Instagram Influencer Finder — Niche Search, Engagement & Emails

What is Instagram Niche Influencer Finder?

Find niche Instagram influencers by topic. Describe a niche like vegan skincare, and the Actor searches public Instagram profiles, enriches the strongest candidates with their full profile and recent posts, and returns a ranked shortlist of influencer records with follower tiers, engagement rates computed from real posts, niche relevance scores, and public contact details. You can also pass a list of known usernames to score them the same way. No Instagram cookies or login are required.

You give	You get	Price
A niche phrase such as vegan skincare, a list of usernames, or both	A ranked shortlist: followers, tier, average and median engagement rate, niche score, last-post age, public email with its source	$0.015 per influencer that passes your filters (influencer-analyzed), plus Apify platform usage

You pay only for creators that pass your filters. Candidates rejected for follower range, engagement, recency or missing email are free.

When to use this Actor

• You lead influencer marketing outreach and need a ranked creator shortlist for a specific niche.
• You are an agency building niche creator lists with engagement evidence and public emails.
• You are validating a niche and want to see which creators actually publish and engage there.

Start with this Actor to build a scored shortlist, then feed the outreach rows into your email workflow. For profile matches without scoring, use the Instagram Keyword Search Scraper. For posts under a specific hashtag, use the Instagram Hashtag Scraper. Then continue with the Instagram Profile Scraper when you want deep detail on a single chosen handle.

Workflow: from niche phrase to ranked outreach list

1. Discovery — usernames you supply go straight to enrichment. Each topic is searched against public Instagram profile search (the primary data provider). Private accounts and profiles outside your follower range are dropped before any paid enrichment.
2. Enrichment — each surviving candidate is enriched with the full public profile plus up to 24 recent posts. The fallback data provider is the automatic fallback when the primary provider fails.
3. Scoring — engagement rate is average likes plus comments per post divided by followers. The niche score (0–100) is a deterministic blend of topic-term relevance in the bio/category (up to 50), engagement strength (up to 30), and authority signals such as verification, business status, public email, and posting history (up to 20).
4. Ranked output — influencers that pass every filter are ranked by your chosen sort and written to the dataset. You are charged only for rows that pass.

A typical workflow: a beauty brand enters vegan skincare, keeps the default 1K–500K follower range, sorts by engagement rate, and receives a ranked list. The brand picks the top rows with public emails, opens each profileUrl to sanity-check content, and moves the email, followerCount, and engagementRatePct columns into its outreach tool.

Input

{
  "topics": ["vegan skincare"],
  "maxInfluencers": 25,
  "minFollowers": 1000,
  "maxFollowers": 500000,
  "minEngagementRatePct": 0,
  "requireEmail": false,
  "requireVerified": false,
  "lastPostWithinDays": 30,
  "sortBy": "engagement-rate",
  "postsPerInfluencer": 12,
  "outputMode": "full"
}

Field	Purpose	Default
topics	Niche phrases to search (1–10)	e.g. ["vegan skincare"]; provide topics, usernames or both
usernames	Known creators to score without discovery (up to 100 usernames or profile URLs)	[]
maxInfluencers	Cap on ranked rows (1–500)	25
minFollowers / maxFollowers	Follower-range filter applied before charging	1000 / 500000
minEngagementRatePct	Keep creators at or above this engagement rate	0
requireEmail	Keep only rows with a public email	false
requireVerified	Keep only verified accounts	false
lastPostWithinDays	Keep only creators who posted within this many days (0 = off)	0
sortBy	engagement-rate, followers, or niche-score	engagement-rate
postsPerInfluencer	Recent posts feeding the average (6–24)	12
outputMode	full research record or compact agent record	full

Output

One dataset row per influencer. Example row from a real run in compact mode (email redacted):

{
  "username": "veganbeautyaddict",
  "fullName": "Jess | cruelty-free influencer",
  "profileUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/veganbeautyaddict/",
  "followerCount": 50567,
  "followerTier": "micro",
  "engagementRatePct": 4.1611,
  "avgLikes": 2011.25,
  "avgComments": 92.92,
  "nicheScore": 54,
  "matchedTopics": ["vegan skincare"],
  "email": "redacted@example.com",
  "emailSource": "bio",
  "postsAnalyzed": 12,
  "rank": 3,
  "sortKey": "engagement-rate"
}

Full records add biography, categoryName, isVerified, isBusinessAccount, followingCount, postCount, latestPostAt, phone, website, bioLinks, profilePicUrl, and discoveredBy (topic-search or username-list). Every row also carries medianEngagementRatePct and lastPostAgeDays. emailSource says whether it came from the public contact button (contact_button) or the bio (bio).

Pricing — Pay per event + usage

• $0.015 per influencer analyzed — charged only when an enriched, scored row passes your filters and is saved to the dataset.
• $0.00005 actor start — charged once per run and scales with memory.
• Platform usage (compute and proxy) is passed through and billed separately; see the live Pricing tab for the current source of truth.

A default 25-influencer run costs about $0.38 in events plus platform usage, and the Actor prints the event cost cap at the start of every run.

API example

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/khadinakbar~instagram-niche-influencer-finder/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"topics":["home coffee brewing"],"maxInfluencers":25,"requireEmail":true}'

AI agent usage

Prompt card for Claude, ChatGPT, or any MCP client:

Find Instagram influencers in a niche and rank them by engagement. Tool: khadinakbar/instagram-niche-influencer-finder Input: {"topics":["<niche phrase>"],"maxInfluencers":25} Outcome: ranked rows with username, followerCount, followerTier, engagementRatePct, avgLikes, avgComments, nicheScore, email, profileUrl. Readback: fetch the dataset URL from the run's OUTPUT record; itemsPushed confirms the row count for pagination. Cost: $0.015 per returned influencer + $0.00005 start + platform usage. Scope: public creators only; for raw profile search pass the query to instagram-keyword-search-scraper, and for hashtag posts use instagram-hashtag-scraper.

Getting the best results

• Filters run before charging: raise maxSearchPagesPerTopic when strict filters (like requireEmail) reject many candidates, so the Actor has a deeper candidate pool.
• Public search coverage is broad yet selective — a valid niche can return zero matching influencers, and the Actor reports that honestly as a valid empty result with an explanation in OUTPUT.
• Engagement rates near zero on small accounts usually mean the account posts without an active audience; pair minEngagementRatePct with a minFollowers floor to surface working creators.
• Each topic is searched independently and duplicates are merged, so passing several adjacent phrases gives wider coverage of the same niche.
• Confirm each shortlisted creator by opening profileUrl before outreach; counts and engagement metrics are public snapshots at collection time.

FAQ

Why did I get fewer influencers than I asked for?

Only creators that pass every filter are saved. Strict settings such as requireEmail, a high minEngagementRatePct or a short lastPostWithinDays reject many candidates. Raise maxSearchPagesPerTopic, add adjacent topics, or relax a filter. Rejected candidates are never charged.

How is the engagement rate calculated?

engagementRatePct is average likes plus comments per analyzed post divided by followers. medianEngagementRatePct uses the median post instead, so one viral post does not inflate it.

Why do some rows have no email?

Only some creators publish an email. The Actor reads the public contact button and the bio text; it never guesses addresses. Turn on requireEmail to keep only rows with one.

Does it work on the Apify free plan?

Yes. The same inputs, filters and fields are available on every plan; the run is limited only by your account's usage and any charge cap you set.

Builder's note

I built this after noticing that keyword profile search alone answers "who exists in this niche" but stops short of "who is worth working with". The engagement layer over recent posts is what turned raw discovery into a usable shortlist in my testing — several high-follower accounts in every niche I tried turned out to have near-zero engagement, and they sink to the bottom of this ranking instead of wasting outreach budget.

Related Actors

• Instagram Keyword Search Scraper — use instead when you need raw keyword-to-profile matches without enrichment, at a lower per-row price.
• Instagram Hashtag Scraper — use when your niche entry point is a specific hashtag rather than a phrase.
• Instagram Profile Scraper — use after building a shortlist to pull full detail for chosen handles.
• Instagram Posts Scraper — use to analyze post feeds once you know which creators matter.

Legal

This Actor processes publicly available Instagram data through public-data providers. You are responsible for complying with Instagram's Terms of Service, applicable privacy laws, and outreach regulations (such as CAN-SPAM or GDPR) when contacting creators. This Actor accesses public profiles and posts only.