Instagram Mentions Scraper - Tagged Posts by Handle

Type an Instagram handle and get back the public posts other accounts made about it: tagged in the photo, named in the caption, or credited as a co-author. One row per post, with the link, the caption, who posted it, likes, comments and the images.

One thing to square away first, because it shows up in every row. Timestamps are worked out from the post id, not read off the post, so timestampIsApproximate is always true. Measured against real publish times it lands within about half a minute, which is fine for sorting and grouping by day and wrong for anything that needs the exact second.

Input	Instagram handles, @handles or profile URLs
Output	One row per post mentioning that handle: how it was mentioned, link, caption, poster, likes, comments, images, approximate time
Ceiling	10,000 rows and 200 handles per run
Account needed	None from you
Price	$0.44 per 1,000 posts on the free plan, down to $0.425 on Business. The free plan's $5 a month covers about 11,000

🔍 What Instagram Mentions Scraper does

It reads the tagged feed of the handles you name and returns what other people published about them. Four kinds of mention land in the same row shape, and mentionTypes tells you which you got: tagged in the photo, named in the caption, credited as a co-author, or tagged on the post.

Nothing to log into, no API key, no app review.

There is one gap worth knowing about. A minority of public accounts, and age-restricted brands are the usual case, are not identified to a reader who is not signed in. Those come back as a labelled NOT_FOUND row rather than silently empty, and your own cookie in sessionCookies is what opens them.

Set onlyTagged when you want the real endorsements and not every account that typed the brand name into a caption.

📋 What data you get from each Instagram mention

What you get	Field
Which of your handles the row is about	mentionedUsername, mentionedUserId
How it was mentioned	mentionType, mentionTypes
Link, shortcode and post id	url, shortCode, postId
What kind of post it is	type, productType, isVideo, carouselCount
Caption, and the hashtags and handles in it	caption, hashtags, mentions
Who posted it	ownerUsername, ownerId
Likes, comments and views	likesCount, commentsCount, viewsCount
When it was posted, and a flag saying it is approximate	timestamp, timestampIsApproximate
Cover image and every carousel frame	displayUrl, images, dimensions
Tagged accounts and co-authors	taggedUserIds, coauthorUsernames
Instagram's alt text	accessibilityCaption

▶️ How to scrape Instagram mentions

1. Open Instagram Mentions Scraper and click Try for free.
2. Put the handles you want mentions of into Instagram usernames, one per line.
3. Set Maximum rows. Start at 20 while you look at the output shape.
4. Tick Only posts tagged in the photo if caption name-drops are noise to you.
5. Click Start, then download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Start a run with nothing filled in and you get one labelled sample row showing the output shape. That row is not charged.

💰 How much does it cost to scrape Instagram mentions?

$0.44 per 1,000 posts. That is the free plan's price; paid plans pay a little less: $0.435 on Starter, $0.43 on Scale and $0.425 on Business. On the free plan, the $5 Apify gives you each month covers about 11,000 posts.

One charge per row delivered. A post dropped by onlyTagged never becomes a row, so it is never billed. Sample rows and diagnostic rows are not billed, and a handle nobody has mentioned is not billed for results.

One case to know: a post that mentions two of your handles comes back as two rows, one under each handle, and both are billed. That is deliberate, because each row answers a different question, but it is worth knowing before you paste in 200 handles from the same brand family.

📥 What you give it

{
  "usernames": ["redbull", "gopro"],
  "maxItems": 100,
  "onlyTagged": false
}

Field	Default	What it is
usernames	none	redbull, @redbull or a full profile URL. Up to 200 in one run. Case does not matter.
maxItems	100	Rows for the whole run, 1 to 10,000. This is your spend cap, so keep it low while you are testing.
resultsPerUsername	none	A per-handle cap. Leave it empty and maxItems is shared evenly between your handles.
onlyTagged	false	Keep only posts where the account is tagged in the image or credited as co-author. Dropped posts are never billed.
concurrency	4	How many handles are read at once, 1 to 8.
sessionCookies	none	Optional. Your own sessionid (and csrftoken if you have it), for the accounts that will not answer a signed-out reader. Use a throwaway account rather than your main one.
proxyUrls	none	Optional. Servers of your own you want the run to use, as http://user:pass@host:port.

📤 What you get back

A real row from a run on 30 September 2026, with the long image links trimmed with ...:

{
  "ok": true,
  "charged": true,
  "recordType": "mention",
  "mentionedUsername": "redbull",
  "mentionedUserId": "476322",
  "mentionType": "coauthor",
  "mentionTypes": ["coauthor"],
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrQ8KTmuCrN/",
  "shortCode": "CrQ8KTmuCrN",
  "postId": "3085230335784921805",
  "type": "reel",
  "caption": "when worlds collide 🌎 \n\ntrust @mammothmountain to bring fire to the ice for #RedBullFathom 🔥🧊 \n\n#redbull #givesyouwiiings #redbullsnow #snowboarding #motorsports #bike #bikeskills",
  "hashtags": ["RedBullFathom", "redbull", "givesyouwiiings", "redbullsnow", "snowboarding", "motorsports", "bike", "bikeskills"],
  "mentions": ["mammothmountain"],
  "ownerUsername": "redbullusa",
  "ownerId": "40813406313",
  "likesCount": 52168,
  "commentsCount": 104,
  "viewsCount": null,
  "timestamp": "2023-04-20T16:28:58.150Z",
  "timestampIsApproximate": true,
  "displayUrl": "https://scontent-iad3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.71878-15/...",
  "images": ["https://scontent-iad3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.71878-15/..."],
  "taggedUserIds": [],
  "coauthorUsernames": ["redbull"],
  "isVideo": true,
  "productType": "clips",
  "carouselCount": 0,
  "dimensions": {"width": 720, "height": 1280},
  "accessibilityCaption": null,
  "inputUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/redbull/tagged/",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-30T16:03:52.031Z"
}

That row shows the shape well: you asked about redbull, redbullusa published the reel, and Red Bull is on it as a co-author. It is also from 2023, because the feed comes in Instagram's order, not newest first.

Field	How to read it
mentionTypes	Any of photo-tag, caption-mention, coauthor and tagged. mentionType is just the first of them.
shortCode	Unique per post. Use it as your dedupe key.
viewsCount	Often null, including on videos. Instagram does not publish it on this feed.
images	The largest version of each frame. A carousel gives you one entry per frame, and carouselCount says how many.
displayUrl, images	Signed links that expire within hours. Download what you want to keep.
accessibilityCaption	Instagram's own alt text, or null when there is none. Nothing is guessed.

🧾 Reading the output

Three kinds of row land in your dataset, and only the first kind is billed.

Row	How to spot it	Billed
A mention	charged: true, recordType: "mention" and a shortCode	yes
The sample row	_sample: true, charged: false, and only on a run with no handles	no
A diagnostic	_diagnostic: true and an errorCode	no

Filter on charged == true and you have your posts. The sample row also says recordType: "mention", so charged is the safer filter; read it as the marker of a real row, not as a receipt. The errorCode names the handle it belongs to and says what happened:

Code	What it means
NOT_FOUND	No such account, or a public account that is not identified to a signed-out reader. A cookie opens the second case.
NO_RESULTS	The handle resolved and nobody has mentioned it.
BAD_INPUT	Twenty handles in a row returned nothing, so the run stopped rather than work through the rest.
BLOCKED	Instagram stopped answering for that handle this time.
RATE_LIMITED	Too many requests too close together. Space them out.
TIME_BUDGET	The run ran out of time before reaching that handle.
PROXY_INPUT_ADJUSTED	Something in proxyUrls could not be used as written.
SERVER_ERROR, NETWORK, CHARGE_ERROR	Something went wrong that did not fit the list above.

A diagnostic row never bills you for results, and one bad handle does not stop the others.

💡 What people use it for

• Watching what creators post about a brand without asking the brand for its tagged feed.
• Finding the accounts that keep showing up around a product, then approaching the good ones.
• Measuring a campaign hashtag against real tagged posts rather than caption name-drops.
• Collecting user photos of a product as reference, with the image links already in the row.

From mentions to a shortlist of advocates, in three steps:

1. Run this on your brand's handle with onlyTagged ticked.
2. Copy the ownerUsername column.
3. Paste it into Instagram Profile Scraper and sort on followersCount to see who is worth a message.

🚧 What it does not do

• Timestamps are approximate. They come from the post id, close to the real time but not exact, and every row is flagged as such.
• No video files. You get the cover image. viewsCount is often null as well.
• No follower counts or display names for the poster, only the handle and the id.
• No private accounts, and no stories or highlights.
• The order is Instagram's, not newest first. Sort on your own side.
• The same post can be billed twice when it mentions two of your handles.
• Twenty empty handles in a row stop the run early, with a row saying so.
• 10,000 rows and 200 handles per run. Bigger jobs need splitting.

🧭 Which Instagram scraper do you need?

If you want	Use
Posts other people made about a handle	This one
What the account itself posted	Instagram Scraper
Bio, counts and contacts for the accounts that mention you	Instagram Profile Scraper
Posts under a hashtag	Instagram Hashtag Scraper
One post or reel you have the link for	Instagram Post Scraper
Comments under a post	Instagram Comments Scraper
Who follows the account	Instagram Followers & Following Scraper

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need an Instagram account to find mentions?

No. The cookie field is there for the small number of accounts that will not answer a signed-out reader at all.

Why is the same post in my results twice?

Because it mentioned two of the handles you asked about, so it appears once under each.

How exact are the timestamps?

Close, not exact. They are derived from the post id and every row says so. Good enough to sort and group by day.

Why do I see more tagged posts in the app?

The app shows you, signed in, everything you are allowed to see. Open the account's Tagged tab in a private browser window: what a logged-out visitor sees there is what a run reads. viewsCount is a separate matter: Instagram does not publish it on this feed, so it is often empty even on videos.

Can I call it from code or connect it to an AI assistant?

Yes. The API tab has ready-made code for Python, JavaScript and the command line. For Claude, ChatGPT or another MCP client, connect https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,dami_studio/instagram-mentions-scraper. Either way the run happens on your Apify account at the same price.

Is scraping Instagram legal?

This reads public posts only, never private accounts or messages. Results can still contain personal data, which GDPR and similar laws cover, so have a reason for collecting it. Apify's write-up on the legality of web scraping is a good starting point, and we are not lawyers.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page. Send the handle you used and the run ID. The errorCode on the diagnostic row usually explains it on its own.