Instagram Profile Scraper

Fetches public Instagram profile pages and returns the headline stats exposed in the page metadata: full name, follower count, following count, post count, profile picture URL and a short bio snippet. Useful for influencer research, lead lists and tracking follower growth of public accounts.

Features

• Accepts a single username or a usernames list (leading @ removed, duplicates removed)
• Reads the og:title, og:description and og:image metadata, no login required
• Counts written as 12.5K or 3.2M are converted to plain integers
• maxItems caps how many profiles are processed (1 to 100)
• Fetches pages through a residential proxy layer with retries, then falls back to a direct request

Input

At least one username must be provided, otherwise the run pushes a warning item and exits.

Example input:

{
  "username": "nike",
  "maxItems": 10
}

Output

One dataset item per profile:

• username - username as requested (without @)
• fullName - display name from the page title, or null
• followers - follower count as an integer, or null
• following - following count as an integer, or null
• posts - post count as an integer, or null
• profilePicUrl - profile picture URL from og:image, or null
• bioSnippet - bio text as it appears in the page description, or null
• profileUrl - https://www.instagram.com/<username>/
• scrapedAt - ISO timestamp of the extraction

Profiles that cannot be parsed produce an item with username, error (no-content or fetch-failed) and message.

{
  "username": "nike",
  "fullName": "Nike",
  "followers": 305000000,
  "following": 150,
  "posts": 1200,
  "profilePicUrl": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51...jpg",
  "bioSnippet": "See more from Nike (@nike)",
  "profileUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/nike/",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-10T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Pricing

Pay per event. The Actor charges the item-scraped event ("Item scraped") at $0.003 per profile item successfully returned. Error and warning items are not charged. There is no separate Actor start fee.

Free plan

The Actor checks whether the run belongs to a paying Apify account. On the free plan maxItems is capped at 10 per run, so free users receive up to 10 real profiles to inspect the output format. Larger runs require a paid Apify plan.

Usage

From the Apify console, type a username into username (or several into usernames) and click Start.

Via API:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/gio21~instagram-profile-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"username": "nike", "maxItems": 10}'

Limitations

• Public profiles only; private accounts and non-existent usernames come back as no-content or fetch-failed items
• Counts are rounded values as shown in the page metadata (for example 12.5K becomes 12500), not exact figures
• Posts, reels, stories, highlights, comments, email, website link and verification status are not extracted
• bioSnippet is the text Instagram places in the page description, which can be a generic sentence instead of the full bio
• Instagram blocks automated traffic aggressively; even with the proxy layer some requests fail, and profiles are processed one at a time

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Instagram, Meta or any of its subsidiaries. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.