accounts, and other safety measures to keep your account safe.

How can I scrape Twitter data using Python?

You can check out our tutorial on scraping tweets using requests Python library. But it’s limited to 100 last tweets.

For scraping tweets at scale using Python, you can use Lobstr’s free API key.

Can I scrape data from X profiles with this scraper?

No, this crawler is tailor-made to scrape tweets data only. To scrape X user profiles data like bio, followers, and other attributes, you can use our Twitter Profile Scraper.

Conclusion

That was our brief step by step tutorial to scrape Tweets from X without coding, without APIs, and for free. Check out Twitter User Tweets Scraper for free.

You can also check other powerful scrapers in our store.