# Instagram Reels Deep Intelligence (OCR & Whisper) (`lepone31/instagram-reels-deep-intelligence`) Actor

All-in-one AI scraper for Instagram Reels: extracts direct MP4 video downloads, on-screen text hooks with computer vision OCR, and full speech-to-text transcripts with Whisper AI.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/lepone31/instagram-reels-deep-intelligence.md
- **Developed by:** [Cedric poma](https://apify.com/lepone31) (community)
- **Categories:** AI, Automation, Developer tools
- **Security:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

Pay per usage

This Actor is paid per platform usage. The Actor is free to use, and you only pay for the Apify platform usage, which gets cheaper the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-usage

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## 🎬 Instagram Reels Deep Intelligence (Video, On-Screen OCR & Whisper Audio)

[![Apify Actor](https://img.shields.io/badge/Apify-Actor-orange?logo=apify)](https://apify.com/Lepone31/instagram-reels-deep-intelligence)
[![Pricing](https://img.shields.io/badge/Pricing-Pay--Per--Event%20\($0.02\)-blue)](https://apify.com/Lepone31/instagram-reels-deep-intelligence)
[![Proxy](https://img.shields.io/badge/Proxy-0%20%24%20Expense-success)](https://apify.com/Lepone31/instagram-reels-deep-intelligence)
[![AI Engine](https://img.shields.io/badge/AI-Whisper%20%2B%20Tesseract-purple)](https://apify.com/Lepone31/instagram-reels-deep-intelligence)

> 🎁 **Free Trial Included:** Apify provides every registered user with **$5 of free platform credits every month**.\
> This means you can run and analyze up to **250 full Instagram Reels** (direct MP4 + on-screen text OCR + full Whisper AI audio transcript) **100% free with $0 out-of-pocket!** Click **Try for free** above to test with your own URLs.

***

### ⚡ What is Instagram Reels Deep Intelligence?

The **only all-in-one multimodal AI scraper for Instagram Reels** that extracts the full content of short-form videos:

1. 🎥 **Direct MP4 Video Stream Download Link** (no watermarks, clean CDN stream).
2. 👁️ **On-Screen Visual Hook Text** (via native Tesseract C++ OCR with grayscale optimization for stickers, titles, and text overlays).
3. 🎙️ **Full Speech-to-Text Audio Transcript** (via faster-whisper CTranslate2 int8 AI in < 2 seconds).
4. 📊 **Complete Post Metadata** (Likes, comments, author username, duration, raw caption, post URL).

***

### 🥊 Why Choose This Actor vs Legacy Scrapers?

Traditional Instagram scrapers only extract HTML metadata and post captions. **They miss 80% of the value because viral hooks and core messages are embedded inside the video frames and audio!**

| Feature | Legacy Instagram Scrapers (`$3.00 - $10.00 / 1k`) | **Instagram Reels Deep Intelligence (`$0.020 / reel`)** |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| **On-Screen Text OCR** | ❌ None | **✅ Native Tesseract C++ OCR on video frames** |
| **Spoken Audio Transcript** | ❌ None (or requires external APIs) | **✅ Built-in Faster-Whisper AI (< 2s speech-to-text)** |
| **Direct MP4 Stream** | ⚠️ Often broken / blocked | **✅ Direct MP4 download URL extracted** |
| **Pricing Model** | Expensive monthly sub or heavy compute | **✅ Fair Pay-Per-Event ($0.02 / analyzed reel)** |
| **Proxy Cost** | High residential proxy bills ($5-20/GB) | **✅ 0 € proxy expense on direct video inputs** |
| **AI / RAG Ready** | Raw caption only | **✅ Structured Markdown + Hook + Transcript JSON** |

***

### 🎯 Ideal Use Cases

- **Viral Hook & Competitor Ad Spying**: Marketing agencies, UGC creators, and media buyers use this to analyze top-performing competitor Reels and identify the exact visual text hooks and spoken opening lines that generate millions of views.
- **Automated Video Repurposing**: Convert spoken video Reels into high-converting Twitter/X threads, LinkedIn carousels, or SEO blog posts in seconds.
- **Social Listening & Brand Safety**: Detect on-screen slogans, sponsored brand mentions, or offensive text embedded inside video frames.
- **AI & LLM Training / RAG Pipelines**: Feed rich multi-modal short-form video data directly into Vector Databases (Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate) or NotebookLM.

***

### 📥 Input Configuration

```json
{
  "reelUrls": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8r2L4Yv9gA/"
  ],
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/gtv-videos-bucket/sample/ForBiggerBlazes.mp4"
  ],
  "sessionId": "YOUR_INSTAGRAM_SESSIONID_COOKIE",
  "enableOcr": true,
  "enableTranscription": true,
  "whisperModel": "tiny",
  "ocrLanguages": ["en", "fr"],
  "maxItems": 5
}
```

#### Parameters:

- `reelUrls` (*array, optional*): List of Instagram Reel URLs to analyze.
- `videoUrls` (*array, optional*): Direct MP4 video URLs to analyze immediately with OCR and Whisper (zero login required, works for any pre-extracted video or public CDN).
- `sessionId` (*string, optional*): Your Instagram `sessionid` cookie value. Enables 100% reliable Reel & collection scraping from cloud servers without Instagram IP challenges (see guide below). Encrypted / secret in Apify UI.
- `proxyUrl` (*string, optional*): Custom HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS5 proxy URL for routing Instagram API calls.
- `collectionName` (*string, optional*): Name of a private saved Instagram collection to batch export.
- `enableOcr` (*boolean*): Run Computer Vision OCR to extract on-screen hooks and captions (Default: `true`).
- `enableTranscription` (*boolean*): Run Whisper AI speech-to-text on the audio track (Default: `true`).
- `whisperModel` (*string*): Choose `tiny` for ultra-fast processing (~1-2s) or `base` for higher precision.
- `ocrLanguages` (*array*): Languages for OCR text recognition (supports `en`, `fr`, `es`, `de`, `it`, `pt`).
- `maxItems` (*integer*): Maximum number of Reels to process per run.

***

### 🔑 How to get your Instagram `sessionid` (in 30 seconds)

Instagram requires authentication to view high-resolution Reels and private collections from datacenter IPs. Getting your session cookie takes less than 30 seconds:

#### Method 1: Chrome / Edge / Brave DevTools (No install needed)

1. Open [instagram.com](https://www.instagram.com/) in your desktop browser and make sure you are logged in.
2. Press `F12` (or Right-Click anywhere ➔ **Inspect**).
3. In the top tabs, click on **Application** (in Firefox: **Storage**).
4. On the left sidebar, expand **Cookies** ➔ click on `https://www.instagram.com`.
5. Look for the cookie named **`sessionid`** in the list.
6. Double-click the **Value** column, copy the string (e.g. `682918342%3AKd92...`), and paste it into the Actor's **`sessionId`** input field!

> 🔒 **Security Notice**: Your session cookie is executed purely in volatile container memory to fetch the Reel stream and is **never saved, logged, or shared**.\
> 💡 **Best Practice**: For scraping large collections (500+ items), we recommend using a secondary/burner Instagram account.

***

### 📤 Output Dataset Example

```json
{
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8r2L4Yv9gA/",
  "code": "C8r2L4Yv9gA",
  "author": "growth_marketer",
  "onScreenHookText": "STOP SCROLLING: Here is how to automate your entire business in 3 steps",
  "fullOnScreenText": "STOP SCROLLING 3 steps Step 1: Scrape data Step 2: AI analysis Step 3: Profit",
  "audioTranscript": "Wait, don't scroll past this video. If you're still manually doing data entry, you're wasting hours every single day. Here's the exact framework...",
  "detectedLanguage": "en",
  "caption": "The ultimate automation playbook for 2026. Link in bio! #automation #ai #nocode",
  "videoUrl": "https://instagram.fcdg1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t50.2886-16/...",
  "likesCount": 24890,
  "commentsCount": 412,
  "duration": 28.5,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-11-06T15:00:00Z"
}
```

***

### 💰 Transparent Pay-Per-Event Pricing

- **Only $0.020 per Reel Analyzed**: You only pay when a video is successfully downloaded and processed with OCR and/or Whisper transcription.
- **$0.00 infrastructure waste**: Zero monthly fixed fee. Use your free $5 monthly Apify credit to test up to 250 reels.

***

### 🔗 Explore our AI & B2B Intelligence Suite on Apify

Complement your intelligence workflows with our other production-grade Actors:

- 📺 **[YouTube Transcript Pro](https://apify.com/Lepone31/youtube-transcript-pro)** — Subtitle transcripts, timestamps & descriptions in <0.4s for RAG and AI summaries ($1.25 / 1k).
- 📈 **[ATS Job Board & Hiring Signals](https://apify.com/Lepone31/ats-hiring-signals)** — Track tech hiring momentum on Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, and Workable ($2.50 / 1k).
- 🛒 **[Amazon Product Intelligence](https://apify.com/Lepone31/amazon-product-intelligence)** — Global Amazon search, pricing, sales volume velocity, and deal scoring ($1.45 / 1k).
- 📱 **[Mobile App Reviews Intelligence](https://apify.com/Lepone31/mobile-app-reviews-intelligence)** — Dual-store iOS & Google Play reviews with built-in sentiment analysis ($1.00 / 1k).
- 📰 **[Google News Intelligence](https://apify.com/Lepone31/google-news-intelligence)** — Multi-region news monitoring with article text extraction & PR sentiment ($1.50 / 1k).

# Actor input Schema

## `videoUrls` (type: `array`):

Direct MP4 URLs to analyze immediately with OCR and Whisper (zero login required). Great for testing or analyzing exported video files.

## `reelUrls` (type: `array`):

List of Instagram Reel URLs (e.g., https://www.instagram.com/reel/CXYZ123/). Note: for datacenter execution, pass a session cookie or session JSON below if Instagram blocks public access.

## `sessionId` (type: `string`):

Recommended for Instagram URLs: Your Instagram 'sessionid' cookie value (Open instagram.com -> Press F12 -> Application -> Cookies -> copy 'sessionid'). Bypasses Instagram datacenter IP blocks. Never saved or shared.

## `collectionName` (type: `string`):

Optional: Name of a saved Instagram collection to scrape (e.g. 'Inspiration', 'Quotes', 'Ads'). Requires sessionId or sessionJson.

## `sessionJson` (type: `string`):

Optional: Full instagrapi session JSON string if you use exported session files.

## `proxyUrl` (type: `string`):

Optional: HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS5 proxy URL (e.g., http://user:pass@proxy.example.com:8000) for routing Instagram requests.

## `enableOcr` (type: `boolean`):

Run Computer Vision (Tesseract OCR) on video keyframes to extract on-screen hooks, banners and subtitles.

## `enableTranscription` (type: `boolean`):

Transcribe spoken words from the audio track with faster-whisper AI.

## `whisperModel` (type: `string`):

Select Whisper model: 'tiny' is ultra-fast (2-3s), 'base' offers higher accuracy.

## `ocrLanguages` (type: `array`):

Languages for OCR text recognition (e.g. \['en', 'fr']).

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of Reels or videos to process in this run.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.w3schools.com/html/mov_bbb.mp4"
  ],
  "enableOcr": true,
  "enableTranscription": true,
  "whisperModel": "tiny",
  "ocrLanguages": [
    "en",
    "fr"
  ],
  "maxItems": 5
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `overview` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "videoUrls": [
        "https://www.w3schools.com/html/mov_bbb.mp4"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("lepone31/instagram-reels-deep-intelligence").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "videoUrls": ["https://www.w3schools.com/html/mov_bbb.mp4"] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("lepone31/instagram-reels-deep-intelligence").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.w3schools.com/html/mov_bbb.mp4"
  ]
}' |
apify call lepone31/instagram-reels-deep-intelligence --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,lepone31/instagram-reels-deep-intelligence"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/D4eGkISr1qmqTM5HM/builds/fcgUHc8YCF9ALjBXf/openapi.json