Mastodon API

API

REST API for reading and posting statuses on Mastodon servers

Price: Free, open source
Access: OAuth to post; public reads open

About

Mastodon's REST API reads timelines and statuses, posts statuses and manages notifications and conversations on any Mastodon server, which federates over ActivityPub. Public data is readable without a token unless the server disables public preview; posting needs an OAuth token.

What you can do with it

Read the public timeline or a single public status without a token
Post statuses from a bot or app with an OAuth token
Run your own Mastodon server and build against its API

Get started

Pick a Mastodon server or run your own
Register an application on it to get an OAuth token
Call the statuses and timelines endpoints

Example

# Public timeline (no token unless the server disables public preview)
curl "https://mastodon.social/api/v1/timelines/public?limit=5"
# Post a status (needs a token with the write:statuses scope)
curl -X POST https://mastodon.social/api/v1/statuses \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $MASTODON_TOKEN" \
  -d "status=Hello from the API"

Details

Hosting: Hosted service, Self-hosted
Available in: Worldwide
MCP server: None