Instagram Fake Follower Check: Audience Quality Score

This Actor tells you how much of an Instagram account's audience looks real. Give it a username and it samples 100 people from that account's audience, looks up each of their profiles, and returns one report: the share of likely fake or bot accounts, a 0 to 100 audience quality score, an A to F grade, the three most common reasons, and every sampled account with the signals it showed. One audit costs $0.30 and needs no login.

Who is it for?

Brands and agencies checking an influencer before they pay for a post, creators who want proof their audience is real, and analysts comparing accounts in a niche.

What does one audit return?

One row per audited account, for example (humansofny, 100 commenters sampled, 2026-10-30):

Field	Example
audience_quality_score	75.0
grade	B
suspicious_share_pct	25.0
top_reasons	"29 of 100 has fewer than 10 followers", "25 of 100 follows 1,000+ accounts but has under a tenth as many followers", "23 of 100 username carries a run of 4+ digits"
generic_comment_share_pct	58.1 (emoji-only or stock praise comments)
private_share_pct	25.0
sample	100 accounts with followers, following, has_posts, private, verified, signals and suspicion points

The same run scored natgeo 99.0 (grade A, 1 of 100 suspicious). Missing, private or unreadable accounts produce no row and cost nothing.

How is the score worked out?

Each sampled account collects points for signals that bought followers and bots tend to share:

Signal	Points
Account no longer exists or is hidden	60
Has never posted	30
Follows 1,000+ accounts but has under a tenth as many followers	30
No profile picture	25
Fewer than 10 followers	20
No name and no bio	15
Username with a run of 4 or more digits	15

An account with 50 or more points counts as suspicious. Verified accounts are never flagged, and a private account is not judged on posts it hides. The quality score is 100 minus the suspicious share; grades are A from 85, B from 70, C from 55, D from 40, F below. Every row shows which signals fired, so you can check any flag yourself. It is a heuristic screen, not proof that an account is fake.

Which audience is sampled?

Without a login, the sample is the people who comment on the account's latest 12 posts, because Instagram shows comments to visitors but not follower lists. That measures the engaged audience, which is where bought engagement and bot comments show up. If you add your own Instagram sessionid cookie (optional, stored as a secret input), the sample is the account's newest followers instead, and the report adds an estimated real follower count. Use a spare account for that: Instagram may limit accounts that read many follower lists.

How much does it cost?

$0.30 per audited account on the free plan (down to $0.255 on higher Apify plans), whatever the sample size up to 200. Auditing 10 influencers costs $3.00. There is no charge per sampled follower.

How does it compare?

Follower list scrapers such as the Instagram Followers/Following Scraper export raw lists and leave the scoring to you. Other fake follower checkers on Apify charge per scored follower on top of a report fee (for example $0.99 per report plus $0.005 per follower, or $0.05 per account plus $0.005 per follower). This Actor charges one flat price per audit, scores the people who actually engage when there is no login, and shows the reason behind every flag.

Input

{ "usernames": ["humansofny", "https://www.instagram.com/natgeo/"], "sampleSize": 100, "includeSample": true }

Limits

Instagram does not show visitors the follower list or post count, so without a session the sample is commenters and "has never posted" is read from the account's post grid. Accounts with few public comments give a smaller sample; the row then carries a note. A private account can only be audited with a session cookie.