Patreon Scraper Tutorial: Run This Apify Actor with Python

Scrape Patreon creators (campaigns) with campaign metadata, tier pricing, public posts, and patron counts.

This repository shows how to run Patreon Scraper from Python. The complete actor README below is the canonical source of truth for inputs, outputs, examples, limits, and behavior.

Actor Overview

• Actor: crawlerbros/patreon-scraper
• Apify Store: https://apify.com/crawlerbros/patreon-scraper
• SEO title: Patreon Scraper Tutorial: Run This Apify Actor with Python
• Description: Scrape Patreon creators (campaigns) with campaign metadata, tier pricing, public posts, and patron counts.

Run Locally

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
cp .env.example .env
cp input.example.json input.json
python main.py

Set APIFY_TOKEN in .env, then edit input.json according to the actor README below. The script calls the actor and prints JSON results from the default dataset.

Actor README

The following README is copied from the Apify actor page/source and should be treated as the source of truth.

Patreon Scraper

Scrape Patreon creators (campaigns) — name, summary, patron count, paid-member count, total post count, currency, tier pricing (with USD conversion), and recent public posts. No login required, pure HTTP using Patreon's __NEXT_DATA__ payload + public posts API.

Built for creator-economy analytics, brand-deal teams, and competitive research on Patreon-monetised creators.

What you get

Creator records (recordType=creator)

Field	Description
id	Patreon campaign ID
vanity	Vanity slug (PhilosophyTube)
url	Public Patreon URL
name	Campaign name
summary	Plain-text campaign description
oneLiner	Short tagline
creationName	What the creator makes (e.g. "Creating Philosophy Videos")
currency	Currency code (USD / EUR / GBP / …)
patronCount	Total patron count (free + paid)
paidMemberCount	Paid-member count
creationCount	Total post count
payPerName	"month" / "video" / "creation"
isMonthly	true if billing is monthly
isNsfw	true for adult content
offersFreeMembership	Whether a free tier exists
offersPaidMembership	Whether paid tiers exist
publishedAt	ISO 8601 launch date
avatarPhotoUrl	Avatar image URL
coverPhotoUrl	Banner image URL
pledgeUrl	Direct checkout URL
creator	{fullName, vanity, url} for the underlying user
tiers	Array of paid tiers (sorted by price ascending)
scrapedAt	ISO 8601 UTC timestamp

Each tier in tiers:

Field	Description
id	Tier (reward) ID
title	Tier title
description	Tier description (plain text)
amountCents	Price in cents
amountUsd	Price as a decimal USD/local-currency value
currency	Currency code
patronCount	Patrons on this tier
requiresShipping	true if physical fulfilment required
imageUrl	Tier illustration URL

Post records (recordType=post)

Field	Description
id	Post ID
vanity	Creator vanity (added by us)
title	Post title
publishedAt	ISO 8601 publish timestamp
url	Public post URL
postType	video_external_file, image_file, text_only, audio_file, link, …
isPaid	true if patron-only
isPublic	true if visible to anonymous users
patronCount	Number of patrons who can see the post
commentCount	Comment count
likeCount	Like count
teaserText	Plain-text teaser (when paid post has a public teaser)
content	Plain-text body (when public)
thumbnailUrl	Thumbnail image URL

Empty fields are dropped from every record at every depth.

Input

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
mode	Enum	creator	creator (campaign + tiers + posts) / posts (posts only) / search (creators by keyword) / explore (browse by category) / postByUrl (single post by URL)
creators	Array	["PhilosophyTube"]	Vanity slugs or full URLs (mode=creator/posts)
searchQuery	String	—	Keyword for mode=search
category	Enum	—	Patreon Explore category — podcasts, video-film, music, visual-arts, comedy, games, writing, drawing-painting, comics-graphic-novels, tabletop-games, science, education, crafts-diy, lifestyle
postUrls	Array	—	Patreon post URLs (https://www.patreon.com/posts/<id>) for mode=postByUrl
includePosts	Boolean	true	When mode=creator, also fetch posts
maxPostsPerCreator	Integer	20	Hard cap per-creator post emission (1-200)
minPatronCount	Integer	—	Drop creators with fewer patrons
excludeNsfw	Boolean	false	Drop NSFW creators
maxItems	Integer	50	Hard cap on total emitted records (1-5000)

Example input — single creator + posts

{
  "mode": "creator",
  "creators": ["PhilosophyTube"],
  "includePosts": true,
  "maxPostsPerCreator": 20
}

Example input — batch creators

{
  "mode": "creator",
  "creators": ["jordanbpeterson", "PhilosophyTube"],
  "includePosts": false,
  "minPatronCount": 1000
}

Example input — posts only

{
  "mode": "posts",
  "creators": ["PhilosophyTube"],
  "maxPostsPerCreator": 100
}

Example input — search creators

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "philosophy",
  "minPatronCount": 500,
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example input — explore by category

{
  "mode": "explore",
  "category": "podcasts",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example input — fetch post by URL

{
  "mode": "postByUrl",
  "postUrls": [
    "https://www.patreon.com/posts/85614999",
    "https://www.patreon.com/posts/welcome-to-the-12345"
  ]
}

Example output

{
  "recordType": "creator",
  "id": "114875",
  "vanity": "PhilosophyTube",
  "url": "https://www.patreon.com/PhilosophyTube",
  "name": "Philosophy Tube",
  "creationName": "Creating Philosophy Videos",
  "oneLiner": "Giving away a philosophy degree one video at a time.",
  "summary": "When the British government tripled university tuition in 2010 …",
  "currency": "USD",
  "patronCount": 15382,
  "paidMemberCount": 5233,
  "creationCount": 756,
  "payPerName": "month",
  "offersFreeMembership": true,
  "offersPaidMembership": true,
  "publishedAt": "2014-09-21T17:34:46.000+00:00",
  "creator": {
    "fullName": "Philosophy Tube",
    "vanity": "PhilosophyTube",
    "url": "https://www.patreon.com/PhilosophyTube"
  },
  "tiers": [
    { "id": "...", "title": "Patron", "amountCents": 200, "amountUsd": 2.00, "currency": "USD" },
    { "id": "...", "title": "Producer", "amountCents": 500, "amountUsd": 5.00 }
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-06T05:42:18Z"
}

Use cases

• Creator-economy analytics — Track patron growth and tier pricing across a portfolio of creators.
• Brand-deal targeting — Identify creators with N+ patrons in a niche for sponsorship outreach.
• Competitive research — Compare your creator's pricing/post-cadence with peers.
• Investor due-diligence — Patron counts are a public approximation of MRR; compare across creators.
• Content audits — Pull every public post from a Patreon creator for analysis or archival.

FAQ

Do I need a Patreon account? No. Every endpoint this actor uses is part of Patreon's public-facing site (the campaign page that any visitor can see) and the public posts JSON API.

Why does paidMemberCount differ from patronCount? patronCount includes free-tier members. paidMemberCount is paying patrons only — usually a much smaller number for creators that offer a free tier.

Are full post bodies included? Only for posts marked is_public=true. Patron-only posts return a public teaser (when set) but the full body is locked. Each post's isPaid / isPublic flags tell you which type you have.

How many posts can I scrape per creator? Up to 200 per run via maxPostsPerCreator. The Patreon posts API paginates 20 at a time — large pulls take ~1 second per page.

How current is the data? Live — every run hits Patreon at request time. Schedule the actor for hourly / daily refreshes to track patron-growth curves.

Do I need a proxy? No. Patreon's public site is happy to serve datacenter IPs.

What if Patreon does block me? The actor has built-in auto-escalation: on the first HTTP 403 / anti-bot block it lazily engages Apify Proxy (datacenter group first, residential as a second-stage fallback) and retries the failed URL transparently. All subsequent fetches in the same run continue through the proxied session. To disable, set autoEscalateOnBlock=false. To force a specific group set, populate proxyGroups.

Limitations

• Patron-only post bodies are not accessible without a logged-in account.
• Some creators hide patronCount (set member_count_preference to TIER_BREAKDOWN); those records will still emit but with the count omitted.
• Earnings are not exposed unless the creator explicitly publishes them (show_earnings); we don't surface this field by default.
• Comments are not included in this version (each post would need a follow-up fetch); we surface commentCount for sentiment-trend approximation.

Files

• main.py - minimal Python runner for the Apify API.
• main_apify_client.py - equivalent runner using the official Apify Python client.
• input.example.json - empty input placeholder; copy it to input.json and fill it from the actor README.
• .env.example - environment variables used by the runner.
• .gitignore - keeps .env, input.json, and Python cache files out of commits.
• requirements.txt - Python dependencies for both runners.
• LICENSE - MIT license.

Links

• Run this actor on Apify
• CrawlerBros on GitHub
• CrawlerBros on Apify

License

MIT