A follower count is a lifetime number. What a sponsored post will reach is closer to what the creator's last ten videos reached. This guide shows a check that takes one run and about fifteen seconds: for each account, the exact follower count, the median plays of the latest ten videos, the share of followers that represents, and how often the account posts. It is for marketers who shortlist creators and for anyone who has been sent a media kit and wants to see the numbers behind it.
The data comes from TikTok Profile Scraper on Apify, which reads public profile pages without a TikTok login. Everything below was measured on October 3, 2026.
The check on eight accounts
One run, eight usernames, 14 seconds:
| Account | Followers | Median plays, latest 10 | Plays per follower | Posts per week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| @zara | 14,826,553 | 2,450,000 | 16.5% | 2.8 |
| @mrbeast | 142,722,214 | 18,350,000 | 12.9% | 2.5 |
| @nasa | 1,942,934 | 217,450 | 11.2% | 3.3 |
| @khaby.lame | 162,977,441 | 7,450,000 | 4.6% | 1.1 |
| @tagesschau | 2,670,106 | 106,850 | 4.0% | 120.1 |
| @duolingo | 18,184,409 | 382,850 | 2.1% | 7.8 |
| @nike | 9,262,649 | 108,700 | 1.2% | 3.9 |
| @garyvee | 15,478,050 | 14,300 | 0.1% | 11.2 |
Sorted by followers, this list would start with Khaby Lame and MrBeast and put NASA last. Sorted by what a typical recent video reaches per follower, NASA is third and two accounts with more than 15 million followers each are at the bottom. Nike's typical video reaches about one follower in eighty-five. The @garyvee account has 15.5 million followers and a median of 14,300 plays on its latest ten videos.
None of this says an audience is fake. A news account that posts seventeen times a day (@tagesschau) spreads its views over many videos, and a brand that posts product clips reaches fewer people than one that posts entertainment. It does say what a single post is likely to reach, which is the number a sponsorship price should be compared with.
Run it yourself
Without code: open the Actor, paste the usernames into TikTok Profiles, run it, and export the dataset as CSV or Excel. The columns to look at are followers, recent_median_plays, posts_per_week and last_post_at.
With Python (the file tiktok_creator_reach.py is on GitHub):
import os
import sys
from apify_client import ApifyClient
accounts = sys.argv[1:] or ["nasa", "duolingo", "zara"]
client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run = client.actor("benthepythondev/tiktok-profile-scraper").call(run_input={"profiles": accounts, "maxProfiles": 0})
dataset_id = run["defaultDatasetId"] if isinstance(run, dict) else run.default_dataset_id
rows = [row for row in client.dataset(dataset_id).iterate_items() if row.get("recent_median_plays") and row.get("followers")]
for row in sorted(rows, key=lambda row: row["recent_median_plays"] / row["followers"], reverse=True):
share = 100 * row["recent_median_plays"] / row["followers"]
print(f"@{row['username']:<17}{row['followers']:>14,}{row['recent_median_plays']:>14,}{share:>13.1f}%{row['posts_per_week']:>12}")
Its output for four accounts:
@zara 14,826,558 2,450,000 16.5% 2.8
@nasa 1,942,947 217,500 11.2% 3.3
@duolingo 18,184,409 382,950 2.1% 7.8
@garyvee 15,478,051 14,300 0.1% 11.2
A profile costs $0.0015, so the eight-account check above cost about 1.2 cents. The file tiktok-creator-reach-sample.json holds the rows behind the table.
When ten videos are not enough
Ten videos are a small sample, and one viral clip or one quiet week moves the median. Three more exports give a fuller picture of a creator who made the shortlist:
- A longer history. TikTok Profile Videos Scraper lists every video with plays, likes, comments, shares and saves. For @duolingo the median over the latest 50 videos was 1,050,000 plays, almost three times the median of the latest ten, and the median engagement rate was 13.1%. For @garyvee the wider window confirmed the small one: 12,450 median plays over 60 videos.
- What the creator says. TikTok Transcript Scraper returned the transcripts of 20 recent @garyvee videos, 2,530 words, in seven seconds. Search them for competitor names, claims you could not stand behind, or language that does not fit your brand.
- What the audience answers. TikTok Comments Scraper exports the comments under a video with TikTok's own flag for comments that show purchase interest. Under one Zara video, six of 42 comments carried the flag, among them "Are there any trench coats?". The flag also catches unrelated questions, so read what it returns.
Limits to keep in mind
- TikTok rounds large play counts for visitors, so 2,450,000 is a rounded figure. Follower counts are exact.
- Pinned videos are left out of the median, because an old viral clip would distort it.
- Plays are not unique viewers.
- Private accounts have no public video list.
- The numbers describe the day of the run. Schedule the run weekly to see a trend instead of a snapshot.
A note on data and law
The Actors read only what TikTok shows publicly to any visitor and do not log in. Account names and comments can be personal data, so GDPR, CCPA and similar rules apply to how you store and use them, and TikTok's terms apply to you as well.
Try it
The four Actors are linked above, and each can be tried on Apify's free plan. If you do not have an Apify account yet, you can create one here. That is an affiliate link: the author may earn a commission if you later pay for Apify, at no extra cost to you.
Top comments (0)