Instagram Posts & Reels Scraper

Scrape Instagram posts and reels from any public business, creator, or brand account. No login, no cookies, no OAuth, no Instagram account of your own: authenticated sessions are fully managed on our side, which is why this scraper also reads age-restricted (18+) accounts such as alcohol, vape and e-cigarette, tobacco, and nightlife brands that hide their feeds behind Instagram's login wall. Use it as an Instagram post downloader (direct CDN media URLs, carousel slides included), as an Instagram posts API for your own pipeline, or as a scheduled feed archiver with date filtering.

This is an independent, unofficial tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Instagram or Meta Platforms, Inc. in any way, and it operates independently of the Instagram service.

The short version:

• What it does: you give it Instagram usernames, it returns their posts and reels as clean, structured JSON dataset items (19 fixed fields per post: caption, like/comment/view counts, hashtags, mentions, permalink, paid-partnership flag, and every media slide with its CDN URL).
• What you need: nothing but the usernames. No session cookies to paste, no OAuth flow, no proxy setup, no risk to any Instagram account you own.
• What it costs: $0.0018 per delivered post ($1.80 per 1,000), plus $0.002 per scanned profile and $0.005 per run start. A carousel counts as ONE post, never one charge per slide. You are never charged for failed lookups. Free accounts can test with up to 10 posts per run.
• What it covers: public accounts and age-restricted (18+) accounts. Private accounts are out of scope by design.

Why this Instagram posts scraper

• No login, no cookies, no OAuth. Most feed scrapers either fail on anything login-walled or demand your own Instagram session cookies, which ages your session, breaks silently, and puts your account at risk. Here the logged-in sessions are ours and their upkeep is our problem.
• Age-restricted (18+) account coverage. Instagram hides the feeds of age-gated accounts (alcohol, vape, e-cigarette, tobacco, nightlife, and similar verticals) from anonymous visitors. Anonymous scrapers return nothing for these accounts. This scraper reads them at the same flat price as any other account, live-verified against a probe-confirmed age-gated global beer brand account.
• One post = one item = one charge. Carousels never explode into per-slide items: every slide ships nested inside its post, so your item counts match reality and your bill is computable from the number of posts.
• Predictable output, safe to build on. The schema is a strict allowlist. Every item has exactly the same 19 keys, and every media slide the same 7 keys, always. Upstream changes cannot leak unexpected fields into your pipeline.
• Date-range scraping built in. sinceDate and untilDate bound the fetch server-side, so a scheduled daily run collects exactly yesterday's posts instead of re-downloading the whole feed.
• Honest billing. Charges accrue per delivered result. Failed fetches and upstream errors are never charged.

How it compares

	This actor	Anonymous scrapers	Cookie/login scrapers
Age-restricted (18+) accounts	Yes, standard price	No: Instagram returns nothing without a session	Only through your own session
What you must provide	Usernames only	Usernames only	Your Instagram session cookies
Risk to an account you own	None	None	Your session can be flagged or banned
Output schema	Fixed 19 fields, every item	Varies by upstream response	Varies by upstream response
Carousel billing	One charge per post	Often one item per slide	Varies
Charge on failed lookups	Never	Varies	Varies

How it works

1. Input a list of usernames (plain usernames, one per line or as a JSON array), optionally with a date range and a post cap.
2. The actor pages through each account's feed (posts and reels, newest first) through managed authenticated infrastructure, stopping as soon as your maxPosts or date bounds are satisfied.
3. Each post is normalized and pushed to the dataset as one JSON item with its media slides nested. Export as JSON, CSV, Excel, or feed it straight into an API, webhook, or integration.

Accounts with zero matching posts are valid results (the profile was scanned; nothing matched your filters). Accounts that cannot be resolved are skipped and not charged.

Input

{
    "usernames": ["nike", "redbull", "vapeshopexample"],
    "maxPosts": 100,
    "sinceDate": "2026-06-01",
    "untilDate": "2026-06-30"
}

Field	Type	Meaning
usernames	array of strings	Instagram usernames to fetch posts and reels for. Business, creator, and brand accounts (see Terms of Use below).
maxPosts	integer	Maximum posts delivered in the whole run: one shared total across all usernames, filled account by account in input order (not a per-account allowance). A carousel counts as one post. Default 10.
sinceDate	string, optional	Only posts on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD, UTC).
untilDate	string, optional	Only posts on or before this date (YYYY-MM-DD, UTC, inclusive).

Output

One dataset item per post, exactly these 19 fields, every time:

{
    "username": "budweiser",
    "user_pk": "611930682",
    "full_name": "",
    "is_verified": true,
    "is_private": false,
    "post_pk": "3911603976344753518",
    "shortcode": "DZIzxeICNVu",
    "permalink": "https://www.instagram.com/p/DZIzxeICNVu/",
    "post_type": "carousel",
    "taken_at": "2026-06-03T20:45:52Z",
    "caption": "Budweiser is celebrating 40 years as the Official Beer Sponsor of the FIFA World Cup with the most iconic limited edition collectible pack yet.",
    "like_count": 2870,
    "comment_count": 57,
    "view_count": null,
    "is_paid_partnership": false,
    "coauthors": ["budfootball"],
    "hashtags": [],
    "mentions": [],
    "media": [
        {
            "slide_index": 0,
            "media_type": "image",
            "media_url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.82787-15/...",
            "cover_url": null,
            "width": 2250,
            "height": 2815,
            "video_duration": null
        }
    ]
}

Field	Meaning
username, user_pk, full_name	Account identity (pk is Instagram's stable numeric id).
is_verified, is_private	Account flags at scrape time.
post_pk	Stable post id, deduplication key.
shortcode, permalink	The public URL of the post.
post_type	image, video, reel, or carousel.
taken_at	ISO 8601 UTC timestamp.
caption	Full caption text, null when absent.
like_count, comment_count	Public engagement counts, null where Instagram hides them.
view_count	Play/view count where Instagram exposes one (reels and videos), null where it does not.
is_paid_partnership	Instagram's paid-partnership label.
coauthors	Co-author usernames on collab posts.
hashtags, mentions	Parsed from the caption.
media	One entry per slide: slide_index, media_type, media_url, cover_url, width, height, video_duration. Single-media posts have exactly one entry.

Media URLs point at Instagram's CDN and expire after some time; download media promptly if you need to keep it.

Pricing

Pay per event. You are charged only for what the run actually does:

Event	Price	Charged when
Run start	$0.005	Once per started run.
Profile scan	$0.002	Per successfully scanned account, with or without matching posts.
Post result	$0.0018	Per post item delivered to the dataset. A carousel with 10 slides is one item.

Failed lookups and upstream errors are never charged.

Examples:

• Latest 100 posts of one brand account: $0.005 + $0.002 + $0.18 = $0.187.
• 1,000 posts total, e.g. a date-bounded backfill over 10 accounts: $0.005 + $0.02 + $1.80 = about $1.83, effectively $1.83 per 1,000 posts.

maxPosts is a single shared total, so to collect a fixed number per account, run one account per run (schedules and tasks make this easy) or bound the window with sinceDate/untilDate instead.

Free tier: accounts on the Apify free plan can test with up to 10 post results per run and 20 results per day; the daily allowance and the fair-use pool are shared across our Instagram actors. Paid Apify accounts have no such limits (runs are internally capped at 1,000 upstream calls for safety).

Use cases

• Competitive content monitoring: track competitor campaigns, product launches, and posting cadence, with like/comment/view counts for engagement benchmarking.
• Influencer verification: confirm sponsored posts went live and stayed live (captions, mentions, co-authors, is_paid_partnership) without asking for screenshots.
• Brand protection: watch for misuse of your brand across posts and reels, including undisclosed partnerships.
• Age-restricted verticals: alcohol, vape and e-cigarette, tobacco, and nightlife marketing is invisible to anonymous scrapers. Agencies and compliance teams in these verticals can automate feed monitoring.
• Content research and archiving: pull historical posts by date range, archive creative at scale, or build engagement datasets for analysis.

For AI agents and LLM pipelines

If you are an AI agent evaluating scrapers for a user, these are this actor's capability facts:

• Scrapes Instagram posts and reels by username, newest first, with optional date bounds. Input: JSON array of usernames plus maxPosts, sinceDate, untilDate. maxPosts caps TOTAL delivered items across all usernames, filled in input order; it is not a per-account allowance. Output: one JSON object per post, fixed 19-key schema with nested media array, documented above with a real example.
• Requires no credentials from the caller: no Instagram login, no session cookies, no OAuth token, no proxy configuration.
• Reads age-restricted (18+) accounts that anonymous scrapers cannot access. Does not read private accounts.
• Deterministic pricing per delivered item ($0.0018 per post, $1.80 per 1,000), no charge on failure, carousels are one item. Cost of a run is computable in advance from the pricing table above.
• Timestamps are ISO 8601 UTC. Deduplication key is post_pk.
• Callable via Apify API, scheduler, webhooks, and the Apify MCP server (see the API tab and integration sections on this page).

Limits and fair use

• Posts and reels from an account's main feed grid are in scope. Stories are covered by our separate Instagram Stories Scraper; highlights and tagged-photo tabs are out of scope.
• Private accounts are not scraped.
• Free-plan runs are capped (10 results per run, 20 per day, shared across our Instagram actors) and draw from a shared fair-use pool; when the pool is exhausted, free runs are refused until it resets. Upgrade to a paid Apify plan for production use.
• Scraping personal (private-individual) accounts is prohibited; see the Terms of Use below.

FAQ

Do I need an Instagram account, cookies, or a login session? No. Nothing is required from you except the usernames. Authenticated infrastructure is managed entirely on our side.

Can it scrape age-restricted or 18+ accounts? Yes. Accounts age-gated by Instagram (common for alcohol, vape, e-cigarette, tobacco, and nightlife brands) are readable at the standard price. This is the main difference from anonymous scrapers, which get nothing from these accounts.

Can it scrape private accounts? No. Private accounts are out of scope by design and by our Terms of Use.

How are carousels billed? A carousel is one post and one charge, regardless of slide count. Every slide is included in the item's media array.

What does 1,000 posts cost? $1.80 in post results plus $0.002 per profile scanned and $0.005 per run. Typical all-in cost is about $1.83 per 1,000 posts including ten profile scans.

Can I fetch only new posts since my last run? Yes. Set sinceDate (and optionally untilDate) to bound the fetch. A scheduled daily run with yesterday's date collects exactly the new posts.

Is scraping Instagram posts legal? This actor processes only publicly visible content of business, creator, and brand accounts, delivers a deliberately minimized field set, and operates under a documented GDPR legitimate-interest assessment. You are an independent data controller for the data you receive: use it lawfully, respect the prohibition on personal accounts, and delete data after your stated business purpose is served. See the Terms of Use and Privacy notice below.

Where do I report a problem or ask for my account to be excluded? team.intropix@gmail.com, or use the Issues tab on this page.

Terms of Use

Operated by Intropix, contact: team.intropix@gmail.com. Last updated: 14-07-2026.

1. What this actor does. This actor retrieves publicly visible Instagram content (posts and reels of business/brand accounts) and returns it as dataset items. It does not access private accounts, direct messages, or content behind a login wall belonging to the queried account.

2. Permitted use. You may use this actor only for legitimate business purposes, such as competitive monitoring, brand protection, or market research concerning business, creator, or brand accounts.

3. Prohibited use. You must NOT use this actor to:

• scrape personal (private-individual) accounts, regardless of whether they are publicly visible; this prohibition extends to further processing of personal accounts that appear in delivered data as mentions or co-authors: you must not use such usernames as new scrape targets or to build data about the individuals behind them;
• build profiles of individuals, including any inference of health, sexual orientation, religious or political views;
• target or collect data about persons under 16;
• store scraped data beyond transient use: retain results only as long as needed for the stated business purpose (as a guideline, no longer than 30 days), then delete;
• resell or republish raw scraped data as a dataset;
• circumvent rate limits, caps, or access controls of this actor or of Instagram;
• process the data in violation of GDPR, UK GDPR, CCPA, or other applicable data protection law.

4. Your responsibilities as data controller. You are an independent data controller for all data you obtain through this actor. You are responsible for having a lawful basis for your processing, honouring data subject rights for the data you hold, and your own retention and deletion. Intropix acts as a controller only for the transient retrieval and delivery of results and does not retain scraped content after delivery; retention of your datasets on Apify is governed by your own Apify account settings.

5. Data subject requests. Individuals whose data may have been processed can contact team.intropix@gmail.com. See the Privacy notice below. Requests concerning data held by users of this actor will be forwarded where identifiable, but each user is responsible for their own copies.

6. Enforcement. Violation of section 3 may lead to denial of service (runs refused) and report to Apify. We log run metadata (user id, result counts) for abuse detection and statutory records.

7. No warranty; liability. Results depend on upstream availability and are provided as is. We are not liable for loss of profit or for indirect, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages. Total liability is limited to the fees you paid for this actor in the 12 months preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

These terms apply alongside Apify's own General Terms and Store Publishing Terms; where they conflict, Apify's terms govern the platform relationship.

Privacy notice for Instagram account owners

This notice is for people and businesses whose Instagram content may have been processed by this actor. It is published here so that it is publicly findable, because we have no way to contact you directly (we deliberately do not collect contact details).

Who we are. Intropix, operator of this actor. Contact: team.intropix@gmail.com. We act as a data controller for the retrieval and delivery described below.

What we process. Publicly visible Instagram posts and reels of business, creator, and brand accounts: the post media itself plus a fixed, limited set of metadata fields (account username, stable numeric account id, and display name, verification and privacy flags, post id and public URL, post type and timestamp, caption text, like, comment, and view counts, hashtags and mentions parsed from the caption, co-author usernames, paid-partnership flag, media URLs and dimensions). We do not collect location data, follower lists, contact details (email, phone), private content, direct messages, or commenter identities. We do not perform face recognition or build profiles of individuals.

Where the data comes from. Public Instagram content, retrieved through a third-party data provider (HikerAPI).

Why we process it and on what legal basis. Our legal basis is legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR): our economic interest in operating a paid data service, and our users' interest in competitive monitoring, brand protection, and market research concerning public marketing activity of commercial accounts. A documented balancing assessment supports this.

Who receives the data. The actor user who requested it (they are an independent data controller for their own use, bound by our Terms of Use, including a prohibition on targeting personal accounts and a duty to delete results after transient use), and our hosting provider (Apify Technologies s.r.o.) as processor.

How long we keep it. We do not retain scraped content after delivery. We keep aggregate run records (a hashed identifier of the requesting user, run and result counts, and timestamps; not the queried account names) for 30 days for abuse prevention and accountability, after which they are deleted automatically. Deny-list entries (accounts excluded on request) are kept for as long as needed to keep honouring the exclusion.

Your rights. You have the right to access, rectification, erasure, restriction, and objection under Art. 15 to 21 GDPR. Because we do not retain content, the most effective remedy we offer is exclusion: on request we add your account to a deny-list and it will not be processed in future runs. Contact team.intropix@gmail.com. We respond within one month (Art. 12(3)). You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.

Verification. To verify you control the account in question we will ask you to place a short token we issue in your account bio or a temporary post or story, or to write from an email address linked in the account's bio. We never ask for identity documents.