Instagram Scraper: profiles, posts and reels from a username or a link

Give it a username and you get that account's profile row plus the media on its public grid. Give it a post or reel link and you get that one item, whether or not it is still on the grid. Everything comes back flat, one row per thing, ready for a sheet or a database.

The part worth knowing up front: a signed-out run sees the grid Instagram serves a visitor. On most accounts that is the whole grid. On a few it is smaller than what you see while logged in, and no signed-out route reaches the difference. Paging also stops at 60 pages, so a very large account will not come back complete in one run.

Input	Usernames, or profile, post and reel links
Output	One row per profile, post or reel
Ceiling	5,000 rows per run
Account needed	None from you
Price	$0.45 per 1,000 rows, flat on every plan

🔍 What Instagram Scraper does

Instagram serves a signed-out client through the same endpoints its own site calls, and those endpoints move. The profile lookup currently errors out on accounts with a business category set, which is most brands and most creators. So the run tries the routes in turn until one answers, and builds the row from whatever came back.

A username returns the grid in the grid's own order: pinned tiles first, then newest first. Every media row carries isPinned, and skipPinnedPosts drops the pinned ones if you want plain publication order. Reels an account keeps off its grid are a separate set, and includeReelsTabOnly adds them.

Hashtags and mentions are parsed out of the caption for you. Tagged users, collaborators and sponsors come back as their own arrays with ids, names and links. Rows are deduplicated inside a run, so nothing is returned or billed twice.

📥 What you give it

{
  "usernames": ["nasa"],
  "resultsLimit": 50
}

Field	Default	What it is
usernames	none	Handles with or without @. Each returns its profile row plus its grid.
startUrls	none	Paste links instead. A profile link scrapes that grid, a /p/, /reel/ or /tv/ link scrapes that one item.
resultsLimit	50	Rows across the whole run, profiles and posts together. 1 to 5,000. This is also your spend cap.
onlyPostsNewerThan	none	YYYY-MM-DD. Older posts are dropped before they are billed. Anything it cannot read as a date turns the filter off without warning, so check the format.
skipPinnedPosts	off	Drop the tiles pinned to the top of the grid, up to three of them.
includeReelsTabOnly	off	Also return reels the account keeps off its grid, such as trial reels.
sessionCookies	none	Optional. Your own Instagram cookie, so the run sees what your account sees. Use a throwaway account: the value sits in the run input, which anyone who can open the run can read.
proxyConfiguration	Apify default	Leave it alone unless you have your own servers to use. Picking a country here can come back with no rows at all.
notionConnector, notionParentId	none	Optional. Write each row into a Notion database as well as the dataset.

Run it with nothing at all and you get one labelled sample row, free, so you can see the shape first.

📤 What you get back

A real profile row from a real run, with the picture link and the bio cut short:

{
  "ok": true,
  "type": "profile",
  "username": "nasa",
  "id": "528817151",
  "fullName": "NASA",
  "biography": "Making the seemingly impossible, possible. ...",
  "externalUrl": "https://www.nasa.gov/",
  "followersCount": 104352628,
  "followsCount": 91,
  "postsCount": 4928,
  "verified": true,
  "isBusinessAccount": true,
  "private": false,
  "profilePicUrl": "https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-19/...",
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/"
}

Post and reel rows come back with type set to image, video or carousel, and carry:

Field	What it is
shortCode, url	Unique per post, and the canonical /p/<code>/ link. Use shortCode as your dedupe key across runs.
caption, hashtags, mentions	The caption, and the tags and handles parsed out of it without the # or @.
likesCount, commentsCount, videoViewCount	Counters as Instagram reports them at read time.
displayUrl, videoUrl, images	Direct links to the cover, the video file and every carousel frame. Signed and time limited.
dimensions, isVideo, isPinned	Shape of the media, and whether it is pinned to the top of the grid.
ownerUsername, ownerId, timestamp	Who posted it and when, as an ISO timestamp that never moves.
taggedUsers, coauthorProfiles, sponsorProfiles	Profile objects with id, username, full name, link and picture.
isPaidPartnership, isSponsored, likesAndViewCountsDisabled, isCommentsDisabled	What the account turned on or off for that post.

Fields Instagram leaves out stay null rather than being guessed. postsCount and isBusinessAccount are the two that go null when the run had to fall back to the rendered page.

🧾 Reading the output

Three kinds of row can land in your dataset.

Row	How to spot it	Billed
A profile, post or reel	ok: true and a type	yes
The sample row	_sample: true	no
A diagnostic	ok: false and an errorCode	no

Filter on ok == true and you have your data. NOT_FOUND means Instagram showed the item as gone. BLOCKED means the route refused that item this run, which re-running usually clears. Either way the run carries on to the next item and neither row is billed.

One quirk of the Overview table: it shows post columns, so a profile row reads as an almost empty line there. Open the row itself or download the JSON and it is all present.

▶️ How to run it

1. Open Instagram Scraper and click Try for free.
2. Type a handle into Profile usernames, or paste links into Start URLs.
3. Set Max results. Start at 50 while you look at the output shape.
4. Click Start.
5. Download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel, or pull it from the Apify API.

💰 How much does it cost?

$0.45 per 1,000 rows. Flat on every Apify plan, no volume tiers.

A profile row and a post row cost the same. You pay for rows that carry data, so the sample row, diagnostic rows, posts dropped by your date filter and duplicates inside a run are not charged. resultsLimit is the ceiling on both the rows and the spend.

💡 What people use it for

• Pulling a competitor's recent posts every Monday and diffing the like and comment counts.
• Building a content archive for a handful of accounts, captions and media links included.
• Checking one post or reel at a time from links a team drops into a channel.
• Measuring posting cadence: timestamp across a grid tells you how often an account actually ships.

🚧 What it does not do

• No comments, follower lists or stories. Those are separate actors, two of them linked below.
• A private account returns the profile shell only. Bio, counts and private: true come through. There is nothing public behind it to read.
• Recent posts, not the full archive. Paging stops at 60 pages, so a very large account needs onlyPostsNewerThan to make the walk purposeful.
• postsCount and isBusinessAccount can be null when the run fell back to the rendered page. The rest of the profile row is still there.
• A signed-out run can see a smaller grid. If a profile shows more in your browser than the run returned, that is what you are looking at, and your own cookie is the fix.
• A bad date turns the filter off instead of failing, so write onlyPostsNewerThan as YYYY-MM-DD.
• Media links expire. They are signed, short-lived links. Fetch anything you want to keep.
• Counts are a snapshot at read time, not at publish time.

🧭 Which Instagram scraper do you need?

If you want	Use
A profile plus the posts on its grid	This one
One row per account, with contact details and engagement	Instagram Profile 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. Everything above works signed out. The cookie field is only for the accounts where a signed-out reader sees less.

Is resultsLimit per username or per run? Per run, and the profile row counts towards it. Ask for 100 across three handles and you get 100 rows in total, not 300.

Why did I get fewer posts than I asked for? Either the account has fewer, your date filter dropped them, or the walk hit its paging ceiling on a very large grid.

Is scraping Instagram legal? This reads public profiles and 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.

Can I run it on a schedule? Yes. Apify's scheduler, or start it from the API and read the dataset when it finishes.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page. Include the username or link you used and the run ID, and the log is enough for us to see what happened.