Instagram Public Profile & Post Scraper (No Login) 📸

Scrape public Instagram profiles, posts, and hashtags without login and export clean, analysis-ready data to CSV or JSON.

This production-ready Apify Actor is designed for marketers, founders, researchers, and analysts who need reliable public Instagram data without dealing with authentication, cookies, or private APIs.

⚠️ PUBLIC DATA ONLY This Actor scrapes only publicly visible information. It does not log in to Instagram, access private profiles, stories, or use internal APIs.

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🎯 Who This Is For

Perfect for:

• 📊 Market & competitor research
• 📣 Influencer discovery & analysis
• 🧠 Content & hashtag research
• 🏷️ Lead generation from public profiles
• 🎓 Academic & social media research

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✨ Key Features

• ✅ No login required (public data only)
• 👤 Profile scraping (followers, bio, verification, counts)
• 🖼️ Post scraping (captions, hashtags, media, engagement)
• 🔍 Hashtag scraping (public posts)
• 📦 Clean output (CSV & JSON friendly)
• 🛡️ Anti-blocking measures (sessions, delays, fingerprinting)
• 🌍 Proxy support (residential required for hashtags)
• 🧪 Debug mode for development & troubleshooting

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🚨 Limitations (Important)

Capability	Supported	Notes
Public profiles	✅ Yes	Proxy optional
Hashtag scraping	⚠️ Yes	Residential proxies required
Private profiles	❌ No	Public data only
Stories / Reels (private)	❌ No	Requires login
Login / cookies	❌ No	By design

⚠️ Hashtag scraping fails fast without residential proxies to prevent wasted compute.

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📥 Quick Start (30 seconds)

{
  "profiles": ["instagram", "natgeo"],
  "maxPostsPerSource": 10,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

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📊 What Data You Get

Profile Data

• Username, full name, biography
• Followers & following counts
• Total posts count
• Profile picture URL
• Verified status
• Profile URL

Post Data

• Post URL & ID
• Caption text & extracted hashtags
• Likes & comments counts
• Media type (image / video / carousel)
• Media URLs
• Timestamp (ISO-8601)
• Owner username

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📤 Output Schema (Consistent)

All dataset items — including errors — follow one schema:

{
  "sourceType": "profile | hashtag",
  "sourceValue": "string",
  "scrapedAt": "ISO-8601",
  "data": {
    "status": "success | error",
    "type": "profile | post",
    "message": "error message (if error)",
    "...": "scraped fields (if success)"
  }
}

This guarantees:

• CSV export compatibility
• BigQuery / Sheets compatibility
• Stable downstream processing

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🌐 Proxy Requirements

Scraping Type	Proxy
Profiles	Optional (recommended)
Hashtags	Residential required

Recommended (Hashtags)

{
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Datacenter proxies may work for profiles only but usually fail for hashtags.

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⚙️ Technical Overview

• Runtime: Node.js 18+
• Crawler: PlaywrightCrawler
• Framework: Apify SDK v3 + Crawlee
• Browser: Headless Chromium

Anti-Blocking Strategy

• Session rotation
• Randomized delays
• Human-like scrolling
• Browser fingerprint randomization
• Automatic retries

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⚖️ Legal & Compliance

This Actor:

• Scrapes only public data visible to non-logged-in users
• Does not bypass paywalls, logins, or CAPTCHAs
• Does not store cookies or sessions

You are responsible for:

• Complying with Instagram’s Terms of Service
• Complying with GDPR, CCPA, and local data laws
• Using scraped data ethically and legally

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🐛 Troubleshooting

Login wall detected

• Use residential proxies (mandatory for hashtags)
• Reduce maxPostsPerSource
• Increase delays

Actor fails at startup

• Happens when hashtags are requested without residential proxies

Slow performance

• Intentional to avoid blocking
• Increase concurrency at your own risk

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📁 Project Structure

src/
├── main.js
├── input-schema.json
└── helpers/
    ├── extractProfile.js
    ├── extractPosts.js
    ├── scrollPage.js
    └── utils.js

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🚀 Ready to Use

Push and run:

$apify push

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📄 License

ISC License

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🤝 Support

Questions, issues, or feature requests? Open an issue in the repository — feedback is welcome.