OnlyFans proved to be one of the best creator platforms for monetizing content. Hence, as of May 2024, the platform has more than 3M registered creators and 220M users.
Although the platform is primarily famous for its adult content, OnlyFans expanded and includes many other niches.
Now, with hundreds of millions of active creators and users, businesses are using OnlyFans scrapers to:
- Find their ideal customers
- Find creators that are monetizing
- Analyze trends and patterns from OnlyFans
- Do competitive analysis
So, as OnlyFans data becomes more valuable, more businesses are leveraging OnlyFans scrapers to make data-driven marketing strategies.
But web scraping raises some legal consequences if you are not informed well before you dive into collecting and using OnlyFans data.
That’s why we’ve put together this article to discuss what’s OnlyFans scraper, the ethical and legal implications, and the top 5 scraping tools as reviewed by our coders.
What is OnlyFans Scraper?
An OnlyFans Scraper is a tool or service that extracts data from both public and private OnlyFans profiles. These tools can collect information without going through an official API or user interface.
The main goal of OnlyFans scrapers is to automate the manual data extraction process, making it more efficient and systematic.
The Ethical and Legal Implications
The legality of collecting data from OnlyFans depends on the types of data you want to scrape.
OnlyFans has terms of service you agree to when you visit the site. These terms generally prohibit data collection, and violating them may result in legal consequences, including being banned from the platform.
Still, there are data points that are legal to collect if you follow some rules. Here is a breakdown of the various data points and their associated legal considerations:
3 types of data that are potentially legal to scrape
In general, it is legal to collect publicly available data. Yet, it matters how you do it, and what your intentions are with the collected data.
1. Public profile information
Basic information that creators share on their public profiles, such as username, profile photo, and bio description.
2. Publicly listed social media links
If the creator links to other social media profiles on their OnlyFans page and is publicly available, it is legal to collect such information using OnlyFans scraper.
3. Publicly available statistics
If data such as the number of posts, likes or followers is publicly displayed, you can collect it without violating other terms.
Type of data that is illegal or unethical to scrape
1. Content behind Paywall
It’s prohibited to scrape paid content or content that requires registration to access, such as exclusive photos, or videos posted.
Plus, content on OnlyFans is copyrighted by the creators so unauthorized scraping, distribution, or reproduction can lead to copyright infringement.
2. Private messages
All chat messages between creators and subscribers are private. Although they cannot be viewed or deleted, if some OnlyFans scraper tools or services offer to collect such data, it’s good to know that it is not legal to collect it.
3. Personal contact information
If a creator has not publicly shared their email address, phone number, or other contact information, it is illegal to collect or attempt to access that information.
4. Financial information
Any data related to a creator’s income, payment methods, or other financial details is highly sensitive and is considered illegal to access.
5. Data Behind Access Controls
Any data that requires special permissions, logins, or other forms of access control is off-limits. Bypassing these controls is a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) in the U.S. and similar laws in other jurisdictions.
Lastly, remember that not all data is free to take. Before accessing any data, make sure you are not doing any unauthorized scraping and that you respect the platform’s privacy and rights.
5 key points to keep in mind before scraping OnlyFans
While some OnlyFans data can be legally scraped with appropriate precautions, most of the data is protected by various laws and considerations.
To remain compliant you can use a trusted OnlyFans scraper tool or service or make sure to follow these guidelines:
- Always respect the ’robots.txt’ file on the website, which may restrict access to certain parts of the site.
- Ensure you’re not violating the platform’s Terms of Service.
- Don’t overload the website with requests, because this can be seen as a denial-of-service attack.
- Even if data is publicly available, its use might be restricted by data protection laws, especially if it can be tied back to an individual.
- Respect the data protection laws – In regions like the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposes strict rules on data collection and processing. Scraping personal data without consent can lead to significant fines.
Top 5 Onlyfans scrapers picked by social media scraping experts
There are not many OnlyFans scrapers that collect data within the legal obligations. However, there are few services and tools that can transform your marketing campaigns.
Over the past few months, we’ve analyzed some of the well-known scrapers and compared them with our OnlyFans scraper and we are sharing the overview below.
Some are best for discovering and reaching out to OnlyFans creators, some are great for developers who want to dive deeper into scraping possibilities.
1. Influencers Club
If you need an OnlyFans Scraper for finding OnlyFans creators, this is your best solution.
At Influencers Club we collect publicly available data of creators across all creator platforms including OnlyFans, following all legal and ethical considerations.
We have a database of 1M+ OnlyFans creators with valid email addresses and 30+ data points for each creator. Plus, we can scrape 200K OnlyFans creators per day, per your requirements.
Apart from the general data points like username, bio, location, etc, we match OnlyFans creators with creators on other platforms (80M+ in our database). This way we can find each creator across all social media platforms.
So, we can give you a wide perspective into an OnlyFans profile, their niche, experience with brand collaborations, etc.
But, keep in mind that although we have the largest number of data points per OnlyFans creator, we don’t collect OnlyFans content, as that goes against the legal and ethical considerations of OnlyFans scraping.
Free list of top 50 OnlyFans creators in the United States
2. Apify
Apify stands out for its automation capabilities. This OnlyFans scraper allows users to replicate manual browser tasks at scale. They offer a range of pre-built tools for various scraping needs and also provide custom solutions upon request.
The tool uses the combination of automation with data extraction and offers a convenient and efficient scraping experience.
This OnlyFans scraper is suitable for more tech-savvy professionals and it’s a great option for developers that want to build their own OnlyFans scraper. Apify shares the complete documentation with a detailed description of the fields and structures.
3. ScraperAPI
Scraper API is a flexible OnlyFans web scraper that is suitable for generalized web scraping tasks.
It also handles proxies and browsers, ensuring you won’t face blocks while scraping OnlyFans. This OnlyFans scraper is suitable for both, businesses that need to scrape small amounts of data and businesses that need to scale.
The precise data points ScraperAPI can collect from OnlyFans depend on the user’s configuration and the site’s structure.
4. Oxylabs
Oxylabs is suitable for those who are looking for a simple OnlyFans scraper. It allows users to extract data without coding knowledge.
They have the capability to transform web pages into structured spreadsheets and offer features like scheduled scraping.
5. Bright Data
Bright Data is well recognized as a web scraping domain, and besides the diverse scraping services, it offers features for OnlyFans scraping. They provide large-scale data sets and automated data collection you can access without any coding knowledge.
This way of scraping OnlyFans is legal and secure, as Bright Data offers proxy solutions to ensure anonymity and safety during scraping sessions.
The tool is designed to scrape data such as the number of posts, subscription costs, subscribers, number of likes, etc.
Conclusion
Data is the foundation of marketing and platforms like OnlyFans are a treasure trove of insights about the latest digital trends, creators, and user behaviors.
So, using OnlyFans scraper you can gather insights and improve your marketing strategies to maximize impact.
Lastly, if you are aiming to discover creators that monetize from their content, at Influencers Club we can find and make a deep analysis of creators from every niche or following size.
1M+ OnlyFans creators in our database
Use our creator discovery dashboard and find OnlyFans creators per your criteria, plus a valid email address for each one of them.
