Instagram Follower Tracker

Know the moment someone unfollows you on Instagram — emailed to you automatically. Even your very first run is useful: see who you follow that doesn't follow you back, your top fans, and how many followers never engage — exact counts and first few names, free. Add your email, put it on a daily schedule, and just read the alerts.

✅ Works on public accounts — a private account's follower list can't be read by anyone (Instagram blocks it for everyone). No Instagram login or password. Your email is never stored. Built by an established Apify developer running 15+ public actors since 2024. 🆓 Free plan (always): 1 account, 15 runs a month, accounts up to 2,500 followers. 🎁 Bonus when you schedule: put it on a daily schedule and your first 7 days track a bigger account — up to 50,000 followers, free (20× the 2,500 cap).

✨ What you get on your very first run

No waiting for run 3 — these land on run 1:

• Who you follow that doesn't follow you back — exact count, first few names free.
• Your top fans — the followers who engage the most (top 3 named free).
• Your ghost followers — how many never engage with your posts (exact count free; full list on a paid plan).

👉 Set it up once: open the ready-made task, add your email, and schedule it daily (full steps below).

🎯 What it does

You give the actor one or more public Instagram accounts to watch and choose whether to track their followers, their following, or both. The first run lists every current follower and saves a baseline snapshot. Every later run compares against the previous snapshot and reports who joined and who left.

Each row tells you the tracked account, the change type (tracked on the first run, then new or lost), which list changed (followers or following), and the affected account's username, full name, profile picture, verified, and private flags, plus the timestamp it was recorded.

Run 1 also shows who you follow that doesn't follow you back (not_following_back rows). Both lists are tracked by default, so it's ready the first time you run — no waiting for run 3. The count is exact. The first few names are free; a paid plan reveals every name.

Run 1 also audits engagement (on by default). It checks who likes and comments on the account's recent posts. You get your top fans — the followers who engage the most (top_fan rows; first few names free). You get your ghost followers — followers who never engage with your recent posts (ghost_follower rows; exact count free, full list on a paid plan). And you get a count of how many non-followers engage with your posts. It refreshes weekly on a schedule, at no extra charge. Ghosts are only counted when every analyzed post's like list can be read in full — so a real fan is never mislabeled a ghost.

The snapshot is stored in a key-value store that persists between runs, so tracking accrues the longer you run it. A daily Apify Schedule turns it from a one-off scraper into an automatic Instagram follower tracker.

🧭 When to use it

• Spot unfollowers — find out who unfollowed your Instagram account, with names and timestamps.
• See who doesn't follow you back — from your very first run. Exact count and first few names, free.
• Find your top fans and ghost followers — who engages most, and how many never engage. Counts free; full lists on a paid plan.
• Detect new Instagram followers automatically — get a dated list of every new follower between runs.
• Monitor competitor or creator following changes — see who a public account starts or stops following.
• Track follower gains and losses — keep a clean audience-change history for reporting.
• Build Instagram follower analytics — export rows to Apify datasets, API, MCP, or your own dashboard.

🚀 Start daily email tracking

1. Open the ready-made task: Track who unfollowed you on Instagram. New to Apify? You'll be asked to sign up (free) first — then the task opens automatically.
2. In Accounts to Track, enter the Instagram handle to track. Then open 📧 Email alerts and put your address in Email me the changes — that's how the changes reach you (no Gmail or integration setup needed).
3. Schedule it: top-right ... -> Schedule -> Daily -> Create.
4. That's it — set it once and walk away. Your first scheduled run fires automatically at the time you picked, saves the baseline, and from run 3 onward every new follower and unfollower is listed and emailed to you. (For a bigger account, that first scheduled run opens your free 50,000-follower window.)

🎁 The free 50,000-follower window opens on your first scheduled run. Schedule it Daily any time — your first scheduled run tracks an account up to 50,000 followers free for 7 days (20× the normal 2,500 free cap). Start it right away with Run now (Step 3 of the visual guide below).

Already on the Actor page instead? Add the account + email, then top-right ... -> Schedule Actor -> Daily -> Create.

🔒 Your email stays private. It's never stored, sold, or seen by us — passed straight through only to send you that run's results, then discarded. (Please pick Daily, not hourly — Instagram lists don't change that fast, so sub-daily runs are skipped.)

ℹ️ Runs 1–2 build the baseline (no new / lost rows yet) — but the run-1 email already brings your first results: who you follow that doesn't follow you back, plus your top fans and ghost-follower count (when available), and a link to your full follower list. Confirmed new / lost changes start landing in your inbox from run 3 onward. You'll also get a heads-up email if a run can't fully track an account.

📸 Visual setup walkthrough

Three quick steps — set the account, add your email, and put it on a daily schedule. Tap any image to open the ready-made task. (New to Apify? You'll be asked to sign up free first — then the task opens automatically.)

Step 1 — Open the ready-made task and fill it in. 👉 Open the Instagram Follower Tracker setup — put the Instagram handle in Accounts to Track, and your address in Email me the changes — that's how the changes reach you.

Step 2 — Schedule it: top-right ⋯ -> Schedule -> Daily -> Create. That's the whole setup — the schedule takes it from here.

Step 3 — Start it now (don't wait until tomorrow). Open Schedules, click the schedule you just created, and press Run now at the top. Your first scheduled run saves the baseline today — and for a bigger account it opens the free 50,000-follower window.

⚡ Quick start

A minimal input (replace natgeo with the account you want to track):

{
  "usernames": ["natgeo"],
  "trackFollowers": true,
  "trackFollowing": true
}

This runs a quick manual check — fine for a small account (up to 2,500 followers). For a bigger account (up to 50,000 free), or to get changes emailed, use the schedule (see Start daily email tracking above): your first scheduled run opens the free 7-day window and saves the baseline at the full size. Confirmed new / lost changes start from run 3.

🆓 Free vs paid plan

	Free plan	Paid plan
Accounts tracked	1 (your trial account)	Unlimited
Tracking runs	15 per month (resets monthly)	Unlimited
Followers + following tracking	✓	✓
Scheduling	✓	✓
How many newly followed / unfollowed	✓ (counts)	✓ (counts)
Who newly followed / unfollowed	First few unfollowers by name (free)	✓ Every name
Who you follow that doesn't follow you back	Exact count + first few names (free)	✓ Every name
Top fans (followers who engage the most)	Top 3 by name (free)	✓ Top 10 with like/comment stats
Ghost followers (never engage with your posts)	Exact count (free)	✓ Full list by name
Followers / following tracked per account	Up to 2,500 / 1,000	Up to 150,000 / 1,000

The free plan tracks 1 account, 15 runs per month (resets monthly), on accounts up to 2,500 followers / 1,000 following — a larger account saves its most-recent 2,500 followers, free. Every run shows how many people newly followed and unfollowed, plus the first few unfollowers by name, free. Upgrade to reveal every name, track unlimited accounts with no run limit, and follow much larger lists — once you upgrade, your next run lists every name automatically.

🎁 Free bonus: put it on a Daily schedule — your first scheduled run opens a free 7-day window tracking accounts up to 50,000 followers, 20× this 2,500 cap.

💰 How much will tracking cost?

Most accounts cost $0.30 a run. You're billed per follower checked, not per API call — Apify's Pay Per Event billing (you pay only when the actor actually does the work), at $0.03 per 1,000 followers with a 10,000-follower minimum. Every run — the first baseline and each check after — costs the same, because each one re-reads the whole list (Instagram exposes no "followed-on" date). Cost scales only with the follower count; tracking the following list is free (track only following and it's the flat $0.30 minimum per run).

What one run costs, by account size:

Followers	Charge per run
up to 10,000	$0.30
25,000	$0.75
50,000	$1.50
100,000	$3.00
150,000 (max)	$4.50

Accounts up to 150,000 followers are tracked in full — a single followers list never bills more than the $4.50 max. Unreachable accounts (private, not found, error) are never charged.

⏱️ Large accounts take longer. The list is read page by page, so a 150,000-follower run can take up to ~1 hour; small accounts finish in well under a minute.

Your monthly cost = the per-run cost × how often you schedule it:

Account size	Weekly (~4.3 runs)	Daily (30 runs)
5,000 followers	~$1.30	~$9
50,000 followers	~$6.45	~$45
150,000 followers	~$19.35	~$135

Tracking a large account weekly instead of daily is the cheapest way to keep watching it.

🔧 How confirmation works

Run 1 saves the baseline. Run 2 verifies possible changes. From run 3 onward, confirmed changes are reported.

Run	What it does	What you see in the Output
Run 1 — baseline	Reads the followers list end-to-end and saves it as the starting snapshot.	One tracked row per current follower (the whole list, streamed live as it's read). No new / lost rows yet.
Run 2 — first diff, held for confirmation	Re-reads the current list and compares it against run 1's snapshot. Any candidate changes (a new face, a disappeared follower) are held one more run before they're emitted.	Empty Output, plus a USER_MESSAGE in Storage that says "N possible changes spotted — confirming on the next run" and previews the candidate usernames (e.g. +3 candidate new: @alice, @bob, @charlie). The live status page shows the same preview while the run is in progress.
Run 3 onward — confirmed changes	Anything that's been present (or absent) for two runs in a row is now reported.	Confirmed new rows (accounts that appeared) and lost rows (accounts that disappeared) since the previous confirmation.

Why three runs to the first confirmed change? Instagram returns the follower list in a slightly different order on each read, so a stable account sometimes drops out of one read and returns on the next. Requiring two consecutive observations before reporting a change filters that noise out — at the cost of one extra run of latency. A real follow / unfollow lands in the run after it was first seen, which is why confirmed rows start from run 3, not run 2.

Followers vs. following — one asymmetry. Followers get a baseline listing on run 1 (you see the whole list in the Output). Following gets no baseline listing — only its confirmed new / lost changes, starting from run 3.

Caps. Reliable up to 150,000 followers and 1,000 following per account; larger lists track the most-recent portion (see 🆓 Free vs paid plan and 🛠 Input for how free and paid differ). For a one-time, no-baseline export of an account's entire current followers or following list, use the Instagram Followers Scraper instead — this actor is designed for change-over-time monitoring, not a single-shot list dump.

📦 Output sample

Each current follower (on the first run) and each later followers / following change is pushed to the dataset as its own row — one account can be hundreds or thousands of rows, not a single item. Every row has the same shape (the list_type field says which list it came from); what a run produces just depends on whether it's the first run or a later one.

First (baseline) run → one tracked row per current follower (the whole list, streamed in batches as it's read), then the baseline snapshot is saved:

{
  "target_username": "natgeo",
  "change_type": "tracked",
  "list_type": "followers",
  "username": "jane_explores",
  "full_name": "Jane • Travel",
  "profile_pic_url": "https://instagram.fxyz-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t51.2885-19/abc.jpg",
  "is_verified": false,
  "is_private": false,
  "detected_at": "2026-05-21T10:15:30.000Z"
}

From run 3 onward → just the changes since the previous confirmed snapshot: a new row for each account that appeared and a lost row for each that disappeared:

[
  {
    "target_username": "natgeo",
    "change_type": "new",
    "list_type": "followers",
    "username": "mark_hikes",
    "full_name": "Mark Rivera",
    "profile_pic_url": "https://instagram.fxyz-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t51.2885-19/def.jpg",
    "is_verified": false,
    "is_private": false,
    "detected_at": "2026-05-22T09:02:11.000Z"
  },
  {
    "target_username": "natgeo",
    "change_type": "lost",
    "list_type": "following",
    "username": "old_brand_acct",
    "full_name": "Old Brand",
    "profile_pic_url": "https://instagram.fxyz-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t51.2885-19/ghi.jpg",
    "is_verified": true,
    "is_private": false,
    "detected_at": "2026-05-22T09:02:11.000Z"
  }
]

Here the account gained a follower (new, list_type: "followers") and stopped following someone (lost, list_type: "following") in the same run. Both lists use the same row shape — list_type says which one. (The asymmetry: only the followers list gets a baseline tracked listing on run 1.)

The change type tells the three kinds apart:

• tracked — a current follower, listed on the first (baseline) run (followers list only).
• new — an account that appeared in the list since the previous run.
• lost — an account that disappeared (unfollowed, or the target stopped following it); carries the last-known details from the previous snapshot.

Missing optional values (e.g. no profile picture) come back as null. The full per-field schema (types, descriptions, examples) is published in .actor/dataset_schema.json — that's also what AI agents see when they call the actor through Apify's MCP server.

🛠 Input

Field	Purpose
Accounts to Track (usernames)	One or more public handles or profile URLs to monitor. Free plan: 1 account (your trial account), 15 runs per month.
Email me the changes (notificationEmail)	Get every new follower and unfollower in your inbox automatically the moment a scheduled run finds one — the highest-value setting, paired with a daily schedule. Used only to send these alerts, then discarded; never stored or shared.
Track Followers (trackFollowers)	Track the followers list — new followers and unfollowers. On by default.
Track Following (trackFollowing)	Track the following list — accounts the target started or stopped following. On by default.

At least one of Track Followers / Track Following must be on. List size is handled automatically — large lists track the most-recent portion, and cost scales with the follower count (see 💰 How much will tracking cost?). Free per-account ceilings are 2,500 followers / 1,000 following (see 🆓 Free vs paid plan); a paid plan tracks the whole list and confirms changes.

🎯 Example tasks

Ready-to-run examples — each opens a pre-configured task you can run in one click (no setup):

• Track who unfollowed you on Instagram — Monitor any public Instagram account and see who unfollowed and who newly followed, refreshed every run with full profile details for each change.
• Detect new Instagram followers automatically — Get an automatic list of every new follower a public Instagram account gains between runs, each with name, handle, and verification status.
• See who an Instagram account starts following — Track which accounts any public Instagram profile starts or stops following over time — spot new partners, sponsors, and interests as they happen.
• Watch follower gains and losses on Instagram — Monitor follower gains and losses for any public Instagram account — confirmed new and lost followers listed run by run, with no manual checking.
• Track a brand's Instagram follower growth — Follow a brand or competitor's Instagram audience over time — every confirmed new follower and unfollower captured automatically between runs.
• See who doesn't follow you back on Instagram — Find every account you follow on Instagram that doesn't follow you back — from your very first run. Exact count and first names free; no login needed.
• Find your Instagram ghost followers — See which of your Instagram followers never engage with your posts — plus your top fans. Exact ghost-follower count free; full list on a paid plan.

🤖 Programmatic / API use

Start a run from your own code or an AI agent:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/afanasenko~instagram-follower-tracker/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"usernames":["natgeo"],"trackFollowers":true,"trackFollowing":true}'

The actor is also exposed as a tool through Apify's MCP server at mcp.apify.com. Once your MCP-enabled client (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, …) is connected to your Apify token, an LLM can run it with instructions like "track who unfollows @natgeo and report new unfollowers — and who @natgeo starts or stops following — every day."

❓ FAQ

Q: How do I see who unfollowed me on Instagram? A: Point this tracker at your account (or any public account), turn on Track Followers, and put it on a daily schedule. The first run saves a baseline of your current followers; from run 3 onward every run lists exactly who unfollowed (lost rows) and who newly followed (new rows) since the last check, each with the handle, name, and a timestamp. You don't need to remember who followed you before — the actor keeps the snapshot and does the diff for you.

Q: Is there a free Instagram follower tracker? A: Yes — this one has a free plan: 1 account, 15 runs per month, on accounts up to 2,500 followers. You get the full current-follower list on the first run, plus the count of new and lost followers and the first few unfollowers by name, free on later runs. Schedule it Daily and your first scheduled run opens a free 7-day window tracking accounts up to 50,000 followers. See 🆓 Free vs paid plan for the full breakdown.

Q: My run came back empty — why can't I track this account? A: The account is almost certainly private. A follower or following list can only be read for a public account — Instagram blocks every app and tool from reading a private account's list, so no tracker can do it. To confirm, open the profile while logged out of Instagram: if you can't see its followers there, neither can the actor. Switch to a public account (yours, a competitor's, or any public creator) and it tracks normally. Private or not-found targets are never charged, and a brief lookup blip is retried automatically before you ever see an empty result.

Q: Can I see who I follow that doesn't follow me back? A: Yes — turn on both Track Followers and Track Following, and your very first run flags every account you follow that isn't following you back (not_following_back rows in the Output). You get the exact count and the first few names free; a paid plan reveals every name. One caveat for honesty: this is only shown when your full followers list was read (accounts up to the plan's follower cap), so the number is never inflated by followers we couldn't page in.

Q: Can I find my ghost followers and my most active followers? A: Yes — leave Find Top Fans & Ghost Followers on (it's the default), and the first run (plus a weekly refresh) checks who liked and commented on the account's recent posts. Top fans are the followers who engage the most (top_fan rows, top 3 named free); ghost followers are followers who never engaged with any analyzed post (ghost_follower rows — the exact count is free, the full list needs a paid plan). It also counts engaged non-followers. Honesty note: ghosts are only reported when every analyzed post's like list could be read in full, so the audit may be skipped for accounts with very high-like posts — top fans still work there (comments are always read in full). Recent-post data also isn't available for every account; when it isn't, the audit quietly skips and the rest of the run is unaffected.

Q: Can I use the Instagram API to track followers instead? A: Instagram's official Graph API only returns follower counts and aggregate insights for accounts you own and have connected — it does not give you the list of which accounts follow or unfollow an arbitrary public profile, and it has no "followed-on" history to diff. This actor reads the public follower/following lists directly and computes new/lost changes run over run, so you get the named changes the official API can't provide.

Q: What are the best Instagram unfollower tracker alternatives? A: Most "who unfollowed me" mobile apps require you to log in with your Instagram password, which risks your account and only covers your own profile. This actor is different: it reads public follower lists (no login, no password), tracks any public account (yours, a competitor's, a creator's), runs on a schedule, and exports clean rows to the dataset, email, or your own code via the API. If you only need a one-time list export rather than change tracking, see the Instagram Followers Scraper in the related-actors table below.

Q: Can I get followers/following in chronological order (by the date each follow happened)? A: No — and no tool truly can. Instagram does not attach a "followed on" date to the follower/following data, so there's nothing to sort by. What you almost certainly want instead is what changed — and that's exactly what this actor gives you: run it on a schedule, and from run 3 onward each run lists who newly followed and who unfollowed since last time, with the detection timestamp. That's a forward-looking chronological record of changes.

Q: How much does it cost? A: $0.03 per 1,000 followers (a 10,000-follower minimum), per run — so a small account is $0.30, a 50,000-follower account is $1.50, and a 150,000-follower account (the max) is $4.50. The first run is a one-time baseline at the same price; every later run re-reads the whole list (Instagram has no incremental "since" feed). Monthly cost = the per-run cost × how often you schedule it — see How much will tracking cost? for examples. Unreachable accounts aren't charged; a list too large to track in full is read up to the cap and charged for that portion on a paid plan (on the free plan the most-recent 2,500 followers are saved without charge). Tracking the following list is included at no extra charge — the price is based on followers only.

Q: Does tracking following cost extra? A: No. The bill is based on the account's follower count; its following list (up to 1,000 accounts) is included at no extra charge. If you track only following, it's the flat $0.30 minimum per account per run.

Q: A follower changed their username — will that look like an unfollow? A: No. Accounts are matched on their stable internal ID, not their username, so a rename is not reported as a loss + a gain.

Q: What happens when Instagram limits how many followers are shown for an account? A: Instagram caps the visible followers list for some Meta Verified and Business accounts — you can see the note in the app itself ("We limit the number of followers shown for certain Meta Verified and Business accounts"). For those accounts, the tracker follows the visible portion of the list (the most recent followers, where new follows and unfollows actually appear) and tells you exactly how much is visible versus what Instagram hides. Billing reflects the followers actually read, not the larger number on the profile. No tool can read the hidden part — it's an Instagram restriction, not a tracker limit — and if Instagram lifts it, full-list tracking resumes automatically. The following list is not affected by this limit.

Q: How fast is it? A: Reading a list is paginated, so time scales with its size — small accounts finish in well under a minute, a few thousand followers take a minute or two, and a very large account (up to 150,000) can take up to ~1 hour. Multiple accounts add up roughly linearly.

📡 Live status & storage records

While the run is in progress, the actor exposes:

Storage key	Type	What it holds
status.html	HTML page	Live progress — including the running follower-collection count while a large list is read — plus change counts, cost, and elapsed time. Open it from the run's Storage tab.
RUN_SUMMARY	JSON	Aggregate run statistics — accounts checked, new/lost counts per list, followers written on baseline runs, baselines created, cost, timings.
USER_MESSAGE	JSON	Contextual note — baseline established, test-run hint, or unknown-input guidance.
SKIPPED_ACCOUNTS	JSON	Targets skipped this run (private, not found, error, or too large) with reasons.
FREE_LIMITS_APPLIED	JSON	Which free-plan limits were applied this run (e.g. account or run-count cap reached). Written only on free-plan runs that hit a limit.

The cross-run snapshots themselves live in a named key-value store, instagram-follower-tracker-state, which persists between runs in your own Apify account.

Reading the USER_MESSAGE. Every run writes a one-line message you can open from the run's Storage tab. The common ones and what to do next:

Message	What it means · what to do
"Run 1 of 3 — baseline saved…"	First run; your current follower list is saved as the baseline. Schedule it daily — confirmed changes start at run 3.
"Run 2 of 3 — N possible changes, confirming on the next run"	Possible changes were held one run to filter noise. Wait for (or run) the next one — anything real is confirmed and listed.
"Audience stable — no changes since the last run ✅"	Both lists read and diffed cleanly; nothing changed. Nothing to do.
"Saved the most recent part — free plan size limit"	The account is larger than the free plan tracks in full; the most-recent 2,500 followers were saved (not charged). Put it on a Daily schedule to open the free 50,000-follower window, or upgrade to track the whole list.
"Couldn't finish reading — please re-run"	Instagram briefly rate-limited the read or a page timed out (the unread list isn't charged). Re-run in a few minutes — a daily schedule rides this out.
"That account is private…" / "Couldn't find that account…"	The account can't be tracked: it's private (a follower list can only be read for a public account) or the handle wasn't found (check the spelling). Transient lookup blips are retried automatically before you ever see this.
"Monthly free-run limit reached (15 runs)"	All 15 free runs this month are used (not charged). Upgrade for no run limit, or wait for the monthly reset.

🔗 Other related actors (same author)

This actor is part of a family of focused Instagram tools — pick the one that matches your goal:

You start with…	You want to…	Use this actor
A public account	Track who follows / unfollows it over time	This actor
A public account	Pull and enrich its full followers / following list once	Instagram Followers Scraper
A username or URL	Scrape and enrich profiles, posts, and contact info	Instagram Profile Scraper
A seed account	Discover similar / related accounts	Instagram Related Profiles Scraper
An AI agent (Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT)	Query Instagram from inside your agent — MCP tools it picks by intent	Instagram Profile MCP Server

Use this one for change-over-time monitoring; use the Followers Scraper when you need a one-time enriched export of an entire list.

🛟 Support & feedback

• Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab — fastest way to get a fix shipped.
• Feature requests in the same tab; we read every one.
• Ratings & reviews on the Apify Store page help other users find the actor.

⚖️ Is it legal to track Instagram followers?

Yes — the actor reads publicly available follower and following lists from public Instagram accounts and does not bypass authentication, access private content, or act on your behalf. Use it in compliance with Instagram's Terms of Service and applicable privacy laws (GDPR, CCPA) — for any outreach built on the results, ensure you have a legitimate basis and a clear opt-out.