If you need real-time Twitter (X.com) trends from more than 60 countries, the Twitter Trends API Global/Country actor on Apify is the fastest path. It pulls live trending topics by location — global feed or any supported country WOEID — and bills pay-per-use, so a single market research sweep across 60 markets costs cents, not a Bright Data contract.
Quick Answer
A Twitter trends scraper by country fetches the trending topics shown on X.com for a specific geographic location, typically using Yahoo's WOEID (Where On Earth ID) system. The Twitter Trends API Global/Country actor on Apify covers 60+ countries in real time, returning trend name, tweet volume, and URL for each location in a single JSON payload. Calls take ~3–8 seconds per location and pricing is pay-per-use on Apify infrastructure. Output works directly with BigQuery, Postgres, Google Sheets, or any BI pipeline. No proxies, no login farms, no Selenium maintenance.
Why scrape Twitter trends by country instead of global only?
Global trends are dominated by US English-language entertainment, sports, and politics. If you're a media company in Spain, a brand monitoring agency in Brazil, or a hedge fund tracking Japanese retail sentiment, the global feed is noise.
Country-level trends reveal:
- Local breaking news before it hits Google News (typically 5–15 minutes faster)
- Market-specific hashtag campaigns competitors are running
- Cultural moments that don't cross borders (Eurovision in Sweden, K-drama launches in South Korea, Lok Sabha debates in India)
- Currency, election, and protest signals for risk and finance teams
A trend appearing in 12 of 15 LATAM countries at the same time is a different signal than one trend in one country. You can only see that pattern with country-level data.
What countries does the Twitter Trends API cover?
The actor supports 60+ countries with active X.com trend coverage, including the major markets analysts actually care about:
- Americas: US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela
- Europe: UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Greece, Portugal
- Asia-Pacific: Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan
- Middle East & Africa: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Israel, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Lebanon, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria
Each location uses its WOEID. Pass the country code or WOEID as input and you get back that country's trending list. Global trends are available via WOEID 1.
How does country-level Twitter trend scraping work technically?
X.com surfaces trends through its internal API tied to a WOEID. The Twitter Trends API actor handles:
- Authentication & session management — rotating tokens, no manual login
- WOEID routing — you pass a country, it maps to the right location ID
- Response normalization — clean JSON with
name,tweet_volume,url,promoted_content,as_of - Rate limit absorption — proxies and retries handled inside the actor
A typical call:
{
"country": "BR"
}
Returns:
{
"location": "Brazil",
"woeid": 23424768,
"as_of": "2026-06-15T14:22:01Z",
"trends": [
{ "name": "#CopaAmerica", "tweet_volume": 142000, "url": "..." },
{ "name": "Lula", "tweet_volume": 58200, "url": "..." }
]
}
For a 60-country sweep, run the actor in parallel via Apify's API — full snapshot completes in under 60 seconds.
Who actually uses a Twitter trends scraper by country?
Real use cases pulled from common scraping workflows:
Media monitoring agencies — Cision, Meltwater-style competitors building lower-cost tools poll 20–40 countries every 15 minutes to alert PR clients when their brand or industry hashtags trend regionally.
Hedge funds and prop trading desks — Tracking trends in Turkey, Argentina, and Nigeria for FX volatility signals. A trending bank name in Turkish ahead of a lira move is a tradeable input.
Esports and entertainment — Riot Games-tier publishers monitor 15+ Asian and European markets during tournament weekends to gauge audience reaction in near-real-time.
Political risk firms — Eurasia Group-style analysts watch protest hashtags across MENA countries simultaneously. Country granularity is non-negotiable here.
Marketing agencies — Pitching multi-country campaigns: "Your competitor trended in 7 of 10 target markets last Tuesday — here's our response plan."
Academic researchers — Comparative studies on misinformation spread, language-specific sentiment, election interference. Country-level snapshots over months feed peer-reviewed work.
How much does it cost to scrape Twitter trends from 60 countries?
Pay-per-use Apify pricing means you only pay for actor runtime and platform compute units. A single 60-country snapshot consumes minimal compute — typically under $0.05 per full sweep at standard Apify rates.
Compare to alternatives:
| Option | Setup time | Monthly cost (hourly polls, 60 countries) | Maintenance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build your own (Puppeteer + proxies) | 2–4 weeks | $300–800 (proxies + servers) | High — breaks monthly |
| Twitter Enterprise API | Approval required | $5,000+ | Low |
| Bright Data / Apify ScrapingBee custom | 1 week | $500–2,000 | Medium |
| Twitter Trends API actor | 5 minutes | ~$20–60 | Zero |
For hourly polling of 60 countries (43,200 calls/month), you're looking at low double-digit dollars, not thousands.
Can I schedule and automate country trend collection?
Yes. Apify has built-in schedulers. Common patterns:
- Every 15 minutes — media monitoring, breaking news
- Every hour — marketing dashboards, weekly trend reports
- Every 5 minutes — trading signal pipelines during market hours
- Daily snapshot at 09:00 local — research datasets
Apify schedules trigger the actor, push output to your webhook, S3 bucket, Google Sheet, or directly to a Postgres/BigQuery table via integrations. You can also chain it with sentiment analysis actors or LLM summarization actors to auto-generate country briefings.
What's the output format and how do I integrate it?
The actor returns standard Apify dataset JSON. Each item is one location's trend list with timestamp. Pull it via:
- Apify API —
GET /datasets/{id}/items?format=json - CSV / Excel export — built into the Apify console
- Webhook — POST on every run finish
- Direct integrations — Zapier, Make, n8n, Airbyte
For a data warehouse pattern: schedule actor → Apify webhook → Cloud Function → BigQuery twitter_trends table partitioned by date and country. You'll have a year of historical country trend data in 12 months — something not commercially available anywhere else at this price.
Are there limitations to country-level Twitter trends scraping?
Honest caveats:
- Trend lists are short — X.com returns ~20–50 trends per location, not thousands. This is X.com's design, not the actor.
- Tweet volume is often null — X.com hides volume for many trends; the actor returns null when X.com omits it.
- Not every WOEID is active — some smaller countries have inactive trend feeds on X.com itself. The 60+ supported list is what X.com actively serves.
- Trends are not historical — the actor pulls the current snapshot. You need to schedule it to build history.
- No tweet content — this actor returns trend topics, not the tweets themselves. Pair with a Twitter search actor for that.
If you need both trends and the actual tweets driving them, run this actor first, then feed the trend names into a separate X.com search scraper.
FAQ
Q: How real-time is the Twitter trends data? The actor pulls trends directly from X.com at the moment of the call, so data is current to within seconds. X.com itself refreshes trend rankings every 5–10 minutes, so polling more frequently than that returns duplicate data.
Q: Do I need a Twitter/X developer account or API key? No. The Twitter Trends API Global/Country actor handles authentication internally. You only need an Apify account and your Apify API token to run it programmatically.
Q: Which countries are supported and how do I specify one? 60+ countries including the US, UK, Brazil, Japan, India, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Indonesia, and most major markets in Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Americas, and MENA. Pass a country code or WOEID in the input — full list is in the actor's documentation.
Q: Can I get historical Twitter trends from previous days or months? No — X.com does not expose historical trends through any public surface, so no scraper can retrieve yesterday's trends today. The standard approach is to schedule the actor (hourly or every 15 minutes) and build your own history in BigQuery, Postgres, or S3.
Q: How does this compare to paying for X.com's official Enterprise API? X.com's Enterprise tier starts at $5,000+/month with annual contracts and approval gates. The Twitter Trends API actor on pay-per-use Apify pricing typically costs $20–100/month for the same trend coverage across 60 countries, with zero contract and setup in minutes.