What you can scrape from LinkedIn
Different data types have different difficulty and risk profiles:
| Data type | Difficulty | Best approach |
|---|---|---|
| Public profiles (name, headline, location) | Low | Phantombuster, Apify, custom code |
| Sales Navigator search results | Medium | Wiza, Evaboot |
| Verified email addresses | Medium | Wiza, Hunter.io, Apollo |
| Company pages + employees | Low | Phantombuster Company Scraper, Apify |
| Job postings | Low-medium | Apify Job Scraper, custom code |
| Posts and reactions | Medium | Phantombuster Post Scraper, n8n workflows |
| Comments and engagement | High | Phantombuster, Apify, custom |
| Private connections data | Very high / risky | Avoid — high ban risk |
Approach 1 — No-code scraping with tools
The easiest path. You pay a monthly fee, click through a configuration wizard, and the tool runs in the cloud. Best for non-technical users and anyone who values their time.
Phantombuster (recommended for multi-platform)
Phantombuster has 100+ pre-built "phantoms" including LinkedIn Profile Scraper, Sales Navigator Export, Company Page Scraper, Post Scraper, and Comment Scraper. Cloud execution. Starts at $56/mo on the annual Starter plan (5 phantom slots, 20 hours/month execution).
Trade-off: Phantombuster's general infrastructure means LinkedIn-specific tools (see Approach 2) often have better account safety for LinkedIn-only use cases. For multi-platform (LinkedIn + Instagram + Twitter + Google Maps in one workflow), Phantombuster is unmatched.
Apify (recommended for developers)
Apify is a marketplace of community-built scrapers ("Actors"). It has dedicated LinkedIn Profile Scraper, Job Scraper, and Company Scraper Actors. Lower cost per profile scraped at scale than Phantombuster. Requires more technical setup — you call Actors via API or web UI.
Captain Data (recommended for enterprise)
Captain Data positions itself as enterprise data extraction. Strong on data transformation and CRM enrichment. Pricier than Apify but with white-glove support.
Approach 2 — Chrome extensions for inside-LinkedIn scraping
These tools run as Chrome extensions that activate when you're browsing LinkedIn. Best for Sales Navigator export and contact enrichment.
Wiza — Sales Navigator export with verified emails
Wiza is the standard for Sales Navigator scraping with verified emails. ~90-95% email deliverability based on testing. Free tier covers 20 emails + 5 phones/month. Paid plans from $49/mo. Best for: B2B sales teams exporting Sales Nav lists.
Evaboot — same job, cheaper
Evaboot does substantially the same thing as Wiza at a lower price point. Slightly less polished UX, comparable email quality. Good budget alternative.
Kaspr — phone numbers, not just emails
Kaspr stands out for phone-number capture from LinkedIn profiles. Useful when email isn't enough and you need to cold-call. Higher per-credit cost.
Approach 3 — Custom code with proxies
Best for: developers, scale operations, anyone who needs more flexibility than a SaaS tool offers.
The standard stack
- Proxy provider — Bright Data, Oxylabs, IPRoyal, or Smartproxy. Use residential or ISP proxies, not datacentre.
- Scraping framework — Playwright or Puppeteer for browser-based scraping. ScrapFly's API for simpler "GET this URL through a proxy" needs.
- Anti-detection — undetected-chromedriver, custom user-agent rotation, mouse-movement simulation.
- Storage + downstream — write to CSV / Postgres / your CRM.
The free option
The joeyism/linkedin_scraper Python library on GitHub is the most popular open-source LinkedIn scraper. Works for personal projects. Will not survive aggressive use — the maintainers explicitly recommend not running it at scale.
Linkedin is tough to scrape. A combination of proxy rotation and browser rendering can be used to retrieve the data which is public. Take a look at proxy services that focus on residential IPs — the cheap datacentre ones get caught in minutes. — r/webscraping
Is LinkedIn scraping legal? The short answer
In the United States, scraping publicly available LinkedIn data is legal under federal law. The key precedent is hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn (9th Circuit Court of Appeals, 2022), which ruled that scraping public data does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).
Scraping still violates LinkedIn's Terms of Service in either case. That's a contractual matter — LinkedIn can ban your account, but cannot sue an individual user under criminal law. For the full legal picture see our LinkedIn automation legality guide .
EU users should additionally check GDPR implications — scraping public data can still trigger GDPR obligations if it relates to identifiable EU residents.
How to scrape LinkedIn without getting banned
- Don't use a fresh account. Use an aged account (3+ months old) with real connections. Fresh accounts running scrapers get restricted within days. If you need additional accounts, AccsMarket sells aged accounts.
- Rate limit aggressively. 50-100 profile views per day is conservative. 500+ is risky. 1000+ guarantees restriction.
- Use residential proxies, not datacentre. LinkedIn maintains lists of datacentre IPs and blocks them faster than residential ranges.
- Simulate human patterns. Random delays between actions (3-15 seconds), occasional scroll, occasional non-scraping browsing.
- Don't combine scraping with messaging. Either scrape OR run outreach campaigns. Doing both from one account compounds detection signals.
- Use the right tool category for the job. See the safety breakdowns: Is Phantombuster safe? , Is Heyreach safe? .
How to scrape LinkedIn for free
Three meaningful free paths:
- joeyism/linkedin_scraper (GitHub, Python). Free, requires coding ability, scales poorly. Best for one-off projects.
- Waalaxy's free plan. 80 invitations + 25 email finder credits per month. Not pure scraping, but covers basic Sales Nav export for small projects. Sign up via Waalaxy.
- n8n workflows. Open-source automation platform with LinkedIn community nodes. Free to self-host. Requires setup time.
How to scrape emails from LinkedIn specifically
LinkedIn doesn't show email addresses on most profiles. To extract emails, you need an enrichment layer that matches LinkedIn profiles to verified email addresses from external databases. The best options:
- Wiza — purpose-built for this, free tier available
- Hunter.io — broader email finder, LinkedIn integration via Chrome extension
- Apollo.io — has a Chrome extension that does the same thing as part of a broader CRM
- Phantombuster's LinkedIn Profile Email Finder phantom — bulk option
How to scrape LinkedIn comments
LinkedIn Post Comments are scrape-able with the right tool. Phantombuster's "Post Comments Extractor" is the standard option. Apify has community Actors for the same job. For a custom solution, Playwright + residential proxy + careful rate limiting works but requires babysitting.
This is one of the higher-risk operations because comments scraping requires loading many post pages in sequence, which is easily fingerprinted as automation.
Best tool by use case (cheat sheet)
| Use case | Best tool | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Sales Navigator → CSV with emails | Wiza or Evaboot | Purpose-built, verified emails, fast |
| Bulk profile scraping (1k+) | Apify or Phantombuster | Scale, cloud execution, proxy infra |
| Multi-platform (LI + IG + Twitter) | Phantombuster | Only tool covering 5+ platforms in one workflow |
| Job posting scraping | Apify Job Scraper Actor | Optimised for this specifically |
| Post + comment engagement | Phantombuster Post phantom | Handles authenticated post access |
| Custom workflow with API | Bright Data + Playwright | Maximum flexibility, residential IPs |
| Free / one-off project | joeyism/linkedin_scraper | $0, works for small batches |
Related reading
- Is LinkedIn automation illegal? — the full legal picture
- LinkedIn connection limit 2026 — daily/weekly caps
- Best Phantombuster alternatives in 2026
- Best LinkedIn automation tools 2026 — main ranking