Scraping Bluesky in 2026: AT Protocol Makes It Surprisingly Easy

If you've been scraping Twitter/X lately, you know the pain. Rate limits, $42K/month API tiers, lawsuit threats. Meanwhile, Bluesky quietly built the most scraper-friendly social network on the planet. Here's the thing: Bluesky runs on the AT Protocol, and public data requires zero authentication. No API keys. No OAuth dance. No terms-of-service landmines. Just HTTP requests to public endpoints. I've been scraping Bluesky data for months now. Let me show you how it works. The AT Protocol: Why It's Different The AT Protocol (Authenticated Transfer Protocol) treats social data as a public utility. Every Bluesky user has a Personal Data Server (PDS) that hosts their posts, likes, and follows. The main PDS is bsky.social , but the protocol is federated — anyone can run one. The public API lives at https://public.api.bsky.app . No auth headers needed for read operations. This isn't a loophole — it's by design. Fetching a User's Profile Let's start simple. Grab any public profile: Python: im