Instagram Comments Scraper

Scrape visible top-level comments from public Instagram posts and Reels. The actor returns structured comment text, timestamps, commenter usernames, profile URLs, verification status, like counts, source post URLs, pagination cursors, provider provenance, and run diagnostics.

It is built for social listening teams, creator analysts, brand monitoring workflows, lead researchers, and AI agents that need Instagram comment data in a clean dataset without fragile browser automation.

What You Can Scrape

• Public Instagram post comments
• Public Instagram Reel comments
• Comment text and creation timestamps
• Commenter username, profile URL, user ID, profile picture URL, and verified status when returned
• Comment like counts when returned
• Pagination cursors for continuation runs

The actor uses provider-backed public-data APIs:

• ScrapeCreators first by default
• SociaVault as fallback
• No Instagram cookies required

Inputs

• postUrls - Instagram post or Reel URLs like https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOq6eV6iIgD/
• startUrls - Apify request-list style URL input
• maxComments - maximum comments saved per post
• maxPagesPerPost - maximum provider pages requested per post
• providerOrder - ScrapeCreators first, SociaVault first, or single-provider debug modes
• initialCursor - optional cursor for continuing a previous single-post run
• outputMode and includeRawData - compact rows by default, detailed raw fragments for debugging

Output

Each dataset row is one comment:

{
  "record_type": "comment",
  "provider": "scrapecreators",
  "post_url": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOq6eV6iIgD/",
  "shortcode": "DOq6eV6iIgD",
  "comment_id": "18051843701642870",
  "text": "Great post",
  "created_at": "2025-09-16T17:03:04.000Z",
  "comment_like_count": 3,
  "commenter_username": "catherina_thijs",
  "commenter_profile_url": "https://www.instagram.com/catherina_thijs/",
  "position": 1,
  "page_number": 1,
  "scraped_at": "2026-06-11T10:00:00.000Z"
}

The key-value store includes:

• OUTPUT - dataset and summary pointers
• RUN_SUMMARY - stop reason, saved count, provider attempts, status codes, per-target summaries, next cursors, and warnings

Reliability Notes

Instagram comments are volatile and provider endpoints return public visible top-level comments. Instagram's visible comment count can include replies, hidden comments, or restricted comments that public endpoints do not return.

This actor does not claim to return private comments, hidden replies, login-only fields, private account data, or full follower graphs.

Pricing

The actor uses pay-per-event pricing:

• Actor start: tiny run-init event
• scraped-comment: one charge per saved Instagram comment

Use maxComments, maxPagesPerPost, and Apify's maxTotalChargeUsd run option to cap spend.

Example Input

{
  "postUrls": ["https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOq6eV6iIgD/"],
  "maxComments": 100,
  "maxPagesPerPost": 20,
  "providerOrder": "scrapecreators-first"
}