Instagram Comment Lead Extractor

Turn Instagram comments into potential buyer signals.

What does Instagram Comment Lead Extractor do?

Paste one or more public Instagram post or Reel URLs and get back only the comments that show buying or commercial intent. Instead of returning every raw comment, the Actor fetches the public comments, filters out the noise, and hands you a short list of people who asked about price, availability, shipping, ordering, purchase links, and more.

Instagram comments  ->  buying-intent filter  ->  qualified potential leads
(thousands of raw)      (rule-based classifier)    (short list, scored)

Why use it?

Generic comment scrapers return tens of thousands of raw comments that still require manual review. Most of them are casual chatter with zero commercial value. This Actor applies a deterministic classifier so you get a short list of comments that look like buying signals, organized by intent level and category. Less noise, less manual work, faster follow-up.

Input

Minimal input is a list of public post or Reel URLs:

{
  "postUrls": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/p/XXXXXXXX/"
  ]
}

Field	Type	Default	Description
postUrls	array	required	One or more public Instagram post or Reel URLs (/p/, /reel/, /reels/).
maxCommentsPerPost	integer	1000	Maximum comments analyzed per post. Range 10-10000.
minimumIntent	string	MEDIUM	Only output comments at or above this intent level (LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, VERY_HIGH).
languages	array	["en","pt","es"]	Languages used for buying-intent detection: en, pt, es.
includeReplies	boolean	false	Also analyze reply comments. Increases upstream cost.
customKeywords	array	[]	Extra keywords that count as commercial intent. Augments the built-in patterns.
excludeKeywords	array	[]	Comments containing any of these words are suppressed (removes false positives).
includeNonLeads	boolean	false	Debug mode: write every analyzed comment (including non-leads) to the dataset.
commentSource	string	"apify"	Upstream Actor used to fetch comments: apify (official, reliable, free plan ok) or scrapesmith (cheapest, but requires a paid Apify plan).

Only postUrls is required; every other field has a sensible default.

Output

Each item is a potential lead with a classification:

{
  "postUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/p/XXXXXXXX/",
  "commentId": "123456789",
  "username": "john_example",
  "userProfileUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/john_example/",
  "comment": "How much is this and do you ship to Canada?",
  "postedAt": "2026-08-08T12:00:00.000Z",
  "likesCount": 4,
  "language": "en",
  "intent": "VERY_HIGH",
  "intentScore": 92,
  "categories": ["PRICE", "SHIPPING"],
  "matchedSignals": ["how much", "ship to"],
  "isReply": false,
  "source": "instagram",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-08T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Field	Type	Description
postUrl	string	URL of the Instagram post or Reel the comment was found on.
commentId	string | null	Instagram comment identifier. null when unavailable.
username	string | null	Instagram handle of the comment author.
userProfileUrl	string | null	URL of the author's public profile.
comment	string	Original comment text.
postedAt	string | null	ISO timestamp of when the comment was posted.
likesCount	number | null	Number of likes on the comment.
language	string | null	Detected language of the matched signals (en, pt or es).
intent	string	Buying-intent level: NONE, LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, VERY_HIGH.
intentScore	number	Heuristic commercial-intent score from 0 to 100. Not a calibrated probability.
categories	array	Detected intent categories, e.g. PRICE, SHIPPING.
matchedSignals	array	The specific phrases that triggered the classification.
isReply	boolean	Whether the comment is a reply to another comment.
source	string	Origin of the data.
scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp of when the comment was analyzed.

Fields such as commentId, postedAt, likesCount and userProfileUrl are null when the upstream source does not provide them. In debug mode (includeNonLeads: true), every analyzed comment is written to the dataset with its classification, including comments with no buying intent.

Results are stored in the Actor's Apify dataset and can be exported as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

Intent categories

• PRICE - The comment asks about price, cost, value, or payment.
• PURCHASE - The comment expresses a clear intent or desire to buy.
• AVAILABILITY - The comment asks if an item is available or still in stock.
• PRODUCT_LINK - The comment asks for the product link or where to buy.
• SHIPPING - The comment asks about shipping, delivery, or whether the seller ships to a location.
• ORDER - The comment asks how to place an order or mentions ordering.
• CONTACT - The comment asks for contact details or to be messaged.
• WHOLESALE - The comment asks about wholesale, bulk, or reseller pricing.
• PRODUCT_INFO - The comment asks for details or specifications about the product.
• OTHER_COMMERCIAL - Commercial intent that does not fit the categories above.

A comment can match multiple categories. minimumIntent controls the floor: set it to HIGH for a very strict, short list, or LOW to capture softer signals such as "this looks nice, how much".

Supported languages

• English (en)
• Portuguese (pt)
• Spanish (es)

Selecting fewer languages makes detection stricter and faster; including all three covers most international audiences.

Use cases

• E-commerce brands - Find people asking about price, stock, and shipping on product posts and Reels so they can be reached out to.
• Marketing agencies - Build qualified prospect lists for clients from their organic Instagram content.
• Creators and influencers - Turn engaged followers into product inquiries for partnerships or merch.
• Lead-generation teams - Feed scored comments into CRM or outreach workflows instead of scraping raw comments.
• Product research - Read what buyers actually ask for, and spot recurring questions or missing info in your posts.

Example: a product Reel with 8,000 comments can yield around 241 commercial-intent comments, giving a small, prioritizable list instead of a dump of raw chatter.

Pricing

Pay-per-analysis (pay-per-event). You are charged per comment analyzed: the launch price is $1.00 per 1,000 comments analyzed. The total you see on a run is proportional to the comments fetched and classified for the posts you provided.

The upstream comment-fetching cost is billed separately to the same Apify account by the upstream source (apify - apify/instagram-comment-scraper, or scrapesmith), and depends on how many comments are actually retrieved. Your final cost is the sum of both.

The $1.00 / 1,000 comments figure is the launch price and is not guaranteed forever: it may be adjusted after cost testing to keep the Actor profitable while staying fair. Always check the current price on the Store listing before running large batches.

Limitations

• Public data only - The Actor never bypasses authentication and never accesses private content. It can only see what Instagram shows to logged-out users on public posts and Reels.
• Heuristic classification - This is a deterministic rule-based classifier, not AI. It is designed for low false-positive rates, but it can still miss intent or misclassify edge cases. Always review output before acting on it.
• Instagram availability - Instagram can change its public pages, access patterns, or rate limits at any time, which may affect comment retrieval.
• Results depend on what Instagram shows - The number of comments retrieved depends on what Instagram exposes publicly, which may differ from what a logged-in user sees.
• Upstream plan limits - The official apify source caps comment retrieval at about 15 comments per post on Apify free plans; paid plans get the full requested volume. The scrapesmith source returns results only on paid Apify plans. For meaningful volume, run this Actor on a paid Apify plan.

Responsible use

The output of this Actor is research and enrichment data. It is not permission to contact anyone.

Do not use it for spam, unsolicited bulk messaging, harassment, or any other abuse. Respect Instagram's terms of service and applicable law, including privacy regulations such as the GDPR. Never use this Actor to bypass authentication or to access private or protected content. When you reach out to people, follow up appropriately and let them opt out.

Technical notes

• Built with the Apify SDK and TypeScript.
• Uses an upstream adapter pattern: a CommentSource interface abstracts over the upstream comment-fetching Actors, so the data layer is swappable without touching the classifier.
• Deterministic multilingual rule-based classifier running on normalized text, with configurable intent floor and custom keyword augmentation.
• Results are written to a standard Apify dataset with an overview table view showing the highest-signal fields.