How to Scrape LinkedIn Followers from Competitors (2026)

It's no surprise that 90% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for lead generation. And imagine how many of your competitors are in this 90%.

This means, why bother building a qualified target audience from scratch when you can scrape LinkedIn followers and gain direct access to your competitors' audience?

I'm going to show you 3+1 ways to scrape competitors' followers on LinkedIn.

Let's see how you can use LinkedIn scraping tools to steal your competitors' audience.

Why Steal Your Competitors' Audience on LinkedIn?

Targeting competitors' LinkedIn followers is faster than cold prospecting because those people have already signaled interest in your niche.

That pre-qualification cuts your acquisition cost before you send a single message.

Your competitors' LinkedIn followers are pre-qualified prospects: they already follow a business in your niche, which means they have demonstrated interest in the exact problem you solve.

Targeting them cuts prospecting time and lowers customer acquisition cost compared to outreach on a cold list.

By targeting your competitors' audience, you can:

Using LinkedIn scraping tools to identify and engage with your competitors' audiences is an efficient way to grow your business, enhance your digital marketing efforts, and outperform your competition.

The Methods at a Glance

Pick your path before you start. The table below maps what you're scraping, what tools you need, and what LinkedIn will let you pull.

The detail matters here.

The rest of this guide walks through each method. If you already know which audience you want, jump to that section in the table of contents.

Scrape Your Competitor's LinkedIn Followers

To scrape a competitor's LinkedIn company-page followers, you need LinkedIn Sales Navigator (LinkedIn's paid prospecting platform with advanced lead-search filters unavailable on free accounts) and a Chrome scraper like Evaboot, together they let you export a filtered, named list of followers, excluding employees, directly into a CSV with contact details.

This technique can also be used for competitor analysis.

Here are the steps you need to follow:

1. Create a fake LinkedIn account

You can't use this technique with your account, as LinkedIn prevents you from doing too much.

The first step is to create a new LinkedIn account and add a job experience at your competitor's company.

When you're done optimizing your LinkedIn profile, connect with the company followers. Start by sending 5 connection requests daily to avoid being spammy.

2. Take the Sales Navigator free trial

LinkedIn Sales Navigator unlocks a 'Following your company' buyer-intent filter not available in free LinkedIn accounts.

You don't want to pay LinkedIn Sales Navigator to get your competitor's followers.

So you can use a Sales Navigator one-month free trial.

3. Select company page followers

Open LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Go to the leads, and in the "Buyer intent" category, select "Following your company."

Don't forget to exclude the people of the company working for your competitor.

You don't want to send prospecting messages to the company owners or employees.

4. Extract Followers and Get Their Emails with Evaboot

Once you have this list, you can extract it into a CSV and get their email addresses with the Evaboot Chrome extension.

Evaboot is a Chrome extension that exports LinkedIn Sales Navigator search results, including company-page followers, into a clean CSV and enriches each record with verified business email addresses.

The process is straightforward. You must click "Extract with Evaboot" to download and put the list into an Excel file.

5. Followers outreach

Once you have this list with contact details, you can contact them manually or send them to your CRM and build a LinkedIn prospecting campaign.

For this type of outreach strategy, I would recommend something straightforward like this.

It's essential to be precise if the prospect is still interested because he may have followed this company a while ago.

To scale your outreach past manual one-by-one messages, set up a drip sequence in your CRM or LinkedIn automation tool.

So 500 scraped followers turn into an automated nurture campaign instead of a weekend of copy-paste.

If you want even higher reply rates, run each profile through an AI personalization layer that reads their headline, recent posts, and job history to auto-generate a unique first-line icebreaker per lead.

That turns your 500-row scraped list into 500 personalized DMs without manual review.

Reach Out To Your Competitor's Post Likers & Commenters

Post likers and commenters are your warmest cold prospects: a public reaction is real-time proof they care about the exact topic your product addresses. That makes them higher-intent than a cold company-follower list.

1. Follow everyone in your niche

You need to have competitors' posts in your LinkedIn feed to detect opportunities in your niche. So, follow every competitor and LinkedIn influencer in your niche.

Timing is critical in this kind of outreach campaign.

If you send messages to post commenters right after they comment on the post, your reply rate will be much higher, as their memory is still fresh.

On the other hand, you want to allow enough time for the post to gather a maximum number of reactions.

That's why I recommend waiting at least 24 hours before doing the second step.

If you see an interesting post, you can copy-paste the post URL to have it for later.

2. Extract post commenters and likers

Phantombuster is a cloud-based automation tool that runs pre-built scripts ("phantoms") to extract public LinkedIn data, post commenters, likers, event attendees, and outputs results as a downloadable CSV.

We'll use its post commenters and post likers export.

Just copy and paste the URL of your post here:

For every post, commenters or likers:

3. Post commenters outreach

Here is an example of results I've obtained with this tactic for a webinar promotion, approximately a 30% reply rate for the campaign.

Here is a template you can use:

It's always better to propose content and not directly your product or service.

For the following technique, we will use the same technique and tools but for LinkedIn event attendees.

Reach Out to Competitors' Event Attendees

LinkedIn event attendees are among the highest-intent prospects you can target because they actively registered for content about a problem in your niche, and the attendee list is publicly visible to anyone who clicks 'Attend', meaning you can access it without a paid subscription.

To reach competitors' event attendees: click 'Attend' on any LinkedIn event to unlock the Networking tab, then run the list through Phantombuster's event-attendees extractor and export to CSV.

1. Look for LinkedIn events

You are going to see a list of events filled with potential customers.

2. Extract LinkedIn event attendees

To get access to the list of event attendees, you must click on "Attend."

Once you click on it, the "Networking" tab will appear. You will have access to the list of all event attendees.

Once done, you can return to Phantombuster and look for the event attendees' extractor.

You will get all the info you need into a CSV file:

That is the mechanic behind it.

Let's see the best way to contact these prospects.

3. Event guests outreach

You have 2 options to contact LinkedIn event guests: before the event or after the event.

For this kind of LinkedIn outreach, I would recommend something super simple and concise:

The goal here is not to sell but to open a conversation about the problem you are solving.

Here, you are looking for feedback regarding your competitor's performance. If your competitor has disappointed your prospect, that's a golden opportunity for you.

Once you have your raw scraped list (name + LinkedIn URL from Evaboot or Phantombuster), run it through an AI enrichment agent that auto-qualifies each lead against your ICP.

Your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is the firmographic and behavioral description of your best-fit buyer: industry, seniority, company size and tech stack. It is what filters a raw scraped list down to high-probability prospects.

This scores fit so you only spend outreach credits on the top slice of a competitor's followers rather than blasting everyone.

AI agents can now chain LinkedIn URL → enrichment API → ICP-scoring prompt in a single workflow. This turns a 500-row export into a 50-row high-fit shortlist in minutes.

Bonus: Reach Out to Competitors' Group Members

Only target LinkedIn group members if the group shows recent posts and genuine activity, most groups are dormant.

Extract members using Phantombuster's 'LinkedIn Group Members Export' phantom (paste the group URL, set a slot limit under 500, download the CSV) or Evaboot if you have a Sales Navigator account.

If your competitors have built a LinkedIn group, you can extract the group members using Phantombuster. If you have a LinkedIn Sales Navigator account, you can also use Evaboot.

Here is a video tutorial:

Be very mindful of this technique. Most LinkedIn groups are dead or full of spammers.

Scrape Your Own Company Page Followers

Your own follower list is warmer than a competitor's. These people clicked Follow on your page, which means they saw your content and decided to hear more. Most companies never message them.

Why now: LinkedIn doesn't surface your followers in a downloadable format, but you can pull them two ways: a HAR-file capture if you're technical, or Sales Navigator's "Following your company" filter if you have a seat.

Method 1: HAR-file capture for own-company followers

This method records the network traffic when you scroll your follower list, then extracts the profile URLs LinkedIn sent to your browser.

Limit: You can scroll about 500–1,000 followers before LinkedIn's infinite-scroll API stops returning new pages.

If your company has more followers, you'll need to repeat the capture on different days or use Sales Navigator instead.

The HAR file is raw JSON.

If you don't want to write a parser, tools like HAR Analyzer can help you extract the profile links, or you can grep for "publicIdentifier" fields and reconstruct the URLs as linkedin.com/in/{publicIdentifier}.

Method 2: Sales Navigator 'Following your company' filter

Sales Navigator lets you search people who follow your company page, then export the results through Evaboot.

Why this beats the HAR method: You get enriched data (title, location, current company) in the export, not just profile URLs.

You can also layer on behavioral filters, people who changed jobs in the last 90 days, people who posted on LinkedIn recently, so you're messaging your warmest followers first.

Limit: Sales Navigator caps search results at 2,500, so if your page has 10,000 followers you'll only see a sample.

LinkedIn doesn't document how it chooses that sample; in practice it seems to prioritize recent followers and people who match your other filters.

Can You Scrape LinkedIn Followers in 2026?

Yes, you can scrape LinkedIn followers in 2026 using three approaches: manual export (for pages you own), Sales Navigator + Chrome extensions, or engagement scrapers for public likes and comments.

Fully automated mass-scraping violates LinkedIn's ToS and triggers rate limits.

What works: Sales Navigator exports, Chrome extensions that capture visible follower lists one page at a time, and engagement scrapers that pull public likes and comments.

What breaks: Mass-scraping tools that hammer LinkedIn's servers get rate-limited or flagged. Your personal account can face restrictions if you extract thousands of profiles in a day.

Is Scraping LinkedIn Followers Legal?

Short answer: scraping violates LinkedIn's Terms of Service, but it's not illegal in most jurisdictions. The risk is account suspension, not a lawsuit.

The hiQ Labs precedent: In 2022 the Ninth Circuit ruled that scraping public LinkedIn profiles does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), because the data was accessible without bypassing a login wall.

LinkedIn's ToS ban on scraping is a contract issue, not a criminal one.

What that means for you: LinkedIn can suspend your account for scraping, but they can't take you to court under CFAA if you're only pulling public data (follower lists, post likes, profile fields visible to logged-in users).

The distinction matters: scraping your own account's connections or messages could still trigger CFAA, because that data isn't public.

GDPR and CCPA: If you scrape EU or California residents, you're collecting personal data.

Under GDPR you need a lawful basis (legitimate interest is the usual argument for B2B outreach), and you must honor opt-out requests. CCPA has a lighter touch but requires a privacy notice.

Neither law bans scraping outright; they regulate what you do with the data afterward.

The real risk: LinkedIn's automated detection, not legal action. A suspended account loses access to Sales Navigator, InMail credits, and your connection graph.

For most outbound teams that's more expensive than any ToS liability.

LinkedIn Page Analytics for Follower Demographics

If you run a LinkedIn company page or can convince a competitor's team to share a screenshot, Page analytics show follower breakdown by seniority, function, industry, company size, and location. No scraping required.

Navigate to your company page admin view, then Analytics > Followers. You'll see charts for:

Use case: You're targeting Series A SaaS founders in the US.

A competitor's page analytics show 18% of their followers are C-level, 22% are in Software & IT Services, and 40% are in the 11–50 employee band.

That's validation you're fishing in the right pond and a demographic filter set for Sales Navigator.

Limitation: You see aggregates, not names. Pair this with a follower-scrape tool to get the individual profiles that match the promising segments.

Alternative Tools: Apify, TexAu, and the Scraper Landscape

Evaboot and Phantombuster handle most workflows, but the scraper ecosystem is wider. Here's where Apify and TexAu fit:

When to branch out: Apify's LinkedIn scrapers let you pull follower lists at scale if you're comfortable with JSON configs and want to avoid per-credit pricing.

TexAu bundles scraping, waterfall enrichment, and email sending.

Waterfall enrichment means querying multiple data providers in sequence, Apollo, then Hunter, then Prospeo, until a verified email is found, so no single vendor gap leaves a record blank.

Useful if you're running the entire outbound motion solo and want fewer tool hops.

Spread your scraping across sessions, keep volumes under 500 profiles per day per account, and accept that some lists will need manual spot-checks.

How to Export Followers from a LinkedIn Company Page

LinkedIn provides no native follower export button, but you have three working options: a follower-scraper tool (Phantombuster or Apify), a Sales Navigator ICP search exported via Evaboot, or manual screenshot plus OCR for small lists under 100 profiles.

Your options:

Why this matters for competitor research: A competitor's follower list includes buyers who've signaled interest but haven't converted yet.

If you can export even 20% of that list, you're prospecting into a pre-qualified pool, people who already care about the category.

Extract LinkedIn Profile Connections and Followers in Bulk

Scraping followers is one use case; scraping connections, the people in your personal network, is another. The methods overlap but the access rules differ.

Followers vs. connections: A follower clicked Follow on a company page or personal profile. LinkedIn shows you the list (up to 2,500 in Sales Navigator) but doesn't let you export it natively.

A connection accepted your invitation.

LinkedIn does let you export your own first-degree connections as a CSV (Settings → Data privacy → Get a copy of your data → Connections), but that export has no email, no phone, and no current company, just name and a timestamp.

Why scrape connections instead of using the native export? The CSV LinkedIn gives you is stale the moment you download it. People change jobs, update headlines, add skills.

A scraper pulls live profile data: current title, company, location, and whatever else is visible to your login session.

How to scrape your own connections

Alternatively, use the People Search CSV Export Chrome extension (search the Web Store). It overlays an Export button on any LinkedIn search or connection list, pulls the visible data, and writes a CSV.

It won't get data LinkedIn doesn't render on screen, so you still need an enrichment step if you want email or phone.

Volume: You can scrape your entire connection list in one session (most people have under 5,000), but enriching it will take multiple days if you're respecting the 500-profile-per-day limit.

Spread the enrichment across a week or run it from multiple accounts.

Why you'd do this: Your connections are the warmest possible list for a product launch, a job-change trigger campaign, or a referral ask.

You already have the relationship; scraping just gives you the data layer to act on it at scale.

Turn Scraped Follower Data into Qualified Outreach

Scraping a list is step one. Here's the workflow to turn 500 LinkedIn profiles into 50 booked meetings:

1. Define Your ICP Before You Enrich Anything

Don't enrich every profile. Filter the scraped CSV first: remove students, job-seekers (headline = "Open to work"), and anyone outside your target seniority or geography.

A competitor's follower list includes investors, partners, past employees, and tire-kickers, you want the 30% who match your buyer profile.

Quick filter columns: Job title (contains "VP", "Head of", "Director"), location (if geo matters), headline keywords (exclude "Consultant", "Freelance" unless that's your ICP).

2. Enrich Profiles for Email and Firmographic Data

Waterfall enrichment = check multiple data sources in sequence until you find a verified email. Tools that do this:

Here is what that looks like in practice.

What to enrich beyond email: Company size, funding stage, tech stack (BuiltWith, Clearbit), recent job changes (signal they're re-evaluating vendors).

3. Verify Emails Before You Send Anything

A 70% valid rate on a scraped + enriched list is normal. Catch-alls, role addresses (info@, sales@), and stale contacts will tank your deliverability if you blast them.

Run the enriched list through Zerobounce, Bouncer, or Millionverifier. Remove anything flagged as invalid or catch-all (unless you're willing to hand-verify catch-alls by searching the person's name + company domain).

Deliverability math: 500 scraped → 350 post-ICP filter → 245 enriched emails → 170 verified = your real outreach universe. Plan volume accordingly.

4. Segment Contacts by Why They Are on the List

Not all signals are equal. Someone who liked three of your competitor's posts in the last month is warmer than someone who followed the page two years ago and went silent.

Segment by:

Tag each row in your CRM or CSV with the source signal. Write separate email variants for each segment.

A post-liker email that opens with "I noticed…" lands; the same line sent to a cold follower feels like you're pretending to know them.

5. Multichannel Sequence: LinkedIn + Email

Don't rely on email alone. If you scraped these people from LinkedIn, they're active there, so follow up where they already spend time.

Simple two-channel sequence:

Conversion benchmark: Expect 5–12% reply rate on a well-segmented, competitor-audience list. That's 2–4× a cold spray-and-pray campaign, because you're prospecting into demonstrated category interest.

Frequently asked questions

Here is what that looks like in practice.

The reason is worth knowing.

This is the part most people skip.

That is the mechanic behind it.

The reason is worth knowing.