Instagram Post Comments Scraper — export the comments on any Instagram post or reel

An Instagram comments scraper for instagram.com. Give it the URL of a post, reel or IGTV video and it exports the comments as structured data: the comment text, when it was posted, how many likes and replies it has, and the username, display name and verified flag of the person who wrote it. Teams use it to scrape Instagram comments for sentiment analysis, find customers and leads in the comment section, monitor campaigns and giveaways, and study how audiences react to competitors' posts.

Every row also carries the post it came from: post author, caption, publish time, like and comment counts and the post URL, so a run over many posts exports to one clean spreadsheet. Export Instagram comments as JSON, CSV or Excel.

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🚀 Key Features

• 🔎 Any post URL — posts, reels and IGTV videos, pasted one per line, in any of Instagram's URL shapes
• 🧾 Comment data — text, timestamp, like count, reply count, and the commenter's username, full name, user ID, verified flag and profile picture
• 🗂️ Post context on every row — post author, caption, publish time, like and comment counts and URL, so rows from different posts stay sortable
• 📑 Automatic pagination — pages through the comments, most relevant first, until it reaches maxComments for that post or the end of the list
• 🛡️ Rate-limit aware — when Instagram throttles the session, the run waits and retries, and keeps the comments already collected if it has to stop
• 📤 Multiple export formats — JSON, CSV, Excel, XML via the Apify dataset
• 🔁 Schedulable runs — re-run daily on a campaign post to collect new comments as they arrive

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👥 Who Is This Actor For?

• Social media and community managers — export the comments on a campaign post, a giveaway or a product launch and answer or count them offline
• Brand and competitor analysts — collect the reactions to a competitor's posts and run sentiment analysis on them
• Sales and growth teams — find the people asking "where can I buy this?" under a post, with their usernames
• Researchers — build comment datasets for discourse, sentiment or topic analysis
• 🤖 AI builders — feed a post's comments to an LLM for summarisation or classification via the Apify API or MCP server

💡 Common Use Cases

• Scrape Instagram comments from a post and export them to Excel
• Export the comments on an influencer's sponsored post to measure the reaction to a campaign
• Pick a giveaway winner from everyone who commented on the post
• Collect the comments on a set of competitor posts for sentiment analysis
• Monitor a post's comment section daily on a schedule

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🔗 Supported URL Types

URL Type	Example
Post	https://www.instagram.com/p/DdHyaYAifb6/
Reel	https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdWyDLcGiqo/
IGTV video	https://www.instagram.com/tv/CFj2X9zj1Ab/
Post with the username in the path	https://www.instagram.com/nasa/p/DdHyaYAifb6/

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📥 Input

Field	Type	Description	Default
urls	Array	Instagram post, reel or IGTV URLs, one per line.	Required
maxComments	Integer	Maximum number of comments to save per post URL (1 to 10,000). Comments come most relevant first, the order Instagram shows them in.	100
cookies	Array	Cookies from a logged-in Instagram session, exported as JSON. Instagram only shows comments to logged-in accounts.	Required
proxyConfiguration	Object	Proxy for all requests. Residential is recommended, because Instagram throttles datacenter IPs.	Apify residential proxy

Example Input

{
    "urls": [
        "https://www.instagram.com/p/DdHyaYAifb6/",
        "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdWyDLcGiqo/"
    ],
    "maxComments": 100,
    "cookies": [
        { "name": "sessionid", "value": "YOUR_SESSIONID" },
        { "name": "csrftoken", "value": "YOUR_CSRFTOKEN" },
        { "name": "ds_user_id", "value": "YOUR_USERID" }
    ],
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true,
        "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
    }
}

How to get your Instagram cookies

1. Log in to Instagram in your browser. A secondary account is a good idea, see the FAQ.
2. Install the Cookie Editor extension.
3. Open instagram.com, click the Cookie Editor icon and export the cookies as JSON.
4. Paste the JSON array into the Instagram Cookies field. There is a video walkthrough.

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📤 Output

One dataset item per comment:

Field	Type	Description
comment_id	String	Instagram's identifier for the comment
text	String	The comment text
created_at	String	When the comment was posted, as an ISO 8601 timestamp (UTC)
likes_count	Integer	Number of likes on the comment
replies_count	Integer	Number of replies under the comment
author	Object	id, username, full_name, is_verified and profile_pic_url of the commenter
post_id	String	Instagram's id for the post the comment is on
post_shortcode	String	The post's shortcode, the last part of its URL
post_url	String	Link to the post
post_owner_username	String	Username of the account that published the post
post_caption	String	The post's caption
post_taken_at	String	When the post was published, as an ISO 8601 timestamp (UTC)
post_likes_count	Integer	Number of likes on the post at the time of the run
post_comments_count	Integer	Total number of comments on the post at the time of the run
input_url	String	The URL you passed in

Example Output

<<EXAMPLE_OUTPUT>>

You can export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS, or HTML from the Apify Console or via the Apify API.

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💰 Pricing

This Actor is pay per event (you pay per result): $0.005 per comment, so 1,000 comments cost $5.00 plus Apify platform usage. A free Apify account is enough to try it.

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❓ FAQ

What is the Instagram Post Comments Scraper?

An Instagram comments scraper that takes post, reel and IGTV URLs and exports every comment on them with its author, timestamp and like count. It is the quickest way to scrape Instagram comments into a spreadsheet or a data pipeline.

Do I need an account, cookies or an API key?

Cookies from a logged-in Instagram account, yes. Instagram only shows comments to logged-in users, so the Actor reads them as the account whose cookies you paste. No API key is needed. Use a secondary account rather than your main one, and export fresh cookies when a run reports that Instagram rejected them.

Do I need a proxy?

Yes, and the Apify residential proxy is on by default. Instagram throttles datacenter IPs on its comment pages with HTTP 429, even for logged-in sessions.

How many comments can I get per run?

maxComments applies per post URL, so ten URLs with maxComments: 500 can return up to 5,000 comments. Comments come most relevant first, the same order Instagram shows on the post. On very large posts Instagram itself stops paging at some point; the run keeps everything collected up to there.

Does it include replies to comments?

Each item carries replies_count, the number of replies under that comment. The reply threads themselves are not expanded in this version.

Does it handle pagination automatically?

Yes. The Actor pages through the comment list until it reaches maxComments for that post or the end of the list, pausing between pages so the session behaves like a person scrolling.

What happens when Instagram rate-limits my account?

The run waits and retries several times. If Instagram keeps refusing, the run stops with a message explaining what to do, and the comments collected so far stay in the dataset.

Can I scrape comments on a private account's post?

Only if the account whose cookies you use already follows that private account. Instagram does not show a private account's posts or comments to anyone else.

Can I schedule it or integrate it with my app?

Yes — every Apify Actor exposes a REST API, webhooks, and integrations with Zapier, Make, Google Sheets and Slack, and can be called from an AI agent via the Apify MCP server.

Is it legal to scrape Instagram?

This Actor reads the comments that Instagram shows to the logged-in account you provide. You are responsible for making sure your use complies with Instagram's terms of service and data-protection laws such as GDPR in your jurisdiction.

What if Instagram changes and the Actor breaks?

Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab with the run link, and we will look into it.

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🧩 Part of the Instagram Scraper Suite

Profiles, followers, followings and comments from Instagram, from one account. Also try:

• Instagram Profile Scraper — profile details, follower counts and bio contacts for a list of usernames, no login needed
• Instagram Followers Scraper — the accounts that follow a given profile, with contacts from their bios
• Instagram Followings Scraper — the accounts a given profile follows

See every Goldmine Actor at apify.com/logical_scrapers.

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📷 Image Credit

Image credit: instagram.com

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📬 Contact & Support

• Issues & feature requests: use the Issues tab on this Actor's page — that is the most direct route to a fix.
• Email: coredev.dan@gmail.com
• If this Actor saved you time, please leave a ⭐ rating on the Apify Store. It helps us keep it maintained.