Instagram Profile Scraper: bios, exact follower counts and contact details from a list of handles

Paste handles or profile links and get one row per account: the bio, the exact follower, following and post counts, the verified and private flags, the business category, and whatever e-mail, phone and links the account publishes. Making an account private hides the posts and nothing else, so private accounts still come back with a full row.

One thing to know before you build on it. The engagement figures are arithmetic over the recent posts Instagram hands a logged-out reader, which is 6 to 12 of them at most. That makes them a picture of current form, not a lifetime average, and on some accounts those posts do not come back at all. Every row carries postsAnalysed so you can see which you got.

Input	Handles, @handles or instagram.com/... profile links
Output	One row per profile
Ceiling	1,000 profiles per run
Account needed	None from you
Price	$0.70 per 1,000 profiles, flat on every plan

🔍 What Instagram Profile Scraper does

You hand it a list of accounts, it hands back a table. nasa, @nasa, instagram.com/nasa and https://www.instagram.com/nasa/ all mean the same thing, so you can mix whatever forms your list already has. Duplicates are dropped before anything is charged.

Counts come back exact, not rounded the way the page prints them: 104,352,629 followers, not "104M". Each field comes from a surface known to report it correctly, so a field nobody could answer for comes back null instead of wrong.

Every row also carries two worked-out blocks at no extra cost. engagement has average and median likes and comments, an engagement rate against followers, posts per week, when the account last posted, what share of recent posts are video, and its most-engaged recent post. signals has the follower tier, the follower-to-following ratio, whether there is a real contact route, link count and bio length.

📥 What you give it

{
  "usernames": ["nasa", "@gopro", "https://www.instagram.com/natgeo/"],
  "maxItems": 50
}

Field	Default	What it is
usernames	none	One entry per profile, in any of the forms above. Up to 1,000 per run.
includeAccountAbout	false	Adds country, join date and how many handles the account has used before. Priced separately, and it needs a paid Apify plan.
includeLatestPosts	off	Adds the recent posts themselves to each row, using the same field names as our post scraper. They also get their own tab in the output.
maxItems	none	Stop after this many profiles, counting from the top. Leave it empty to read the whole list.
concurrency	6	How many profiles are read at once, 1 to 12. Higher finishes a long list sooner.
sessionCookies	none	Optional. Your own Instagram cookie, used to retry a handle that every public route refused.
proxyUrls	none	Leave it empty unless you have your own servers you want the traffic to leave through.

Run it with the input empty and you get one labelled sample row, free, so you can look at the shape before spending anything.

📤 What you get back

A real row from a real run. The picture links and the bio are cut short so the block stays readable, and relatedProfiles is trimmed to one of its 49 entries:

{
  "ok": true,
  "charged": true,
  "recordType": "profile",
  "inputUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/",
  "id": "528817151",
  "username": "nasa",
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/",
  "fullName": "NASA",
  "biography": "Making the seemingly impossible, possible. ...",
  "externalUrl": "https://www.nasa.gov/",
  "externalUrls": [
    { "title": "NASA.gov Homepage", "url": "https://www.nasa.gov", "linkType": "external" },
    { "title": "NASA Internships", "url": "http://intern.nasa.gov", "linkType": "external" }
  ],
  "followersCount": 104352629,
  "followsCount": 91,
  "postsCount": 4928,
  "verified": true,
  "private": false,
  "isBusinessAccount": true,
  "isProfessionalAccount": true,
  "categoryName": "Government Agencies",
  "businessCategoryName": "Government Agencies",
  "businessEmail": null,
  "businessPhoneNumber": null,
  "businessAddress": null,
  "profilePicUrl": "https://scontent-lga3-3.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-19/...",
  "profilePicUrlHD": "https://scontent-lga3-3.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-19/...",
  "highlightReelCount": 6,
  "igtvVideoCount": 171,
  "hasChannel": false,
  "joinedRecently": false,
  "pronouns": [],
  "relatedProfiles": [
    { "id": "524549267", "username": "microsoft", "fullName": "Microsoft", "isVerified": true, "isPrivate": false, "profilePicUrl": "https://scontent-lga3-3.cdninstagram.com/..." }
  ],
  "emailsFound": [],
  "phonesFound": [],
  "bioHashtags": [],
  "bioMentions": [],
  "latestPosts": [],
  "fbid": "17841401474538262",
  "dataSource": "profile-api",
  "limitedData": false,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-21T01:45:24.304Z",
  "accountAbout": { "available": false, "country": null, "dateJoined": null, "accountAgeDays": null, "accountAgeYears": null, "formerUsernames": [], "formerUsernameCount": null, "verifiedOnAboutPanel": null },
  "engagement": { "postsAnalysed": 0, "avgLikes": null, "medianLikes": null, "avgComments": null, "medianComments": null, "engagementRate": null, "engagementPerPost": null, "videoSharePct": null, "avgCaptionLength": null, "postsPerWeek": null, "lastPostAt": null, "daysSinceLastPost": null, "activeLast30Days": null, "topHashtags": [], "topMentions": [], "topPost": null },
  "signals": { "followerTier": "celebrity", "followerToFollowingRatio": 1146732.19, "followsPerPost": 0.02, "hasContactInfo": false, "contactEmailCount": 0, "contactPhoneCount": 0, "externalLinkCount": 5, "bioLength": 44, "hasBioLink": true }
}

Field	What it is
id	The numeric account id. It survives a rename, so track it rather than the handle.
followsCount	How many accounts the profile follows. One public surface publishes it and it throttles, so this is null on a small share of rows rather than a guess.
externalUrls	Every link in the bio when the account uses the multi-link layout. externalUrl is just the first.
emailsFound, phonesFound	Anything written into the bio text, on top of the published business e-mail and phone.
profilePicUrlHD	The largest picture on offer. Signed and time limited, so download what you want to keep.
dataSource	Which public surfaces answered for this row. Useful when you want to know why a field is null.
limitedData	true when Instagram served this profile only through its public embed card. The row has the name, followers, post count, picture and recent posts, but no bio, following count, category, links or contact fields.
latestPosts	Only with includeLatestPosts on: up to 12 recent posts. Each has url, caption, likesCount, commentsCount, timestamp, hashtags, mentions, taggedUsers, coauthorProfiles, locationName, musicTitle, isPinned, likesAndViewCountsDisabled and isCommentsDisabled. A flag Instagram did not send for that post is null, not false, and posts on limitedData rows carry fewer fields.
engagement.postsAnalysed	How many recent posts the figures are based on. 0 means none came back, as above, and the rest of the block is null rather than zero.

🧾 Reading the output

Three kinds of row land in your dataset, and one flag separates them.

Row	How to spot it	Billed
A real profile	ok: true, charged: true, recordType: "profile"	yes
The sample row	_sample: true, charged: false	no
A diagnostic	_diagnostic: true, charged: false, an errorCode	no

Filter on charged == true and you have your profiles. Treat that flag as the marker that tells a real row apart from a sample or a diagnostic, not as a receipt.

Code	What it means
NOT_FOUND	No public account at that handle any more.
BLOCKED	Every public route refused that handle this run. Re-running usually picks it up.
TIME_BUDGET	The run ran out of time before reaching that handle.
STOPPED_EARLY	Instagram refused a long run of handles in a row, so the run stopped instead of working through the rest. unreadUsernames lists the handles it never reached.
BAD_INPUT	Nothing in your list could be read as a handle or a profile link.
ABOUT_PLAN_REQUIRED	You ticked the About box on a free Apify plan. Everything else still arrives.
ABOUT_PARTIAL, ABOUT_RATE_LIMITED, ABOUT_UNAVAILABLE	The About lookup stopped part way through the run. The profile rows are unaffected.

A diagnostic row never fails the run and is never billed.

▶️ How to run it

1. Open Instagram Profile Scraper and click Try for free.
2. Paste your handles into Instagram usernames or profile URLs, one per line.
3. Set Maximum profiles while you are testing, since you pay per profile.
4. Click Start.
5. Download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel, or pull it from the Apify API.

💰 How much does it cost?

$0.70 per 1,000 profiles. Flat on every Apify plan, no volume tiers.

The About panel is the one extra: tick Country, join date and former usernames and those profiles cost $5.00 per 1,000 on top. Leave the box alone and you pay the profile price only.

Duplicate handles are collapsed before the run starts, so you pay once per account. The sample row, every diagnostic row and a handle that turns out not to exist cost you nothing.

💡 What people use it for

• Shortlisting creators. Drop in a few hundred handles, sort by follower count or category, and open Instagram only for the ones worth it.
• Enriching a lead list. Business accounts publish a category, an e-mail and a phone, and the bio often carries a second address.
• Weekly tracking. Re-run the same list and diff followersCount and postsCount to see who is growing and who has gone quiet.
• Cleaning a list. verified, private and the NOT_FOUND rows tell you which handles are still real accounts.

🚧 What it does not do

• No follower or following lists. The counts only.
• No posts unless you ask. latestPosts is empty unless you turn it on, and even then it covers the recent handful rather than a full history.
• Nothing behind a private account. A private profile returns its bio, counts and flags. The content stays private, with latestPosts empty and the engagement block null.
• followsCount is sometimes null. A null beats a wrong number, and re-running usually fills it.
• Some rows come back limited. Now and then Instagram serves a profile only through its public embed card. Those rows carry limitedData: true, are charged like any other row, and a later re-run usually returns the full profile.
• Country does not show on every account. Instagram puts that line on larger accounts. Smaller ones still return the join date with country null.
• Former usernames come back as a count, not as names. Instagram keeps the names behind a tap.
• Entries that are not handles are dropped quietly, so check your list if a row is missing.
• 1,000 profiles per run. Split a bigger list across runs.
• Picture links are signed and expire. Counts are a snapshot, so two runs an hour apart disagree slightly on a big account and neither is wrong.

🧭 Which Instagram scraper do you need?

If you want	Use
One row per account from a list of handles	This one
A profile plus the posts on its grid	Instagram Scraper
One post or reel you already have the link for	Instagram Post Scraper
Posts under a hashtag	Instagram Hashtag Scraper
Reels found by keyword	Instagram Reels Search

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need an Instagram account? No. Profiles are read logged out and that answers almost every handle. The cookie field is there for the rare one that gets refused.

Can it get e-mails and phone numbers? It returns the business e-mail and phone when the account publishes them, plus anything written into the bio text. Personal accounts usually publish neither.

What happens to a handle that no longer exists? One free NOT_FOUND row, and the run carries on down your list.

Is scraping Instagram legal? This reads public profile pages 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. Include the handles you used and the run ID, and the log is enough for us to see what happened.