Instagram Bulk Profile Scraper — Followers & Engagement Rate 🚀

foXLabs Instagram series: Profile Posts · Post Details · Comments · Reels

🎉 Give a list of Instagram usernames or profile URLs and get one clean row per profile: exact follower count, bio, bio links, verified/private flags, highlight titles, Threads name and whether a story is up — plus, from the public embed page, the exact post count and the six newest posts, and from those median likes, median comments, an engagement rate, posts per week and the last-post time. Optionally the "accounts you might like" list.

It reads only what a signed-out visitor sees. No login, no cookies, nothing from your own Instagram account. Not affiliated with Instagram or Meta.

🔍 What is the Instagram Bulk Profile Scraper — and when should you use it?

Give this Actor a list of profiles and it returns a firmographic + engagement row for each — built for screening creators and brands by size and engagement, enriching an account list you already have, and watching follower counts run to run.

Use it when you need: to rank creators/brands by followers and engagement rate; to enrich a list of handles with bio, links and metrics; or to monitor profiles over time.

Use something else when: you need a profile's full post feed → Profile Posts; one post's details → Post Details; a post's comments → Comments; reels → Reels.

🤖 Use with AI agents

Already on the Apify MCP server? Ask for this Actor by name: foxlabs/instagram-profile-scraper. An agent can discover it, run it and read the dataset over MCP — and the Actor can run in Standby mode for on-demand single-profile lookups.

Otherwise paste this into Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP-enabled assistant:

I want Instagram profiles with engagement using the Apify Actor
`foxlabs/instagram-profile-scraper`.

Input: `profiles` is a list of usernames/URLs; `includeRecentPosts` adds post count + six newest
posts + engagement; `includeSimilarAccounts` adds the "you might like" list. Each row has
followers, following, isVerified, biography, engagementRate, medianLikes and postsPerWeek.

Start with:
{ "profiles": ["natgeo", "nasa"] }

Ask me which profiles to screen, run the Actor, then rank them by engagement rate.

The machine-readable API, MCP config and OpenAPI definition live at apify.com/foxlabs/instagram-profile-scraper.md.

📋 Overview

Everything you need to turn Instagram usernames into clean, structured creator data — reach, engagement and bio — in one Actor, with no login, cookies or account.

Why teams pick this Actor:

• ✅ Exact followers + engagement rate — not an estimate; computed from the six newest posts.
• ⚡ Bulk — up to 10,000 profiles a run, read eight at a time.
• 🎯 Honest — an unknown value is null, never 0; the README's "What it does not do" spells out every limit.
• 🔗 Bio links & emails — bio links on 94.7% of profiles; a bio e-mail where the owner wrote one (rare).
• 💰 Pay only for results — one profile event per delivered row; status rows and unreached lines free.
• 🤖 Agent-ready — MCP + Standby for on-demand lookups.

✨ Features

• 🔍 Profiles in bulk — username, @handle or URL; duplicates read once.
• 👥 Reach — exact followers, following, posts count, verified/private flags.
• 📊 Engagement — median likes/comments, engagement rate, posts per week, last-post time, six newest posts.
• 🔗 Bio — text, links, external URL, hashtags, mentions, Threads name, bio e-mails (extractBioContacts).
• 🧩 Extras — highlights titles, story status, includeSimilarAccounts.

🎬 Quick Start

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/foxlabs~instagram-profile-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"profiles": ["natgeo", "nasa"]}'

🚀 Getting Started (3 steps)

1. List your profiles — one per line: natgeo, @natgeo or a profile URL.
2. Pick depth — keep includeRecentPosts on for engagement; add includeSimilarAccounts if you want.
3. Run and export — get a clean dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel.

📥 Input

Field	Default	What it does
profiles	required	One profile per line: natgeo, @natgeo, a URL. Up to 10,000; duplicates read once.
includeRecentPosts	true	Read the embed page: post count, six newest posts, engagement figures (one more request, the slow one). false = fast, profile fields only.
includeSimilarAccounts	false	Add the "accounts you might like" list (username, name, verified of up to 50).
extractBioContacts	true	List e-mail addresses written in the bio text in bioEmails.
maxProfiles	100000	Stop after this many rows.
proxyConfiguration	auto	Nothing to change for normal use (see "How requests leave").

{ "profiles": ["https://www.instagram.com/tartinebakery/", "@onyxcoffeelab"], "includeSimilarAccounts": true }

📤 Output

One row per profile (type: "profile"); a free type: "status" row for a line that gave none. An unknown value is null, never 0. Fill below from platform run 4s2LqCYNeoReKq810 (150 public profiles).

Field	What it holds	Filled (n=150)
userId, graphId, username, url, fullName	ids and identity	100%
followers, following	exact counts	100%
isVerified, isPrivate	flags	100%
biography, bioLinks, externalUrl	bio text and links	98.7% / 94.7%
bioEmails	e-mail written in the bio (extractBioContacts)	0.7%
bioHashtags, bioMentions, threadsUsername	from the bio; Threads name	10% / 17.3% / 44%
hasActiveStory, lastStoryAt, hasReels, highlights	story/reels/highlight titles	100% known
postsCount, recentPosts, recentPostsCount	post count + six newest {shortCode,url,isVideo,likeCount,commentCount,takenAt,isPaidPartnership,coauthors}	98%
medianLikes, medianComments, engagementRate	over those posts; rate = (median likes + median comments) ÷ followers	96.7%
postsPerWeek, lastPostAt, hasPaidPartnership	posting rate, last post, paid-partnership flag	98%
recentPostsStatus	ok / not-offered / unanswered / unreadable / private / off	100%
similarAccounts, similarAccountsCount	with includeSimilarAccounts	—
inputLine, scrapedAt	the line this row answers; when read	100%

Honest limits (summary; full detail below): no e-mail/phone/category beyond a bio e-mail; engagement rests on the six newest posts (shared posts counted, coauthors names them — recompute without them to screen on own-content); no view counts for videos; a hidden like count stays hidden; nothing from behind the login; an age-restricted/signed-in-only profile gets a free status row.

💼 Use cases

1. Influencer screening — rank creators by followers and engagement rate, not guesswork. Input: your handles, includeRecentPosts on. Output: followers + engagementRate. Use: shortlist by real engagement.

2. List enrichment — add profile data to an account list you already have. Input: the handles. Output: bio, links, verified, followers. Use: fill a CRM.

3. Follower monitoring — watch counts run to run (compare runs yourself). Input: the profiles, scheduled. Output: a row per run. Use: track growth over time.

🔗 Integration

JavaScript / Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('foxlabs/instagram-profile-scraper').call({ profiles: ['natgeo', 'nasa'] });
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items[0]);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient('YOUR_TOKEN')
run = client.actor('foxlabs/instagram-profile-scraper').call(run_input={'profiles': ['natgeo', 'nasa']})
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

Written for apify-client 3 for Python, where call() returns a run object; with version 1 or 2 it returns a dict — write run['defaultDatasetId'] there.

Automation (n8n / Zapier / Make): schedule → HTTP request to the Actor API with your profiles → handle the JSON dataset → push to a sheet, CRM or dashboard.

📊 Pricing

Pay per event, one event: profile — one per delivered profile row, public or private, with or without post figures. Status rows are free, and so is every line that gave no row (not a profile, no such account, signed-in-only, a duplicate). View current pricing.

❓ FAQ

Do I need an Instagram account, login or cookies? No. It reads only what a signed-out visitor sees — figures can differ from what a signed-in user sees.

Is there an engagement rate? Yes — (median likes + median comments) ÷ followers, from the six newest posts. Shared posts are counted; coauthors names them, so you can recompute on own-content only.

Can I get e-mail or phone? No — the public profile carries none. The only contact a row can hold is an e-mail the owner wrote into the bio (bioEmails), and that's rare (~0.7%).

Why do some profiles have no post figures? Instagram's embed page sometimes shows no data (recentPostsStatus: not-offered); the row still has its profile fields.

Can I export to CSV / Excel / JSON? Yes — directly from the Apify dataset.

🐛 Troubleshooting / What it does not do

• No e-mail/phone/business category beyond a bio e-mail — the public record carries none.
• Engagement rests on the six newest posts as they stood when read; an account that posts many times a day reads low. Shared posts (common, ~33%) count with full numbers — recompute from recentPosts without coauthors to screen on own content.
• No view/play counts for videos — the six posts carry likes and comments only.
• A hidden like count stays hidden (likeCount: null); a profile whose six newest all hide it has no engagementRate.
• Nothing from behind the login — a private profile comes as its public header only; no follower lists, stories, highlight contents, tagged posts or search.
• Signed-in-only / age-restricted profiles get a free status row.
• Before anything is read the Actor checks one known profile's record and embed page; if Instagram changed its public queries or the embed form, the run ends there, uncharged.

⚠️ Trademark

Independent, third-party tool. Not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Instagram or Meta Platforms, Inc. "Instagram" and related marks belong to their owners and are used here for identification only.

⚖️ Is it legal to scrape this data?

Rows hold what an account shows publicly on its profile. A profile can belong to a private person or a minor even when it looks like a business; you are responsible for having a lawful reason to process personal data (GDPR and similar). bioEmails is exactly an address the owner wrote into the public bio — nothing hidden is looked up. The Actor writes only to your own run's dataset and key-value store. See Apify's blog post on the legality of web scraping.

🤝 Support & contact

• 🌐 Website: data.foxlabs.com.tr
• 📧 Email: info@foxlabs.com.tr
• 🐛 Issues: open a ticket in the Actor's Issues tab — the run's SOURCE_REPORT record says which road was used and why the run stopped.
• 🧰 More clean data actors: Fox Labs on Apify

Changelog

0.1.3 — 2026-10-10

• After an independent README review: recentPostsStatus tells not-offered from unreadable; a run that wants post figures checks one known embed page at start-up; engagementRate has four significant digits; a proxy set in the input is the road of every request.

0.1 — 2026-10-09

• First version: profile rows from the public record, post figures from the public embed page, optional similar accounts, free status rows for lines without a profile; requests start ≥80 ms apart; measured on the Apify platform (150/150 profiles, 147 with post figures).