What Is LinkedIn API? Complete Guide On How It Works 2024

LinkedIn is a powerful platform with valuable data that serves millions of professionals and businesses worldwide.

With over 1 billion users, LinkedIn offers a treasure trove of information essential for recruiters seeking top talent, sales reps, and marketers seeking new leads or doing market research.

So what to do when manual data extraction and scraping tools are not options on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn Scraper API is a key solution here. You can use it to scrape accurate LinkedIn data that is GDPR and CCPA-compliant.

In this article, I’ll cover:

1. What is LinkedIn API?
2. How To Become A LinkedIn Partner?
3. How Much Does LinkedIn Scraper API Cost?
4. How Does LinkedIn Scraper API Work?
5. How To Set Up LinkedIn Scraper API?
6. How To Do Token Analyse?
7. Is LinkedIn Scraping Legal?
8. Alternatives To LinkedIn Scraping API

Let’s dive in.

What is LinkedIn API?

The LinkedIn API (Application Programming Interfaces) is a comprehensive tool designed to help developers and businesses extract valuable public data from LinkedIn.

To access LinkedIn API, you must first become a LinkedIn Partner.

With LinkedIn scraping API, you can gather detailed information from LinkedIn profiles such as:

• user IDs
• names
• cities
• job titles
• profiles
• posts
• current company details
• work experience

LinkedIn API is beneficial for the following reasons:

• Profile API Integration: Facilitates networking within applications by accessing LinkedIn profiles
• Credential Sharing: Simplifies the process of posting accomplishments to company pages
• Content Sharing: Increases visibility of user expertise
• Company Connectivity: Enhances brand exposure through LinkedIn’s Company Page features
• Seamless Sign-In: Simplifies user acquisition and profile management
• Streamlined User Management: Saves time with integrated profile management
• Personalization: Delivers tailored content based on current LinkedIn profile data

LinkedIn Scraper API improves application functionality and user experience, ensuring flexibility and scalability without infrastructure, proxy server, or blocking concerns.

By leveraging this API, you greatly enhance the capabilities of your products and easily extract valuable LinkedIn data.

How To Become A LinkedIn Partner?

The LinkedIn Partner Program is available for:

• Talent Solutions – HR tech companies
• Marketing Solutions – Marketing automation firms
• Sales Navigator Development – Startups enhancing Sales Navigator
• LinkedIn Learning Integration – Content providers

Getting approved by LinkedIn can be time-consuming, so choose the category that best fits your business and apply accordingly.

You need to apply to a specific partner program to be able to get LinkedIn API access.

The LinkedIn Partner label gives you access to the following APS:

• Profile API -Retrieves user profile details, pictures, and headlines
• Connections API: Accesses a user’s network connections
• Share API: Allows posting of text, URLs, and media
• Invitation API: Enables sending connection invitations
• Organization API: Retrieves organization and brand data
• UGC API: Manages user-generated content
• Compliance API: Reports policy-violating content

How Much Does LinkedIn Scraper API Cost?

LinkedIn API is another LinkedIn product like LinkedIn Premium or LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

LinkedIn offers several API pricing plans to meet different user needs (just like its other products):

• Basic Plan: This plan is free and provides access to LinkedIn profile data for up to 3 people.
• Standard Plan: $59 per month, providing access to data for up to 500 people.
• Premium Plan: $499 per month, providing access to data for up to 10,000 people.

So, when you choose a plan, consider the number of profiles you need to access.

The Basic plan is for minimal needs, while the Standard and Premium plans are for greater data needs.

How Does LinkedIn Scraper API Work?

LinkedIn API provides a variety of products and permissions for professionals to engage in, such as:

• Consumer to enhance their sign-in experience and share content
• Marketing tools to build technology to grow B2B communities and businesses
• Sales to integrate with LinkedIn’s APIs for sales professionals
• Talent for finding the right candidates with LinkedIn’s data and insights
• Learning to add Learning content and reporting to your app
• Plugins for offering LinkedIn functionality inside a website
• Regulatory Developer Products for accessing LinkedIn user and page data

LinkedIn APIs can be used only by businesses and app developers who received authorization to leverage various data and features from LinkedIn to meet a range of business needs, like building applications or integrations.

So follow LinkedIn’s API’s Terms of Use and Developer agreement to understand your web scraping limitations and usage policies.

Now let’s see what the LinkedIn API system consists of:

1. API Key Features
2. Authorization
3. User Consent
4. API Rate Limits
5. Data Usage and Protection

1. API Key Features

LinkedIn API is a versatile toolkit with 14 resource methods tailored to specific needs.

LinkedIn developed and uses Rest.li framework for building RESTful architectures at scale and developing microservices in response to member requests.

For user authorization and API authentication, the LinkedIn API uses OAuth 2.0.

OAuth 2.0, or Open Authorization, is a protocol that allows websites or applications to access user data from other web applications securely.

OAuth 2.0 ensures that client applications can access specific resources on behalf of a user without sharing the user’s credentials.

This protocol is critical to the LinkedIn API because it provides secure, permission-based access to LinkedIn data.

This enables developers to build applications that can interact with LinkedIn in a secure and efficient manner.

2. Authorization

There are two types of Authorization Flows:

1. Member Authorization (3-legged OAuth flow)
2. Application Authorization (2-legged OAuth flow)

1. Member authorization (3-legged OAuth flow)

Member Authorization is like user permission that allows an application to access a LinkedIn member’s data.

When to use: Ideal for applications that need direct access to a member’s LinkedIn data.

Permissions: Request only the permissions necessary to protect member data.

2. Application authorization (2-legged OAuth flow)

Application authorization allows an application to access LinkedIn resources that are not member-specific without requiring individual member permissions.

When to use: Suitable for accessing non-member-specific data, such as some marketing APIs.

Permissions: Request only the minimal permissions needed for your use case.

3. User Consent and Permission

If your application needs to access a user’s LinkedIn data, it must first obtain the user’s explicit consent through LinkedIn’s OAuth 2.0 authorization process.

This ensures that users are aware of and approve of the data your application will access, protecting their privacy and maintaining trust.

There are 2 user permissions:

1. Member Auth Permissions: Personal permissions from LinkedIn members
2. Application Auth Permissions: Permissions granted to applications to access LinkedIn resources

4. API Rate Limits

The LinkedIn API enforces rate limits to prevent abuse and ensure efficient request management.

Adherence to these limits is critical to avoid restrictions or bans. Each application has a daily request limit, and exceeding this limit results in a 429 error code indicating too many requests.

So, by regularly monitoring your application’s usage and respecting its limits, you can ensure continuous access to LinkedIn data points.

5. Data Usage and Protection

Once you access LinkedIn data, use it responsibly and for authorized purposes.

Don’t spam LinkedIn users or follow unauthorized marketing or other unethical practices.

You must protect the dataset collected by LinkedIn.

How To Set Up LinkedIn Scraper API?

Now that you know what LinkedIn Scraper API is and how it works, I’ve created a clear tutorial on how to get started.

Step 1: Create a new application

Sign in to the LinkedIn Developer Portal and click Create a new App by entering details such as name, LinkedIn URL, and company logo.

Step 2: Request App Verification

Once you’ve added your company, click “Verify”.

Once you verify your company, send the verification link to your company page administrator.

After confirmation, you’ll get your API key and can proceed to the next step.

Step 3: Complete the OAuth2.0 Flow

On the Auth tab, register your app’s OAuth redirect URL.

Choose the Advertising, Community Management, Lead Sync or Conversions API under the Products tab of your app.

Ensure your app has the required scopes r_emailaddress, w_member_social, r_liteprofile, w_organization_social, and others based on your chosen products.

Like in this picture, you can see the scope for developers who want to build marketing-related integration by using Advertising API permissions.

Step 4: Store and Protect User Data

Once you’re all set, you need to store the scraped data and client IDs securely in a secret database or vault.

To protect your data, follow these practices:

• Secure your API keys by keeping them out of the application’s front end.
• Ensure all communications involving token exchanges or sensitive data use HTTPS.
• To prevent redirection attacks, validate all redirect URIs.
• Regularly monitor your API usage for unusual activity and potential security breaches.
• Implement token expiration and refresh mechanisms to maintain security.

How To Do Token Analyse?

The token introspection tool allows developers to check the time to live (TTL) and status of all tokens, including enterprise tokens.

Here is an example of a token introspection.

Let’s say I’m sending a POST request to the following endpoint:

curl --location --request POST 'https://www.linkedin.com/oauth/v2/introspectToken' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
--data-urlencode 'client_id=<Application Client ID>' \
--data-urlencode 'client_secret=<Application Client Secret>' \
--data-urlencode 'token=<Token Value>'

---

The request must include:

• client_id: This is your application’s unique identifier provided by LinkedIn
• client_secret: This is a secret key associated with your application, used for secure communication
• token: This is the token you wish to inspect. It can be obtained through the Client Credential Flow (2-legged OAuth), Authorization Code Flow (3-legged OAuth), or Enterprise OAuth Flow

---

As a response, you get the following:

JSON
{
    "active": true,
    "client_id": "xxxxxxxx",
    "authorized_at": 1493055596,
    "created_at": 1493055596,
    "status": "active",
    "expires_at": 1497497620,
    "scope": "r_liteprofile,r_emailaddress,w_member_social",
    "auth_type": "_see note below_" 
}

---

The response can provide detailed information about the token, such as:

• Active: A boolean indicator of whether the token is active
• Status: The status of the token, which can be “active”, “revoked”, or “expired”
• Scope: A comma-separated list of permission scopes associated with the token, displayed for 3-legged OAuth tokens
• client_id: The client ID associated with the token
• created_at: The timestamp when the token was issued
• expires_at: The timestamp when the token will expire
• authorized_at: The timestamp when the token was authorized
• auth_type: Indicates the type of token, which can be “2L” for application tokens, “3L” for member tokens, or “Enterprise_User” for enterprise tokens

---

Lastly, you will also receive the following HTTP Response status codes:

• 200 (Success): Indicates the token introspection request was successful
• 400 (Invalid client ID or token): The provided client ID or token is incorrect
• 401 (Invalid client secret): The client secret is incorrect

If the credentials are valid but do not match the token information, the response will still be “200 OK” but with a status of “active”: false in the body.

Is LinkedIn Scraping Legal?

In fact, it’s illegal to use web scrapers to scrape data from LinkedIn. It’s against their terms of service.

This means that the only way out is to use the LinkedIn Scraper API to gather limited data about LinkedIn companies and prospects, which, as you saw above, is not that simple.

You must first earn the LinkedIn Partner title.

However, third-party tools, like the Evaboot Chrome extension, scrape LinkedIn data from LinkedIn Sales Navigator and scrape LinkedIn for you.

Due to their huge databases, they do the job for you in seconds, so there is no need to spend time setting up your LinkedIn API.

Simply follow the LinkedIn User’s Agreement and its terms of service, and you’ll have no problems.

Alternatives To LinkedIn API

Lead generation and prospecting are crucial for all businesses and individuals looking to boost their sales.

There are tons of scraping tools that facilitate this process, making it effective and accessible to everyone.

These web scraping tools are made for extracting contact or company information from websites, LinkedIn user accounts or company profiles, or other web platforms into CSV files, Excel sheets, or even directly to your CRMs.

With these data extractors, you can create prospecting lists with scraped data, such as emails, phone numbers, first and last names, company names, locations, and more.

If you want to try out a scraping tool, you can check out Evaboot, which scrapes data from LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

It’s a great tool if you’ve built a network on LinkedIn private and public profiles and want to target them in the first place.

With Evaboot, you get a ready-for-outreach Excel or CSV file in just one click.

Type	Cloud-Based
Works on	LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Main Features

• Export leads from LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• Export company profiles
• Export LinkedIn profile URLs
• Clean the data (emojis, capital letters, typos…)
• Detect false positives in your search results
• Find professional emails
• Verify emails

Pros	Cons
Easy to use	You need a Sales Navigator account
Export 2500 leads per day	No API yet
Built-in email finder and verifier
Identify Open Profiles

To learn more about other data-collection tools, check our guide on the best LinkedIn Scraping tools.

Conclusion

You learn from this article that scraping with LinkedIn API is extremely demanding and time-consuming.

For some of you, this might seem impossible, as setting it up and using it to export data requires coding and developer skills.

However, if you can’t get a developer to do this, you’d better try using LinkedIn scraping tools like Evaboot.

Simply follow the usage regulations not to be banned and complete data enrichment for your outreach campaigns.

FAQ

What is the LinkedIn Scraper API?

The LinkedIn Scraper API is a tool that extracts public LinkedIn data like ID, name, city, position, about, posts, current company, and experience.

It offers full control, flexibility, and scalability without concerns about infrastructure, proxy servers, or getting blocked.

Is it legal to use LinkedIn Scraper API?

In fact, LinkedIn considers data scraping an illegal process, a violation of its terms of service.

To make it possible, it offers LinkedIn Scraper API, a more responsible way to scrape data.

However, you can still use third-party tools like Evaboot to export lead data that conforms to LinkedIn’s rules and limitations and complies with data protection regulations, including GDPR and CCPA.

How Does LinkedIn scraper API work?

The LinkedIn Scraper API sends automated requests to LinkedIn, extracts data points, and delivers them in a structured format for accurate, fast data collection. It supports JSON, NDJSON, JSON lines, CSV, and .gz files.

What are the best practices for using a LinkedIn Scraper API while complying with LinkedIn’s terms of service?

When you use LinkedIn API, it’s already the most legit tool to scrape LinkedIn data.

However, the best ways to use LinkedIn Scrapers responsibly and ethically is to:

• Respect user privacy: Scrap only publicly available data and avoid sensitive personal information.
• Limit scraping frequency: Don’t overload LinkedIn’s servers with too many requests, as this may appear suspicious.
• Be transparent: If LinkedIn contacts you about your scraping activities, be direct about your intentions and cooperate with their inquiries.

How can I obtain LinkedIn API access for my business?

To obtain LinkedIn API for your business, you need:

1. Create an app, add the Marketing Developer Platform, and complete the access form under My Apps > Products.
2. Wait until LinkedIn reviews your application.
3. Once reviewed, you’ll receive an email with the next steps.
4. If your application is rejected, here are some common reasons and how to reapply.

This is a very time-consuming and painful process. If this process is not an obligation for your business, you should better try scraping tools.

Disclosure

This content was partly written by AI (ChatGPT 4), I added my own perspective, fact-checked it and made sure it is helpful for you.