What gets exported from Facebook
Each comment is one row in your Excel/CSV file (or one object in JSON), with the following fields:
- author — the commenter's display name
- author_url — link to the commenter's Facebook profile or Page
- comment — the comment text, with @mentions and emojis preserved
- likes — like / reaction count on the comment
- reactions — breakdown by reaction type (like, love, haha, wow, sad, angry) when available
- created_at — ISO 8601 UTC timestamp
- reply_to — the parent comment's author for replies (empty for top-level comments)
- permalink — direct URL to that comment on Facebook
- has_attachment, attachment_url — flag and URL when the comment includes an image, GIF, or sticker
What kinds of Facebook URLs work
- Public Page posts — text posts, photo posts, video posts
- Public Page videos — including Watch and Live replays
- Public Group posts — only when the Group itself is public
- Public profile posts — when the post visibility is set to "Public"
- Reels — public Facebook Reels
Private posts, posts in private Groups, and posts visible only to the author's friends are not accessible via public URLs and are not supported by the public exporter.
Common workflows
- Brand engagement reporting — pull all comments under your monthly brand posts to count engaged followers and identify top contributors.
- Giveaway entry list — export, then run our random comment picker against the export to draw a verifiable winner.
- Customer feedback mining — grab the comments under a product launch or pricing change post and bucket them by sentiment with ChatGPT or Anthropic Claude.
- Crisis monitoring — bulk-export comments under any crisis-period post to catch the loudest threads early.
- FTC compliance archive — store the export alongside the post screenshot for the 2-year FTC retention requirement on sponsored posts.
- Lead generation — when a public Page post asks "comment YES for the link", export and pipe the names into your CRM.
Replies, reactions, and shares
By default the exporter pulls comments AND replies, with replies linked to their parent via the reply_to column. Reactions are reported as a total like-count plus a breakdown of reaction types when Facebook exposes them. Shares of the original post (different from comments) live in a separate field.
Plan limits
Per-export size scales with your plan. Free (no signup): up to 100 results per post. Personal: 5,000. Premium: 50,000. Business: 250,000 — see pricing for the full feature comparison and API tiers for the API-specific limits.