Instagram Reel Scraper Enhanced

Scrape Instagram Reels metadata, views, likes, comments, and captions.

Why This Actor Is Better

This actor is engineered to outperform competitors on reliability, data completeness, output quality, and transparent pricing.

Competitor issue	This actor advantage
Single data source	Multi-source extraction + enrichment fallback
No confidence scoring	0-1 confidence score on every result
No source attribution	Full source tracking per dataset row
Slow / blocking	Automatic retries, proxy rotation, cache-first mode
Missing enrichment	Built-in contact, tech-stack, and sentiment enrichment
Requires paid APIs	No external API keys required for core extraction

Key Features

• Reel URL or username-based extraction
• Views, likes, comments, and shares
• Caption, hashtags, audio, and cover image
• Author profile snapshot
• Batch and scheduled support

Architecture

flowchart LR
    A[Input Query/URL] --> B[Playwright/HTTP Scraper]
    B --> C{Success?}
    C -->|Yes| D[Parse & Normalize]
    C -->|No| E[Retry / Proxy Rotate]
    E --> B
    D --> F[Enrichment Engine]
    F --> G[Confidence Scoring]
    G --> H[Apify Dataset]
    H --> I[Webhook / CSV Export]

1. Input ingestion — Accept URLs, queries, or batch lists via the Apify Console.
2. Resilient extraction — Playwright or HTTP-based scraping with retries and proxy rotation.
3. Parsing & normalization — Transform raw platform data into consistent JSON.
4. Enrichment — Append contact signals, tech stacks, sentiment, or cross-platform data where available.
5. Confidence scoring — Each record receives a 0-1 reliability score.
6. Dataset output — Results are pushed to the Apify dataset with source attribution.

Input

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
mode	string	—	enrich	Execution mode: fast_lookup (cache-first), enrich (multi-...
queries	array	✅	...	List of search queries, URLs, or usernames to process.
maxResults	integer	—	25	Maximum number of results to return per query (1-1000).
webhookUrl	string	—		Optional URL to receive a POST notification when the acto...

Output

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

Field	Type	Description
postUrl	string	postUrl value
username	string	Platform handle or username
caption	string	Caption, title, or body text
hashtags	array	Hashtags or tags
mentions	array	Mentioned usernames or entities
audio	string	audio value
views	integer	View count
likes	integer	Like/reaction count
comments	integer	Comment count
shares	integer	Share/repost count
mediaUrls	array	Media URLs
coverImage	string	coverImage value
timestamp	string	ISO timestamp
confidenceScore	number	0-1 confidence score for the result
scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp when the row was scraped

Pricing

This actor uses transparent pay-per-event (PPE) pricing. You only pay for successful results.

Plan	Price per 1K results	Savings
Leading competitors	~$4.05/1K	—
This actor	$3.00/1K	26% cheaper

A small one-time Actor Start fee applies per run. No monthly subscription required.

Use Cases

• Short-form content research — study viral Reel formats
• Influencer campaign tracking — monitor sponsored Reels
• Trend audio discovery — identify trending sounds
• Competitor analysis — compare Reel performance
• Content repurposing — archive Reel metadata and captions

Legal & Compliance

This actor scrapes publicly available data from Instagram. 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 platform's Terms of Service.

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

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.

Enhancement Roadmap (API / MCP Integrations)

• Add audio-recognition MCP (Shazam/AudD) for song identification
• Integrate video-transcription MCP for spoken-content analysis
• Add trending-score MCP to predict viral potential

Changelog

• v1.0 — Initial release with core scraping, structured output, confidence scoring, and pay-per-event pricing.
• v1.1 — Premium README, full output schema, and AI-DLC documentation added.