Guide to LinkedIn API and Alternatives

LinkedIn is the world's largest professional networking platform and contains data for public profiles, jobs and much more. For developers, the LinkedIn API offers a way to integrate this vast professional data into their applications, allowing automation of functionalities such as recruitment, marketing, and networking.

In this article, we'll take a look at how to use LinkedIn API, including available endpoints, alternatives, and limitations, helping you understand its potential impact on your projects.

Legal Disclaimer and Precautions

This tutorial covers popular web scraping techniques for education. Interacting with public servers requires diligence and respect and here's a good summary of what not to do:

• Do not scrape at rates that could damage the website.
• Do not scrape data that's not available publicly.
• Do not store PII of EU citizens who are protected by GDPR.
• Do not repurpose the entire public datasets which can be illegal in some countries.

Scrapfly does not offer legal advice but these are good general rules to follow in web scraping
and for more you should consult a lawyer.

What is LinkedIn API?

The Official LinkedIn API is actually a set of APIs and web tools that enables developers to programmatically access and modify data on LinkedIn.com

Each LinkedIn API provides an integration to a specific section of the LinkedIn website allowing to create content, retrieve data and interact with LinkedIn products.

How does the LinkedIn API Work?

There are 3 types of LinkedIn APIs:

1. User Integration APIs - which request access of each connecting user giving the integration access to user data and user actions or authentication.
2. Public APIs - which allows to control your own LinkedIn content like posts, ads, pages and shared learning materials.
3. Partner APIs - which are used by LinkedIn partners to access LinkedIn data in bulk or to create integrations for LinkedIn products.

Understanding each endpoint’s offerings helps developers choose the most relevant data for their applications. The next section details what’s available through these LinkedIn API endpoints.

Available Official LinkedIn APIs

LinkedIn offers several APIs, though access to its data-focused APIs is restricted primarily to LinkedIn partners. For individuals or businesses looking to access LinkedIn data who aren't LinkedIn partners, scraping public endpoints can be a viable alternative.

Non-Data APIs

For those interested in LinkedIn's APIs beyond data access, LinkedIn provides tools primarily for marketing and conversion tracking, which are open to wider use. Here are some popular options:

• Advertising API: Allows marketers to manage LinkedIn ad campaigns, target audiences, and track campaign performance

• Conversion API: Helps track and attribute off-LinkedIn conversions, providing insights into how LinkedIn ads drive website actions.

• Share on API: Enables content sharing from external platforms to LinkedIn, useful for distributing updates and articles directly to LinkedIn feeds.

To start with these APIs:

1. Create a LinkedIn Page
   1. Company Page
   2. Showcase Page
   3. Education Institution Page
2. Create a developer application in the developer portal of your LinkedIn Page
3. Apply to one of the available APIs listed in your application Products section page:

Note that some LinkedIn products have different requirements like additional authentication steps which can be seen by mousing over the "Request Access" button:

LinkedIn Partner APIs

These key LinkedIn APIs are restricted to LinkedIn’s trusted partners, providing access to data in areas like talent, marketing, sales, and learning.

• Talent API : Designed for LinkedIn-certified partners, this API provides access to job listings, candidate matching, and recruiting data.

• Marketing API : Allows LinkedIn’s advertising partners to create, manage, and track ad campaigns, providing data on ad performance, audience engagement, and campaign reach.

• Sales API : Grants access to LinkedIn’s sales intelligence data, allowing LinkedIn’s partners to build integrations that enhance sales prospecting and relationship management.

• Learning API : Exclusively available to LinkedIn’s learning partners, helping partners integrate educational content and course progress tracking into their applications.

How to become a LinkedIn Partner?

To access LinkedIn’s partner APIs, developers must apply to the LinkedIn Partner Program, which involves a review process to ensure compliance with LinkedIn’s terms and conditions. Once approved, partners can access LinkedIn’s APIs and data for their applications.

To become a LinkedIn partner for accessing LinkedIn partner APIs:

1. Submit a Partner Program Application Form which are accessible for different sections of LinkedIn partnerships:
   1. Talent Solutions Partnership Request Form for Talent API
   2. Marketing Developer Program for Marketing AP
   3. Sales Navigator Application Platform for Sales API
   4. LinkedIn Learning Integration Partner Program for Learning API
2. Wait for application review process and sales team quote.
3. Agree on terms, sign a contract
4. Receive access details and API keys

Note that LinkedIn Partners APIs applications are only available for incorporated companies and not individual developers.

How much does the LinkedIn Partner APIs cost?

LinkedIn tailors pricing for each individual Partner application and does not disclose pricing publicly. The cost is determined by the type of data access, volume of data, and the specific use case.

Alternatives for Non-Partner Users

Becoming a LinkedIn partner is incredibly difficult and not accessible for many. Even then, not all data on LinkedIn is accessible through partner APIs. This is where LinkedIn scraping can be a viable alternative to LinkedIn API.

As most LinkedIn data pages are public they can be scraped and collected by anyone with appropriate web scraping tools and knowledge. Let's take a look at this approach next.

LinkedIn API Alternative through Web Scraping

For those who find the LinkedIn API’s limitations or costs restrictive, web scraping can serve as an alternative way to gather LinkedIn public data. Web scraping involves extracting data directly from LinkedIn's web pages instead of using the API, which has its advantages and challenges.

Benefits of Web Scraping:

• Access Unavailable Data: Scraping can capture data not provided by LinkedIn’s API, such as specific details on job postings or company updates.
• Cost-Effective: Bypasses LinkedIn's pricing model by avoiding API calls and quotas.
• Flexible Data Collection: Allows for customized data extraction across different LinkedIn profiles, posts, and jobs.

Challenges and Considerations:

LinkedIn’s anti-scraping measures are among the most advanced, making it challenging to scrape the site reliably and legally:

• Legal and Ethical Concerns: LinkedIn’s terms prohibit scraping, so legalities can vary by country so legal advice is recommended.
• Technical Barriers: LinkedIn employs anti-scraping mechanisms like CAPTCHA, rate limiting, and bot detection.
• Maintenance: LinkedIn’s structure changes frequently, meaning scrapers need regular updates to keep working.

Here are some initial tools to consider for smaller-scale LinkedIn scraping projects or for prototyping data collection workflows. While these options can handle simple scraping needs.

• cURL Impersonate: A great starting tool for LinkedIn scraping is cURL Impersonate, which emulates real browser requests. By replicating browser TLS and HTTP/2 fingerprints, cURL Impersonate helps disguise scraping requests as genuine browser activity.

• Undetected Chromedriver: Another effective choice is Undetected Chromedriver, a modified version of Selenium’s Chromedriver designed to bypass LinkedIn’s bot-detection systems. By simulating a user’s browsing behavior, it reduces the chances of LinkedIn blocking the automated scraper.

• Rotating Proxies: LinkedIn actively monitors IP usage and enforces rate limiting, so a single IP address can quickly get blocked. To maintain access, rotating proxies are essential, allowing requests to be sent from a range of IPs.

LinkedIn’s bot blocking is constantly evolving, and scaling up your operation can quickly become resource-intensive. This is where Scrapfly can support large-scale.

Scrape LinkedIn with Scrapfly

For those needing a LinkedIn API alternative, Scrapfly offers tools for scraping LinkedIn efficiently and ethically. Scrapfly handles common technical challenges involved in scraping, making it easier to retrieve LinkedIn data.

ScrapFly is a Web Scraping API can retrieve any public LinkedIn page and even extract and evaluate data using Extraction API

Scraping can retrieve LinkedIn data without getting blocked. All we have to do is replace our HTTP client with the ScrapFly client, enable the asp parameter, and select a proxy country:

# standard web scraping code
import httpx
from parsel import Selector

response = httpx.get("some linkedin.com URL")
selector = Selector(response.text)

# in ScrapFly becomes this 👇
from scrapfly import ScrapeConfig, ScrapflyClient

# replaces your HTTP client (httpx in this case)
scrapfly = ScrapflyClient(key="Your ScrapFly API key")

response = scrapfly.scrape(ScrapeConfig(
    url="website URL",
    asp=True, # enable the anti scraping protection to bypass blocking
    country="US", # set the proxy location to a specfic country
    proxy_pool="public_residential_pool", # select the residential proxy pool for higher success rate
    render_js=True # enable rendering JavaScript (like headless browsers) to scrape dynamic content if needed
))

# use the built in Parsel selector
selector = response.selector
# access the HTML content
html = response.scrape_result['content']

For more on how to Scrape LinkedIn see dedicated scraping tutorial 👇

How to Scrape LinkedIn in 2024

Guide to LinkedIn web scraping using Python, common challenges, pitfalls and how to scrape LinkedIn data at scale.

FAQ

To wrap up this guide, here are answers to some frequently asked questions about LinkedIn API.

Does LinkedIn have an API?

Yes, LinkedIn offers several APIs, but access is typically restricted to certified partners. These APIs provide data for specific use cases in areas like talent, marketing, sales, and learning.

Is there LinkedIn Jobs API?

No but job data is available through LinkedIn's Talent API which is only available to LinkedIn partners. See how to apply to become a LinkedIn Partner for more details.

What is Linkedin API pricing?

LinkedIn Partner APIs are tailored to each partner’s needs, so costs vary based on the type of data access, volume of data, and specific use case. LinkedIn does not disclose pricing publicly and will provide a quote based on partner application. See how to apply to become a LinkedIn Partner for more details.

Summary

In this guide to LinkedIn API system we've taken a look at:

• Types of LinkedIn APIs: free non-data APIs and restricted partner APIs which provide access to LinkedIn data such as user profiles, job listings, and company data.
• How to access LinkedIn APIs: by applying to the LinkedIn Partner Program, developers can access LinkedIn’s partner APIs for specific use cases.
• Alternatives to LinkedIn APIs: for those unable to access LinkedIn’s APIs, web scraping can be a viable alternative to gather LinkedIn data.