# Instagram Post Scraper (`bornoo/instagram-post-scraper`) Actor

Scrape public Instagram posts by username or profile URL. Extract captions, likes, comments, timestamps, image and video URLs, hashtags, and mentions into a clean, structured JSON dataset. Fast, reliable, and easy to configure — great for social monitoring, research, and content analytics work.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/bornoo/instagram-post-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Biddut Hossain](https://apify.com/bornoo) (community)
- **Categories:** AI, Agents, Automation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.00 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Instagram Post Scraper

Scrape public Instagram posts by username or profile URL. Extract captions, likes, comments, timestamps, image and video URLs, hashtags, and mentions into a clean, structured JSON dataset. Fast, reliable, and easy to configure — great for social monitoring, research, and content analytics work.

### ⚠️ Before you use this

Instagram's Terms of Service prohibit automated scraping of the platform, and Meta actively detects and blocks bot-like traffic. This Actor ships as a **structural template only** — the data-extraction step is a placeholder. To get real data, use one of:

- **Instagram Graph API** — the official, compliant way to pull data from Instagram Business/Creator accounts you own or manage, via a Facebook Developer App.
- **Apify's published Instagram Scraper** — a maintained, ToS-aware Actor already available in the [Apify Store](https://apify.com/store) that you can call from your own Actor via the Apify API/client instead of writing scraping logic yourself.

### Input

| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| `usernames` | array of strings | Instagram usernames or full profile URLs to fetch posts from. |
| `resultsLimit` | integer | Max number of posts to fetch per profile (default: 20). |
| `proxyConfiguration` | object | Apify Proxy settings used for outbound requests. |

Example input:

```json
{
    "usernames": ["natgeo", "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/"],
    "resultsLimit": 20,
    "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true }
}
```

### Output

Each item pushed to the dataset has the shape:

```json
{
    "username": "natgeo",
    "postUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/p/xxxxxxx/",
    "caption": "Example caption text...",
    "likesCount": 1234,
    "commentsCount": 56,
    "timestamp": "2026-08-01T12:00:00Z",
    "mediaUrl": "https://example.com/media.jpg"
}
```

### Project structure

```
.
├── .actor/
│   ├── actor.json          # Actor metadata & dataset view config
│   └── input_schema.json   # Defines the Input UI shown in Apify Console
├── src/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── __main__.py         # Entry point: python3 -m src
│   └── main.py             # Actor logic
├── Dockerfile
├── requirements.txt
└── README.md
```

### Running locally on Apify

1. Push this code to your Actor in the Apify Console Web IDE (or via Git integration).
2. Click **Build**.
3. Go to the **Input** tab, fill in `usernames`, and click **Start**.
4. Check the **Log** tab for progress and the **Dataset** tab for output.

### Tech stack

- [Apify SDK for Python](https://docs.apify.com/sdk/python/)
- [HTTPX](https://www.python-httpx.org/) for async HTTP requests
- [BeautifulSoup4](https://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/) for HTML parsing (if applicable to your compliant data source)

# Actor input Schema

## `usernames` (type: `array`):

List of Instagram usernames (e.g. "natgeo") or full profile URLs to scrape posts from.

## `resultsLimit` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of posts to fetch for each username.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Select proxies to be used by your scraper.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "usernames": [
    "natgeo"
  ],
  "resultsLimit": 20,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}
```

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "usernames": [
        "natgeo"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("bornoo/instagram-post-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "usernames": ["natgeo"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("bornoo/instagram-post-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "usernames": [
    "natgeo"
  ]
}' |
apify call bornoo/instagram-post-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,bornoo/instagram-post-scraper"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/EfVkEQew4CRXZWqFb/builds/2KQ1mK0vclhfowA5i/openapi.json