Launch your First Phantom Step-by-step

This guide walks you through setting up a new Phantom in your workspace: from selecting one on the Solutions page to launching it for the first time. 

To launch a Phantom, choose one from the Solutions page, complete its setup steps (input, behavior, launch settings), and click Save & close. You can launch a Phantom manually or schedule it to run automatically. 

Step 1: Choose your Phantom

Every automation starts by selecting the right Phantom for your goal. You’ll find all available automations on the Solutions page, where you can filter by platform or strategy.

1. Log in to your PhantomBuster workspace and go to the Solutions page.
2. Use filters to narrow by platform or strategy, for example: Extract leads on LinkedIn.
3. Click Use now to open the setup page and start configuring the Phantom. 

Step 2: Add the data your Phantom will use

Every Phantom needs data to start working, this could be links, keywords, or a lead list.

Here are the most common formats:

• A single link, like a LinkedIn profile or search results URL. 

• A spreadsheet of links, if you want to process multiple at once.

• A LinkedIn Leads List, created in your workspace.

• Keywords, for Phantoms that run searches (like Google Maps or LinkedIn Search Export). 

• Results from another Phantom, if you’re combining Phantoms manually (known as chaining).

For example, here’s what the input step looks like in the LinkedIn Search Export Phantom:

→ Learn more on in the Help Center guide: Provide Input Data to your Phantom: Links, Lists, or Files.

Step 3: Connect your account

If the Phantom interacts with a platform like LinkedIn, it will need temporary access to your session. You can connect automatically using the PhantomBuster Chrome extension.

• If prompted, click Connect and use the PhantomBuster browser extension to securely link your account. Make sure you're logged into the correct platform in your browser before starting.
• If no Connect step appears, the Phantom doesn’t require login, this is the case for automations like Google Maps Phantoms. 

For example, here’s what the Connect to LinkedIn step looks like in the LinkedIn Search Export Phantom, with the extension installed and your LinkedIn session already active:

→ For a full explanation of how account connections work, see: Before you start: How account connections work in PhantomBuster

Step 4: Adjust the behavior

Here, you define how the Phantom should behave: such as how many results it collects and how often it runs.

You can configure:

• Results to export per launch: how many total results the Phantom should collect at once each time you run it.
• Results to export per search: how many results to export from each link or keyword.

These features allow you to break your results into smaller batches or run your Phantom over time.
For example, if you have 2 LinkedIn search URLs and want 20 results from each, set Results to export per search to 20. If you only want 10 results per run, set Results to export per launch to 10. The Phantom will continue launching until all results are collected.

Here’s what the Behavior settings step looks like in the LinkedIn Search Export Phantom:

• Optional features, if available:

  • Watcher Mode:
    Automatically re-run the input each time you launch the Phantom to collect new results that weren’t there before. Ideal for ongoing searches or staying updated with fresh profiles.
    → This only collects new results near the top of the search; it won’t pull older ones further down the list.

  • Duplicate removal:
    Prevents the Phantom from collecting the same profiles more than once across multiple searches or launches. Helpful when you're running similar inputs repeatedly.

  • Custom file settings:
    Configure the output file by naming it and selecting which fields to include, helping you customize how your results are organized.

Most platforms have automation limits. Pushing too hard can get your account restricted. Learn how to stay within safe automation limits. 

Step 5: Choose launch frequency

Set how often and under what conditions the Phantom should run:

• Manually: Launch it yourself whenever needed. 
• Repeatedly: Run it automatically several times per day.
• After another Phantom: To chain automations.
• Custom schedule: Launch at specific times or days.

In this example, we selected the Repeatedly option and set it to run once per day, based on our Behavior setup, to stay within recommended rate limits: 

Step 6: Use advanced settings (optional)

If you need more control over how your Phantom behaves, you can adjust advanced settings before launch.

These settings are optional and include features like: execution time limits, retry behavior, proxies, webhooks, file handling, and email notifications.

→ Learn more in the full guide: Control advanced behavior and settings for your Phantoms

Step 7: Save and launch

Once your setup is complete, save it and launch it depending on your previous setting. 

• Click Save & close to save your setup.
  
  
• Your Phantom console will appear in your Dashboard. 
  → If you chose to launch manually, click Launch to start it.
  → If you scheduled it to run automatically, it will launch at the time you configured or after another Phantom.