How to Use the LinkedIn Profile Visitor

*Performance may slow down when email discovery is activated.

Before you start

• Awareness of LinkedIn’s safety limits:
  - Standard accounts: up to 80 profile visits per working day.
  - Per launch: maximum of 10 profiles is recommended for safety.
  - If you enable email discovery, cut these numbers in half (about 40/day for Standard, 75/day for Sales Navigator).

This Phantom only accepts LinkedIn profile URLs. If you want to extract Sales Navigator profile URLs, use the Sales Navigator Profile Scraper.

Step 1: Choose which LinkedIn profiles to visit

You can provide your profiles in four ways:

1. My Lists:
   Choose a saved LinkedIn Leads list you’ve already created in PhantomBuster.
2. A URL:
   • Paste a single LinkedIn profile URL.
   • Provide a Google Sheet with LinkedIn profile URLs (make sure it’s shared with “Anyone with the link”).

   • Upload a CSV file with LinkedIn profile URLs (make sure it’s publicly accessible, and note that CSV upload is only available on paid plans).

     → If you’re using a spreadsheet, the Phantom defaults to the first column (A). To use a different column, enter the column’s header name in the field “Name of column containing profile URLs.”

3. My Phantoms:
   Use results from another Phantom as input (e.g. LinkedIn Search Export results or any other Phantom that outputs LinkedIn profile URLs).
4. HubSpot:
   Connect your HubSpot account and pull profiles directly from a contact list. 
   → Make sure each contact has a LinkedIn Profile URL. If not, use the LinkedIn Profile URL Finder Phantom first.

Step 2: Connect your LinkedIn account

To let the Phantom act on your behalf:

1. Install the PhantomBuster browser extension and connect your LinkedIn session in one click.
2. If you’re not using Chrome or Firefox, you can retrieve your session cookie manually (see our cookie guide).

Check your browser user agent
Make sure your browser is up to date before connecting your account. 
→ If your Chrome or Firefox version is outdated, your session cookie may expire much more quickly, and you’ll need to reconnect often.

Step 3: Enrich your leads with professional emails (optional)

You can choose to add verified professional email addresses to each LinkedIn profile.

Not every profile will return an email address. The match rate depends on the data available, so the number of verified emails may be lower than your credits used.

1. Click on the “Select your email discovery service” dropdown.
2. Choose one of the following options:
   • PhantomBuster credits (default option)
     • Each plan includes monthly email discovery credits.
     • 1 credit = 1 attempt to find and verify an email for one profile.
     • Credits reset monthly.
   • Third-party services
     • Connect your own account by entering your API key for:
       • Dropcontact.io
       • Hunter.io
       • Snov.io

Enabling email discovery allows the Phantom to extract each profile’s companyLinkedinUrl, which won’t be included otherwise.

Tip for safe use
When using email discovery, process about half of the default daily recommendation for your Phantom. This reduces the risk of hitting LinkedIn’s rate limits.
Example: with the LinkedIn Profile Visitor Phantom, aim for ~40 profiles per day instead of the default 80.

Step 4: Configure Phantom behavior

In the Behavior step, you can define how the Phantom visits and what extra data it extracts:

• Profiles to visit per launch:
  • Enter a number in the “Profiles to visit per launch” field.
  • Recommended: 10 per launch. To reach safe daily totals, schedule about 8 launches per day (one per working hour, 9 to 5). This keeps you under LinkedIn’s daily limits while spreading actions naturally.
  • The Phantom will automatically resume where it left off in the next run if your input has more profiles.

Advanced behavior settings (dropdown in setup)

• Optional advanced behavior:
  • Simulate LinkedIn dwell time (wait ~1 minute on each profile).
  • Save each profile picture as a JPEG.
  • Take a partial or full screenshot of the profile.
  • Extract additional details: interests, accomplishments, recommendations, licenses & certifications (JSON only).
  • Result file settings: Keep only current results in JSON if you want each run to overwrite the file.

CSV results only include a subset of the data (e.g. the first two jobs and schools). To access the full dataset - including complete career history and all profile sections - download the JSON file from your Results tab. 
→ How to Fix Incomplete LinkedIn Profile Data in CSV Results

The field companyLinkedinUrl (the company’s LinkedIn profile URL) is only extracted when email discovery is enabled in Step 3.
→ If you run the Phantom without enabling email discovery, this field will not appear in your results.

Step 5: Select launch frequency

Choose how often the Phantom should run:

1. Launch manually: Start the Phantom yourself whenever you need.
2. Launch once at a specific time: schedule a one-time run at a set date and time.
3. Launch repeatedly: schedule regular runs (e.g. once per day, several times during working hours).
4. Launch after another Phantom: chain automations together so this Phantom starts right after another finishes.
5. Advanced scheduling: customize the exact minutes, hours, days, or months when the Phantom should run.

→ For a complete walkthrough of scheduling options, see our guide to scheduling Phantoms automatically.

To keep your LinkedIn account safe:

• Schedule runs during weekday business hours to mimic normal usage patterns.
• Stick to LinkedIn’s limits: 80 visits/day (standard) or 150/day (Sales Navigator).
• If using email discovery, reduce by half.
• If you’re chaining Phantoms, space them so one finishes cleanly before the next starts. Learn more in our guide on chaining Phantoms.

Step 6 (Optional): Advanced settings

Advanced settings are available if you want to fine-tune how your Phantom runs, but by default they’re already optimized for most use cases.

We recommend leaving them as they are unless a guide specifically instructs you to change something.

→ For a detailed overview of all advanced options (like execution limits, retries, email notifications, proxies, webhooks, and file management), see our Advanced settings guide.

Launch and results

When you’re ready:

1. Click Launch to start your Phantom.
2. Once it finishes, open the Results tab in the Phantom console to see the data collected.
3. Download your results as a CSV or JSON file, or view them as a dynamic list on the LinkedIn Leads page.

→ To learn how to export your data to Google Sheets, integrate with other tools, or reuse it in more automations, check our Access and Export your Phantom Results guide.

Export and input limits on the Free plan
If you’re on the Free plan or Free trial, some features are limited:
- CSV exports include only the first 10 rows of results.
- CSV download links (for dynamic viewing in Google Sheets or integrations) are not available.
- JSON exports are not available.
- CSV upload as an input method is not supported.
To unlock all features, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

What you give (Input) and What you get (Output)

This section gives you a detailed breakdown of everything you need to provide to run this Phantom, and everything you’ll receive once it completes.

What you give (Input)

What you get (Output)

Tips and troubleshooting

Common pitfalls

• Browser not updated → outdated user agents cause cookies to expire quickly.
• Using the wrong input type → it only accepts LinkedIn profile URLs, not searches, company pages, or Sales Navigator profile URLs.
• Exceeding visit limits → too many visits/day can flag your account.
• Enabling advanced options (screenshots, recommendations, etc.) without realizing they add time to each run.
• Expecting full data in CSV files → the CSV output only includes limited profile details (e.g. the first two job experiences and education entries). To access all scraped data (such as full career history, endorsements, etc.), download the JSON results, convert them to CSV with a JSON-to-CSV tool, and open the converted file.
  → If you want to avoid accumulating multiple runs and only keep the latest complete dataset, enable “Keep only current results in JSON.”
• Missing email results → when scraping 2nd- or 3rd-degree connections, professional emails are only returned if you’ve enabled Email Discovery Service. For 1st-degree connections, emails are only included if they’re already visible in the profile.
  → If collecting emails is your goal, always activate the email discovery option.
• This Phantom actually "visits" each profile in a browser-like way. As a result, LinkedIn will register these profiles as "viewed." 
  → If you only want to extract data without leaving a viewed footprint, use the LinkedIn Profile Scraper Phantom instead.

If you run into issues

• Check how to troubleshoot your phantom using Logs.
• Browse the Fix Issues & Troubleshoot Errors section for solutions to common problems.
• Review our Automation Rate Limits by Platform guide.
• Check our Best Practices for Social Media Automation guide.

Suggested automations

After visiting LinkedIn profiles, you can:

• Enrich further → run the AI LinkedIn Profile Enricher to analyze profile data and segment leads.
• Engage your leads → warm them up with LinkedIn Auto Liker or LinkedIn Auto Commenter.
• Outreach next → invite or message them using LinkedIn Outreach.