HashtagIntel IG

The most complete Instagram hashtag intelligence tool on Apify. Scrape post counts, related hashtags, difficulty scores, reach estimates, top-performing accounts, and get AI-powered 30-tag strategies for maximum Instagram reach.

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🚀 What It Does

HashtagIntel IG is a powerful Apify actor that dives deep into Instagram's hashtag ecosystem. Feed it any list of hashtags and get back a rich dataset covering competition difficulty, estimated reach, trending direction, related hashtag clusters, and a ready-to-use 30-hashtag strategy for your posts.

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🎯 Use Cases

Use Case	Who Benefits	Value
Content strategy	Social media managers	Optimise hashtag sets for every post
Influencer research	Brands & agencies	Find niche communities and top creators
Competitor analysis	Marketing teams	Benchmark hashtag difficulty vs competitors
Niche discovery	Content creators	Uncover low-competition hashtags with high reach
SEO/hashtag audits	Consultants	Deliver data-backed hashtag audits to clients
Campaign planning	Advertisers	Map hashtag clusters before launch

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📥 Input Fields

Field	Type	Default	Description
hashtags	Array of strings	["travel"]	🏷️ List of hashtags to analyse (without # symbol)
relatedDepth	Integer (0–3)	1	🔗 How many levels deep to follow related hashtags
maxRelated	Integer	10	📊 Max number of related hashtags to collect per hashtag
includeTopPosts	Boolean	true	🔥 Whether to scrape top post metrics (likes, accounts)

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📤 Output Fields

Field	Type	Description
url	String	The Instagram explore/tags URL scraped
scrapedAt	String	ISO 8601 timestamp of when the record was captured
actorVersion	String	Actor version number
hashtag	String	The analysed hashtag (without #)
postCount	Number	Total number of public posts using this hashtag
topPostLikes	Number	Highest like count found among top posts
reachEstimate	Number	Estimated unique users who might see content
difficultyScore	Number (0–100)	Competition score — higher = harder to rank
relatedHashtags	Array	List of semantically related hashtags
topAccounts	Array	Usernames of top accounts posting with this hashtag
category	String	Detected content category (e.g., Travel, Food, Fashion)
trendDirection	String	One of: rising, stable, declining, unknown
aiRecommendation	String	AI-generated 30-hashtag strategy string
aiInsight	String	One-sentence computed insight about this hashtag
aiScore	Number (0–10)	Relevance/quality score derived from engagement data

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🧠 How the AI Scoring Works

• difficultyScore: Computed from total post count. >50M posts = 92/100 difficulty. <10K posts = 5/100.
• reachEstimate: Derived from post count adjusted by difficulty inverse.
• aiScore: Composite of post count magnitude, top post likes, and related hashtag richness.
• trendDirection: Inferred from post count size and difficulty — large stable communities vs. growing niches.
• aiRecommendation: Builds the optimal 30-tag set using the target hashtag + related tags, padded with branded variants if needed.

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📋 Example Output

{
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/travel/",
  "scrapedAt": "2025-01-15T10:32:11.004Z",
  "actorVersion": "0.1.0",
  "hashtag": "travel",
  "postCount": 672000000,
  "topPostLikes": 842300,
  "reachEstimate": 2284800,
  "difficultyScore": 98,
  "relatedHashtags": ["travelphotography", "travelgram", "instatravel", "wanderlust", "explore", "adventure", "vacation", "traveltheworld", "travelblogger", "nature"],
  "topAccounts": ["natgeotravel", "beautifuldestinations", "earthpix", "travelandleisure"],
  "category": "Travel",
  "trendDirection": "stable",
  "aiRecommendation": "High-competition hashtag (#travel, difficulty 98/100). Pair with niche tags for better reach. Optimal 30-tag strategy: #travel #travelphotography #travelgram #instatravel #wanderlust #explore #adventure #vacation #traveltheworld #travelblogger #nature #travellife #traveladdict #travels #travelstoke #travelersnotebook #lonelyplanet #igtravel #travelphoto #travelblog #traveldeep #roamtheplanet #globetrotter #travelmore #passionpassport #travelawesome #seetheworld #goexplore #adventuretime #travelcommunity",
  "aiInsight": "#travel is a stable Travel hashtag with 672,000,000 posts, top post likes of 842,300, and a difficulty score of 98/100 — best for brand awareness campaigns.",
  "aiScore": 9
}

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⚙️ Technical Details

• Crawler: PlaywrightCrawler (Chromium, headless) via @crawlee/playwright
• Rate limiting: Random 800–2000ms delay between requests
• Retry logic: Up to 3 retries per failed request
• Pagination: Scroll-based content loading + enqueues related tag URLs
• Proxy support: Uses Apify proxy when available, graceful fallback
• Validation: Every record validated with Zod before storage
• Error handling: Full try/catch on every selector — never crashes

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💡 Tips for Best Results

1. Start with 5–10 hashtags to stay within Instagram rate limits
2. Set relatedDepth to 1 for a good balance of breadth vs. run time
3. Use residential proxies (via Apify proxy) for more reliable scraping
4. Schedule daily runs to track trendDirection changes over time
5. Export to Google Sheets via Apify integrations for team access

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🔗 Related Actors

• Instagram Profile Scraper
• Instagram Post Scraper
• Instagram Follower Scraper

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📞 Support

For issues, feature requests, or custom scraping needs, open a GitHub issue or contact via the Apify platform.

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HashtagIntel IG is not affiliated with or endorsed by Instagram/Meta. Use responsibly in accordance with Instagram's Terms of Service.