Instagram Profile Scraper

Scrape Instagram public profile data including follower counts, bios, and recent posts — no account required for public profiles.

Followers · Following · Post count · Bio · Recent posts with likes & comments · Business category

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What You Get

• ✅ Username, full name, biography, and external URL
• ✅ Follower count, following count, total post count
• ✅ Verified status and business account flag with category
• ✅ Profile picture URL (high resolution)
• ✅ Recent posts: image URL, caption, like count, comment count, timestamp
• ✅ Reels support (toggle on/off)
• ✅ Three-layer fallback: Instagram API → embedded JSON → OG meta tags
• ✅ Login wall detection so you know when a session cookie is needed

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Use Cases

📊 Influencer Discovery & Analytics

Collect follower counts and engagement data from hundreds of creator accounts for influencer marketing research.

{
  "usernames": ["natgeo", "nasa", "bbcnews"],
  "maxPosts": 12,
  "includeReels": false
}

🏆 Competitor Benchmarking

Track competitor brand accounts weekly — follower growth, post frequency, and top-performing content.

🎯 Lead Generation for Agencies

Find businesses in a niche by filtering on isBusinessAccount: true and category, then collect their external URLs as outreach leads.

📱 Social Media Research

Analyze posting patterns, caption length, and engagement rates across accounts in a vertical for academic or market research.

🤝 Partnership Identification

Find micro-influencers (10K–100K followers) by scraping accounts and filtering by follower range in your downstream tool.

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Quick Start

1. Click Try for free above
2. Enter Instagram usernames in the Usernames field (plain usernames or full profile URLs)
3. Set maxPosts to control how many recent posts to collect per profile (default 12)
4. Optionally toggle includeReels to include video reels
5. Run and export as JSON or CSV

For profiles that trigger a login wall: add your Instagram sessionid cookie value to the sessionCookie field to unlock full data.

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Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
usernames	string[]	required	Usernames or full Instagram profile URLs
maxPosts	number	12	Max recent posts to collect per profile
includeReels	boolean	false	Include video reels in post results
sessionCookie	string	—	Your Instagram sessionid cookie for authenticated access

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Output JSON Example

{
  "username": "natgeo",
  "fullName": "National Geographic",
  "biography": "The world's premium destination for science, exploration, and adventure.",
  "profilePicUrl": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/...",
  "externalUrl": "https://www.nationalgeographic.com",
  "followers": 283000000,
  "following": 154,
  "postsCount": 31200,
  "isVerified": true,
  "isPrivate": false,
  "isBusinessAccount": true,
  "category": "Media/News Company",
  "source": "api",
  "scrapedAt": "2025-01-15T10:23:44.000Z",
  "recentPosts": [
    {
      "postId": "3284710293847",
      "shortcode": "C8xYzABCDEF",
      "imageUrl": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/...",
      "caption": "The Milky Way rises over ancient ruins...",
      "likes": 84321,
      "comments": 412,
      "timestamp": "2025-01-14T18:30:00.000Z",
      "isVideo": false,
      "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/C8xYzABCDEF/"
    }
  ]
}

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Pricing

Volume	Estimated cost
10 profiles	~$0.01
100 profiles with posts	~$0.10
1,000 profiles	~$0.80

Apify free tier includes $5/month of compute.

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Why This Scraper

Three-layer extraction strategy. The actor tries Instagram's internal API first (fastest, most data), falls back to embedded page JSON, then extracts from OpenGraph meta tags. You get data even when Instagram updates its page structure.

No account needed for public profiles. Most public business and creator accounts work without any credentials.

Session cookie support for full data. When Instagram shows a login wall, provide your sessionid cookie to unlock complete profile data and post lists.

Automatic URL normalization. Pass https://www.instagram.com/natgeo/ or just natgeo — both work identically.

Login wall detection. The output includes a loginWallDetected field so you know exactly which profiles need a session cookie.

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FAQ

Q: Can I scrape private Instagram accounts? A: No. Private accounts require you to be an approved follower. Even with a session cookie, private account data is not accessible.

Q: Do I need to provide Instagram cookies? A: Not for public profiles. For profiles behind a login wall, add your sessionid cookie in the input.

Q: How many posts can I collect per profile? A: Up to 12 posts per profile without authentication. With a session cookie the limit is higher.

Q: What is the source field in the output? A: It shows how data was collected: api (Instagram internal API), embedded_json (page JavaScript data), og_meta (OpenGraph tags), or login_wall (blocked).

Q: Does this collect the profile picture in high resolution? A: Yes — when available, the actor fetches the HD variant (profile_pic_url_hd) rather than the standard thumbnail.

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