Python Tweepy – Getting the number of followers of a user

In this article we will see how we can get the number of followers of a user. The followers_count attribute provides us with an integer donating the number of followers the user account has.

Identifying the number of followers in the GUI :

In the above mentioned profile the number of followers are : 17.8K (17, 800+)

In order to get the number of followers we have to do the following :

1. Identify the user ID or the screen name of the profile.
2. Get the User object of the profile using the get_user() method with the user ID or the screen name.
3. From this object, fetch the followers_count attribute present in it.

Example 1: Consider the following profile :

We will use the user ID to fetch the user. The user ID of the above mentioned profile is 57741058.

# import the module
import tweepy

# assign the values accordingly
consumer_key = ""
consumer_secret = ""
access_token = ""
access_token_secret = ""

# authorization of consumer key and consumer secret
auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)

# set access to user's access key and access secret
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)

# calling the api
api = tweepy.API(auth)

# the ID of the user
id = 57741058

# fetching the user
user = api.get_user(id)

# fetching the followers_count
followers_count = user.followers_count

print("The number of followers of the user are : " + str(followers_count))

Output :

The number of followers of the user are : 17814

Example 2: Consider the following profile :

We will use the screen name to fetch the user. The screen name of the above mentioned profile is PracticeGfG.

# the screen name of the user
screen_name = "PracticeGfG"

# fetching the user
user = api.get_user(screen_name)

# fetching the followers_count
followers_count = user.followers_count

print("The number of followers of the user are : " + str(followers_count))

Output :

The number of followers of the user are : 2204