Instagram Profile & Follower Scraper

Monitor Instagram follower counts at scale for competitive analysis and influencer research. Paste a list of profile URLs and get follower, following, and post counts plus bios — without a headless browser. Built for scheduled runs that feed dashboards and spreadsheets.

Features

• Bulk input — check dozens or hundreds of Instagram profiles in one run
• Public web API first — uses Instagram web_profile_info (faster/more reliable than meta tags alone)
• HTML meta fallback — when the API is blocked, tries public meta description parsing
• Retries + delays — backoff on rate limits; configurable pause between profiles for large lists
• Clear errors — failed profiles include an error explanation instead of silent nulls
• Schedule-friendly — run daily or weekly to build a follower-growth time series
• Pay-per-event pricing — charged per dataset item written

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
urls	array	Yes	—	List of Instagram profile URLs (e.g. https://www.instagram.com/nike/)
timeoutSeconds	integer	No	20	Per-profile request timeout
delayMs	integer	No	750	Pause between profiles — raise to 1500–3000 for 100+ URL runs

Input Example

{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/instagram/",
    "https://www.instagram.com/nike/",
    "https://www.instagram.com/cristiano/"
  ],
  "delayMs": 1000
}

Output

Each profile produces one dataset item with username, display name, follower/following/post counts, and bio. Failures include an error field (counts may be null).

Output Example

{
  "inputUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/nike/",
  "username": "nike",
  "fullName": "Nike",
  "followerCount": 291663474,
  "followingCount": 150,
  "postCount": 1200,
  "bio": "Just Do It."
}

Limitations

• Instagram aggressively rate-limits anonymous scrapers. For large batches (100+), increase delayMs or split into smaller runs — otherwise you may see all-null rows from rate limits.
• A small set of business/creator accounts fail Instagram's own web_profile_info API with a schema error (ig_business_category_subvertical). Those return a clear error until Meta fixes the endpoint; HTML fallback is often blocked by the login wall.
• Private profiles and deleted accounts cannot be fully resolved anonymously.

Pricing

Event	Cost
Profile Check	Pay per event on Apify platform

Use Cases

• Competitive analysis — compare follower sizes across brands in your category on a regular schedule
• Influencer scouting — quickly verify audience size before reaching out to creators
• Campaign measurement — track follower lifts before and after marketing campaigns
• Data enrichment — add Instagram audience data to CRM or lead-gen records
• Agency dashboards — automate weekly follower snapshots for client reports

Related Actors

Actor	What it adds
Twitter/X Follower Counter	Extend the same tracking to Twitter/X profiles
YouTube Subscriber Counter	Add YouTube channel subscriber counts to your reports
TikTok Profile & Video Intelligence	Scout TikTok creators with video-level engagement data

Notes

• Instagram may restrict meta-tag data for private or age-gated profiles. The actor returns whatever is publicly available.
• Counts are returned as formatted strings (e.g. "284M") matching Instagram's display format.