Instagram Profile Scraper Enhanced

Creator intelligence from Instagram profiles: bio contact extraction, engagement-rate scoring, follower-band classification, and MCP-ready providerHealth metadata. Desktop+mobile fallback chain. No login cookies required.

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Why This Actor Is Better

This actor is engineered to outperform every Instagram profile scraper on the Apify Store on reliability, creator-intelligence depth, and price. It features a multi-API fallback chain (desktop Playwright + mobile HTML), bio email extraction, bio-link website contact scraping, engagement-rate scoring, follower-band classification, confidence scoring, source attribution, and MCP-ready providerHealth metadata.

Key Features

• Multi-API fallback chain — Instagram desktop (Playwright) primary with automatic mobile-HTML fallback
• Contact extraction — emails/phones from bio + bio-link website (open-source, no paid API)
• Engagement scoring — engagement-rate proxy + label on every profile
• Follower bands — automatic classification: starter / nano / micro / macro / mega
• Confidence scoring — every result gets a 0.0-1.0 score so you can filter noise
• Source attribution — know exactly which provider contributed each field
• Cache-first mode — fast_lookup hits the Apify KVS cache for sub-800ms responses
• MCP-ready — every result carries providerHealth{} so MCP agents can route around failed providers
• Optional paid enrichment — drop in HYPEAUDITOR_API_KEY for fraud detection
• Transparent PPE pricing — pay only for successful profiles, no subscription

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Architecture

Input (queries + mode)
  |
  v
[Cache check] --hit--> return base data (<800ms)
  |miss
  v
[Primary provider: scrape_instagram_desktop]
  |-- on failure --> [Fallback provider]
  v
[Normalization + field mapping]
  |
  v
[Enrichment layer]
  |
  v
[Confidence scoring + source attribution + providerHealth]
  |
  v
[Progressive dataset push] (one push per result)
  |
  v
[Webhook + MCP-ready metadata]

Every result includes providerHealth{} tracking per-provider status, latency, and errors — making this actor safe to call from MCP agents that need to route around failures.

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Modes

Mode	Description	Target latency	Use case
fast_lookup	Cache-first, base data only	<800ms cached	Quick lookups, deduplication
enrich	Full enrichment with contact extraction + scoring	~2-4s/result	Detailed analysis
batch	Queue-based, full enrichment, per-item isolation	varies	Large query lists (100+)

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Input

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
mode	string	—	enrich	fast_lookup | enrich | batch
queries	array	yes	["cristiano"]	Search queries
maxResults	integer	—	25	Max results per query (1-1000)
webhookUrl	string	—	—	Webhook for completion notification

Example input

{
  "mode": "enrich",
  "queries": ["cristiano"],
  "maxResults": 50
}

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Output

Results are stored in the Apify dataset as structured JSON. See .actor/output_schema.json for the canonical schema.

Every result includes:

Field	Type	Description
confidenceScore	number	0.0-1.0 reliability score
sources	array	Provider attribution
providerHealth	object	Per-provider status/latency/error for MCP routing
cacheStatus	string	hit | miss | degraded
mode	string	Execution mode used
extractedAt	string	ISO timestamp

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Pricing

Transparent pay-per-event (PPE) pricing. You only pay for successful results.

Event	Price	When charged
Actor Start	$0.05/1K runs	One-time per run
Result	$0.00177/result	Per result pushed
Contact Found	$0.0005/result	Charge per profile with an extracted email or phone (bio or website).

No monthly subscription required.

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Use Cases

• Influencer prospecting — find creators by audience size with verified contact emails
• Creator outreach — build email lists of Instagram creators for brand partnerships
• Engagement benchmarking — compare engagement rates across a creator shortlist
• Lead generation — extract contact info from business Instagram bios and their websites
• MCP agent workflows — call from LLM agents; providerHealth lets agents route around failures
• Market research — map creator density by niche and follower band
• CRM enrichment — append Instagram follower counts and engagement to existing contact records
• Fraud screening — optional HypeAuditor integration to flag fake-follower accounts

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Integration Examples

Python (Apify SDK)

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("YOUR_USERNAME/instagram-profile-scraper-enhanced").call(run_input={
    "mode": "enrich",
    "queries": ["cristiano"],
    "maxResults": 50,
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/YOUR_USERNAME~instagram-profile-scraper-enhanced/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"mode":"enrich","queries":["cristiano"],"maxResults":25}'

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

This actor is MCP-ready. Register it via @apify/actors-mcp-server:

$npx -y @apify/actors-mcp-server --tools actors,YOUR_USERNAME/instagram-profile-scraper-enhanced

Agents can then call call-actor and use providerHealth + confidenceScore to route around failed providers and filter result quality.

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FAQ

Q: Do I need Instagram login cookies?

No. This actor scrapes public profile data via meta tags and JSON-LD — no login or session cookies required.

Q: How does the desktop+mobile fallback work?

If the primary Playwright desktop scrape fails (blocked, timeout, login wall), the actor automatically falls back to a lightweight mobile HTML fetch (httpx). The providerHealth field on every result shows which providers succeeded/failed and their latency.

Q: Where do the emails come from?

Two sources: emails found directly in the Instagram bio, and emails scraped from the website linked in the bio. No paid email-finder API is required.

Q: Can I call this from an LLM agent?

Yes. The actor is MCP-ready. Every result includes providerHealth{}, confidenceScore, and followerBand so agents can make routing and filtering decisions.

Q: What is the cache TTL?

1 hour. Cached results in fast_lookup mode return in under 800ms. Enrichment results are not cached (always fresh).

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Legal & Compliance

This actor scrapes publicly available data. It does not access private data, bypass authentication, or store credentials. Users are responsible for complying with applicable data protection laws (GDPR, CCPA, etc.) and the target platform's Terms of Service.

This actor is intended for legitimate research, analysis, and outreach use cases. It must not be used for spam, harassment, or unlawful activity.

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AI-DLC / Data Lifecycle

This actor follows AI-DLC principles for ethical data handling:

• Collection — Public data only; respects robots.txt and rate limits.
• Processing — In-memory normalization; no PII logging.
• Storage — Results are pushed to the user's Apify dataset, not retained by the actor.
• Usage — Designed for analysis, enrichment, and legitimate outreach.
• Disposal — No long-term caching of user data between runs (cache TTL 3600s for base results only).

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Enhancement Roadmap (API / MCP Integrations)

• Multi-step orchestration via LangGraph conditional workflows
• Vector store integration for semantic deduplication across runs
• Additional paid enrichment APIs (user keys, disabled by default)

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Changelog

• v3.0 — Multi-API orchestration edition: fallback chain, MCP-ready metadata, engagement scoring, optional fraud detection
• v2.0 — Premium README, full output schema, confidence scoring, source attribution
• v1.0 — Initial release with core Playwright scraping and structured output

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Links

• Apify Store: https://apify.com/YOUR_USERNAME/instagram-profile-scraper-enhanced
• Documentation: See this README
• Support: Open an issue on the actor's Apify Store page