Say a founder posts a contrarian take on B2B hiring and it takes off: 300 likes, 40 comments. The 300 likers are a name dump. The 40 commenters did something else: they argued, agreed hard, or asked a follow-up question. Forty people just told you what they think about your exact topic, in their own words, under their own name. That second list is the one worth exporting, and it is usually the shorter one, which makes the whole job faster.
Most guides treat likers and commenters as the same job with a different button. They are not. This guide is built around the question the roundups skip: which method actually hands you a usable list, and what you have to set up before it does.
Why a commenter outranks a liker
Start here, because it changes what you should even bother exporting.
A like is a reflex. It costs nothing, it is often "I read the first line", and on a viral post half the reactions come from people who will never buy anything from anyone. A comment costs visible effort and a small amount of social risk, and it usually contains an actual opinion. That opinion is both a stronger intent signal and a ready-made opening line.
| Dimension | Liker | Commenter |
|---|---|---|
| Effort to engage | One tap | Wrote a public sentence |
| Intent signal | Weak | Stronger, it cost them something |
| Gives you an opening | No, just a name | Yes, their own words on the topic |
| Typical list size | Long | Shorter, easier to qualify |
| Noise from viral reach | High | Lower |
The practical takeaway: on a post with 300 likes and 40 comments, the 40 comments are the better prospecting list, not because 40 is more manageable than 300 (though it is), but because each of those 40 people told you something you can respond to. For the full argument on reading engagement as buying intent, see signal-based selling on LinkedIn.
The six methods, compared
There are six real ways to get the commenter list off a post. They differ on speed and price, but the axis that actually matters is how much of the work each one does for you, and what you have to set up before it works.
| Method | Builds the list for you | Runs from | Setup required | Exports |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read the comments by hand | No, you read and copy each one | Your browser | None | No |
| Public engagement finder | Yes | A server, on public data | None, just the post URL | Yes |
| Data marketplace or comment actor | Yes | A third party | An account with that vendor | Yes |
| Browser extension | Yes | Your browser | Install the extension, log into LinkedIn | Yes |
| Cloud tool connected to your account | Yes | Their servers | Connect your LinkedIn account | Yes |
| Official LinkedIn API | No | Partner access LinkedIn does not grant for this | Not available |
Two rows get misread constantly, so they are worth expanding.
The cloud tool row asks the most of you before it does anything. You connect your LinkedIn account to a dashboard, and from that point the export runs from the tool's own infrastructure instead of your browser. That is a different commitment than pasting a URL into a public finder or installing a browser extension, and it is worth knowing before you pick a tool for what might be a one-off export. PhantomBuster is one such tool; a PhantomBuster alternative for exporting commenters may ask less of you.
The official API row is a genuine dead end. LinkedIn's partner APIs do not expose the comment thread of an arbitrary post to third-party developers. If a page tells you to "just use the official API" to pull commenters, it has not tried. This matters because it removes the one method people assume is the official, sanctioned option. It does not exist for this.
Paste a post.
Get everyone who commented.
The comments finder reads a public post and lists the people under it, with what each one said. Free to try.
Find who commented
The manual method, and where it stops
Open the post, scroll the comments, read them. This is free, it breaks no rules, and for a post with a dozen comments it is honestly the right answer. You can even reply in-thread, which is warmer than a cold DM anyway.
It stops scaling fast. LinkedIn loads comments in batches and buries replies under "show more replies", there is no export, and there is no filter. Past fifty or so comments you are scrolling, clicking "load more", and retyping names and headlines into a spreadsheet, where every hand-copied row is a fresh chance to mistype a name or grab the wrong headline. This is fine as a one-off. It is not a workflow.
Getting the list from a public post
Comments on a public post are public. A tool can read them straight off the post page, the same way a person scrolling the thread does.
- Copy the post link. Click the three-dot More icon at the top right of the post and choose "Copy link to post" (on mobile: More, Share via, Copy).
- Paste it into the finder. The LinkedIn comments finder takes the URL and returns the people who commented. It needs no extension and no LinkedIn login.
- Filter before you export, not after. This is the step everyone skips. Cutting the list down while it is still on screen is faster than cleaning a CSV later, and it forces you to actually look at who these people are.
Time: a couple of minutes. Setup: none, just the link.
If you also want the reactions from the same post, the LinkedIn post likers finder works identically, and the full likers guide walks through that side. For a side-by-side of the dedicated comment export tools, see LinkedIn comment export tools compared.
The payoff on a commenter list is bigger than on a liker list, and it arrives earlier. A liker gave you a name. A commenter gave you a sentence, which means you can answer something they actually said. Finding the 40 commenters and drafting a reply against each comment is work you can have done for you before you decide who is worth writing to.
The step that decides whether this was worth doing
A list of 40 commenters is not 40 leads, and the export is the easy half. Two filters do most of the work of turning it into a prospect list:
- Fit. Does this person match who you actually sell to? A headline is a weak proxy. Company shape, seniority, and whether they can buy usually matter more than the job title string.
- Relevance of the post. Someone who commented on a post about the exact problem you solve is worth far more than someone who commented on a viral post about hiring or motivation. The topic is part of the signal, not just the act of commenting.
Skipping qualification is why most engagement exports die in a spreadsheet. The payoff for doing it shows up in reply rates. Belkins' LinkedIn outreach study, drawing on more than 15 million touchpoints, found campaigns to people you are already connected to replying at 12.2%, against 7.9% for cold connection-request campaigns. That gap is real, but it evaporates if "warm" only means "this person clicked something once". A qualified commenter who left their own words on your topic is about as warm as a cold list gets, which is the whole reason to prefer the shorter comment list.
What to do with the qualified list
The specific comment is your whole advantage, and it is easy to waste. "I saw you commented on a post about X" is not personalisation, it is surveillance with extra steps. The better version answers what they said: they made a point, you have something useful to add to it, and that is why you are writing. Reference the idea, not the click. The same Belkins study puts a number on it: once a request is accepted, one that carried a short personalised note draws replies at 8.2%, against 5.3% for a blank request, a 55% lift. A commenter's own words are the easiest personalised note you will ever write, so a blank request throws away the one thing the export gave you.
If you are sending from your own account, pace it. The list arriving all at once does not mean the messages should. The roughly 100 connection requests a week that practitioners plan around is industry consensus, not a figure LinkedIn publishes, and careful senders stay under it rather than probing for the wall. Plan at about 100 a week per account. BeReach finds the right people and drafts each message, so those go to the people worth them. Forty new commenters do not become forty invites this afternoon.
Frequently asked questions
Can you export LinkedIn post commenters without an account?
Yes, for public posts. The comment thread on a public post is publicly readable, so a tool can retrieve the commenters without you connecting or signing in. Posts shared to a restricted audience are not publicly readable and will not show up. No extension and no login are required.
Are commenters or likers the better lead source?
Commenters, in almost every case. Commenting costs visible effort and usually contains an opinion, which gives you both a stronger intent signal and a ready-made opening line. Liker lists are longer, noisier, and give you nothing but a name to work with.
Is there an official LinkedIn API for post comments?
No. LinkedIn's partner APIs do not expose the comment thread of an arbitrary post to outside developers. Any guide telling you to use the official API to pull commenters is describing something that is not available, so treat that advice as a sign the page has not tested it.
How many commenters can you export from one post?
The limit is the post, not the method. Most posts have far fewer real comments than people expect once you strip out replies and reactions to comments, and the useful subset after qualifying for fit is smaller still. Optimising for raw list size is usually the wrong goal.
