Instagram Reels Engagement Scraper

An Apify Actor built in TypeScript with the Apify SDK and Crawlee that collects engagement metrics for Instagram Reels.

Features & Scope

Accepts one or more Instagram Reel URLs (https://www.instagram.com/reel/<id>/ or /reels/<id>/) and returns strictly the following engagement metrics per Reel:

• publisherUsername — Account username of the Reel creator
• views — Video view / play count
• likes — Like count
• shares — Share / reshare count (null when not publicly available)
• saves — Save / bookmark count (null when not publicly available)

Strict Scope Guarantees

• No extraneous data: Does not scrape or store captions, comments, audio tracks, hashtags, or media files.
• No fabricated numbers: Any metric that is not publicly available or is hidden by the creator is returned as null — values are never estimated or guessed.
• URL normalization & deduplication: Strips query parameters, hash fragments, and trailing slashes (https://www.instagram.com/reel/<id>), deduplicating repeated Reel URLs in a single run.
• Every input accounted for: Invalid URLs (non-Instagram domains, profile links, regular /p/ posts, stories) or deleted/private Reels do not crash the run — they produce a structured dataset item with a descriptive error field and null metrics.

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Input

The Actor input is defined in ./.actor/input_schema.json (and ./INPUT_SCHEMA.json):

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
reelUrls	string[]	Yes	—	One or more Instagram Reel URLs (https://www.instagram.com/reel/<id>/ or /reels/<id>/).
proxyConfiguration	object	No	{ "useApifyProxy": true }	Apify Proxy configuration. Use Residential proxies if plain requests are blocked or rate-limited.
maxConcurrency	integer	No	4	Number of Reel URLs processed in parallel (1–10).
sessionCookie	string (secret)	No	—	Optional Instagram sessionid cookie value if login is required for restricted targets. Encrypted and never logged or stored.

Example Input

{
    "reelUrls": [
        "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQWxAjPjI32/",
        "https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5QuBSkux6R/",
        "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTq4oW2kfPx/"
    ],
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true
    },
    "maxConcurrency": 4
}

---

Output

The Actor stores one item per deduplicated Reel URL in the default Apify Dataset, rendered as a table in the Apify Console via ./.actor/dataset_schema.json.

Output Schema

{
    "reelUrl": "string",
    "publisherUsername": "string | null",
    "views": "number | null",
    "likes": "number | null",
    "shares": "number | null",
    "saves": "number | null",
    "scrapedAt": "ISO 8601 string",
    "error": "string | null"
}

Example Output

[
    {
        "reelUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQWxAjPjI32",
        "publisherUsername": "iammattjupp",
        "views": 2595,
        "likes": 99,
        "shares": null,
        "saves": null,
        "scrapedAt": "2026-10-18T14:55:00.000Z",
        "error": null
    },
    {
        "reelUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5QuBSkux6R",
        "publisherUsername": "shinewithnatasha",
        "views": 1536,
        "likes": 150,
        "shares": null,
        "saves": null,
        "scrapedAt": "2026-10-18T14:55:01.000Z",
        "error": null
    },
    {
        "reelUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTq4oW2kfPx",
        "publisherUsername": "itszachford",
        "views": 179,
        "likes": 6,
        "shares": null,
        "saves": null,
        "scrapedAt": "2026-10-18T14:55:02.000Z",
        "error": null
    },
    {
        "reelUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/p/INVALID_POST_URL/",
        "publisherUsername": null,
        "views": null,
        "likes": null,
        "shares": null,
        "saves": null,
        "scrapedAt": "2026-10-18T14:55:00.000Z",
        "error": "Invalid Instagram Reel URL: path must match /reel/<id>/ or /reels/<id>/."
    }
]

---

How It Works

1. Input Normalization & Deduplication: Validates each URL against Instagram Reel path patterns (/reel/<id> and /reels/<id>), strips query strings and trailing slashes, and deduplicates URLs.
2. Embedded JSON & GraphQL Extraction (Primary):
   • Fetches Instagram's embed endpoint (/p/<id>/embed/captioned/) and extracts the embedded contextJSON (gql_data.shortcode_media) and DOM metadata.
   • Queries the main Reel page (/reel/<id>/) and Instagram's GraphQL endpoint (/graphql/query) when additional fields are needed or when an optional sessionCookie is provided.
3. Browser Fallback (Secondary):
   • Falls back to headless Puppeteer only if plain HTTP requests are blocked or fail to return embedded data.
4. Retries with Exponential Backoff:
   • Processes URLs in parallel (default concurrency 4) and retries failed requests up to 3 times with exponential backoff.

---

Local Development & Testing

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Run unit tests
npm test

# Build TypeScript
npm run build

# Run Actor locally using Apify CLI
apify run

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Deployment to Apify Platform

# 1. Authenticate with your Apify account
apify login

# 2. Deploy the Actor to the Apify platform
apify push

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Summary of Metric Availability

Metric	Public Availability	Notes
publisherUsername	Obtainable	Extracted from shortcode_media.owner.username, Embed DOM, or OpenGraph/Twitter meta tags.
views	Obtainable	Extracted as exact integer from shortcode_media.video_view_count / video_play_count (null if hidden by creator).
likes	Obtainable	Extracted as exact integer from shortcode_media.edge_liked_by.count / like_count (null if hidden by creator).
shares	Returns null publicly	Instagram does not expose reshare_count publicly without creator/authenticated API access; returns null when unavailable.
saves	Returns null publicly	Instagram does not expose save_count publicly outside Instagram Insights; returns null when unavailable.