Instagram Followings Scraper

Introduction

This Apify actor scrapes the accounts that any public Instagram user is following (their "followings"). Provide a username or profile URL, and the actor will fetch up to your specified number of followings. For each following, the actor can also extract emails, phone numbers, and social links from their bio (optional).

Features

• Scrape followings (accounts a user is following) by username or profile URL
• Set a maximum number of followings to fetch
• Optionally extracts emails, phone numbers, and social links from each following's bio
• Requires Instagram authentication cookies
• Uses residential proxy by default (no proxy setup needed)
• Outputs a flat list of followings with key profile info and contact fields

Input

Example Input

{
  "username": "cristiano",
  "max_results": 50,
  "extract_contacts": true,
  "cookies": [
    { "name": "sessionid", "value": "YOUR_SESSIONID" },
    { "name": "csrftoken", "value": "YOUR_CSRFTOKEN" },
    { "name": "ds_user_id", "value": "YOUR_USERID" }
  ]
}

or

{
  "username": "https://www.instagram.com/cristiano/",
  "extract_contacts": false,
  "cookies": [
    { "name": "sessionid", "value": "YOUR_SESSIONID" },
    { "name": "csrftoken", "value": "YOUR_CSRFTOKEN" },
    { "name": "ds_user_id", "value": "YOUR_USERID" }
  ]
}

How to Get Instagram Cookies

1. Log into Instagram in your browser
2. Install the Cookie Editor extension (Chrome/Edge)
3. Open Instagram and click the Cookie Editor icon
4. Export cookies as JSON and paste the array in the cookies field
5. For a video guide, see this tutorial

Output

Each following is output as a flat object, e.g.:

{
  "pk": "58812734417",
  "username": "kiyak_iyu",
  "full_name": "kiyakiyu🌸",
  "is_private": false,
  "is_verified": false,
  "profile_pic_url": "https://instagram.fadd1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t51.2885-19/521744297_17958103781966418_6490265124352276860_n.jpg?...",
  "emails": ["contact@kiyakiyu.com"],
  "phones": ["+1-555-123-4567"],
  "social_links": ["https://twitter.com/kiyakiyu"]
}

• emails: All email addresses found in the following's bio (if extract_contacts is true)
• phones: All phone numbers found in the following's bio (if extract_contacts is true)
• social_links: All social/profile links found in the following's bio (if extract_contacts is true)

Usage

Apify Console

1. Go to Apify Console
2. Find this actor (instagram-followings-scraper)
3. Enter the username or profile URL, max_results, cookies, and (optionally) extract_contacts
4. Run the actor and view/download results in the dataset

Apify API

curl -X POST \
  https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/logical_scrapers~instagram-followings-scraper/runs \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN' \
  -d '{
    "username": "cristiano",
    "max_results": 50,
    "extract_contacts": true,
    "cookies": [
      { "name": "sessionid", "value": "YOUR_SESSIONID" },
      { "name": "csrftoken", "value": "YOUR_CSRFTOKEN" },
      { "name": "ds_user_id", "value": "YOUR_USERID" }
    ]
  }'

Apify CLI

apify run -d '{
  "username": "cristiano",
  "max_results": 50,
  "extract_contacts": false,
  "cookies": [
    { "name": "sessionid", "value": "YOUR_SESSIONID" },
    { "name": "csrftoken", "value": "YOUR_CSRFTOKEN" },
    { "name": "ds_user_id", "value": "YOUR_USERID" }
  ]
}'

Notes

• Instagram authentication cookies are required.
• Uses residential proxy by default for reliability.
• Only public profiles can be scraped.
• If extract_contacts is true (default), the actor makes an additional request per following to extract emails, phones, and social links from their bio. If false, only the followings list is fetched (faster, less data).

Support

For help or custom solutions, contact: coredev.dan@gmail.com

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