Instagram Reels Search & Viral Finder

Find trending Instagram Reels by keyword or Boolean query — not just by profile. Search any topic and get back the reels ranking for it, each with play count, likes, comments, video URL, caption, audio, and creator. Operators: AND, OR, NOT, quotes, parentheses. No login, no cookies. Export as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

Input	What you get
A keyword (e.g. coffee)	Reels ranking for that search, newest/most-relevant first
A Boolean query	Reels (and posts, if you ask) whose caption, username, location, audio, or alt text matches; misses are not charged
Multiple queries	All of them in one run, each row tagged by its query

Pure HTTP. No browser, no CAPTCHA solver, no cookies. Search by keyword, not just by account — the angle most Instagram scrapers miss.

Why Use This Scraper?

• Keyword and Boolean discovery — AND / OR / NOT, quotes, parentheses, plus date and engagement floors. Match is caption, alt text, username, display name, location, or audio. Rows that fail are never billed.
• Full engagement metrics — play count, likes, comments, and video duration on every reel, so you can rank by what's actually performing.
• Creator + audio included — each reel carries its creator (username, verified) and audio, ready for influencer and trend research.
• Historical archive (opt-in) — every run adds the reels it finds to a permanent archive. Turn on includeHistorical to also get reels captured for the keyword on earlier runs that today's search no longer surfaces — reels that have since stopped trending, with their engagement metrics as captured. Coverage grows the more a keyword is run.
• No account risk — no login, no cookies, no session handover.
• Fast — pure HTTP, paginated automatically until your result cap.

How It Works

1. Search — each keyword is run against Instagram's reels search.
2. Paginate — results are fetched page by page until your maxResultsPerQuery cap (or the results run out).
3. Filter — Boolean, language, date, and engagement checks run before charge. Misses are dropped, not billed.
4. Emit — every kept reel is pushed to the dataset as its own row, tagged with the query it came from.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Notes
queries	array of strings	Yes	Keywords or Boolean expressions (AND / OR / NOT, quotes, parentheses). Not usernames.
maxResultsPerQuery	integer	No	Cap reels per keyword. Omit for as many as the search returns.
includeHistorical	boolean	No	Also return archived reels for the keyword from earlier runs (ones the live search no longer surfaces), tagged source:"archive" with firstSeenAt/lastSeenAt. Default: false.
englishOnly	boolean	No	Keep only reels whose caption reads as English (or is language-neutral, e.g. pure hashtags/emoji). Conservative heuristic — drops a reel only when the caption is confidently non-English. Filtered-out reels are never charged. Default: false.
oldestPostDate	string	No	Keep reels posted on or after this day (YYYY-MM-DD, inclusive). Empty = off.
newestPostDate	string	No	Keep reels posted on or before this day (YYYY-MM-DD, inclusive). Empty = off.
minimumLikes	integer	No	Keep reels with at least this many likes. 0 = off.
minimumComments	integer	No	Keep reels with at least this many comments. 0 = off.
minimumViews	integer	No	Keep reels with at least this many plays. 0 = off.
hashtagFeedType	top | recent	No	Hashtag feed order (fallback, or first-class when searchCoverage is comprehensive). Default top.
contentType	reels_only | posts_and_reels	No	Default reels_only. Set posts_and_reels to also keep photo/carousel posts from Top search and hashtag feeds.
searchCoverage	efficient | comprehensive	No	Default efficient (combined discovery strings). comprehensive also probes each positive term and matching hashtag feeds, then Boolean-filters and dedupes.
strictBooleanSyntax	boolean	No	Reject implicit AND (bank NOT jobs must be bank AND NOT jobs) and unbalanced parens. Default false.

Example input

{
    "queries": [
        "coffee",
        "(#fitness OR \"home workout\") AND nutrition AND NOT giveaway"
    ],
    "maxResultsPerQuery": 200,
    "oldestPostDate": "2026-01-01",
    "minimumViews": 10000
}

Output Schema

One dataset row per reel.

{
    "query": "coffee",
    "mediaPk": "3902687427486805850",
    "shortCode": "DYpIYm4u-9a",
    "url": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYpIYm4u-9a/",
    "playCount": 34729273,
    "likeCount": 651179,
    "commentCount": 1551,
    "videoDuration": 15.6,
    "videoUrl": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/o1/v/…",
    "thumbnailUrl": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/…",
    "caption": "Spanish iced fluffy coffee! …",
    "takenAt": "2026-05-22T13:32:35.000Z",
    "username": "coffeebro0",
    "userId": "4920…",
    "userFullName": "Coffee Bro",
    "userIsVerified": false,
    "musicTitle": null,
    "musicArtist": null,
    "downloadUrl": null,               // set only when media archiving is enabled; otherwise null
    "shareCount": 1204,
    "locationName": null,
    "contentKind": "reel",
    "matchedTerms": ["coffee"],
    "matchType": "caption",
    "discoveryType": "keyword_serp",
    "normalizedQuery": "coffee",
    "hashtags": ["coffee"]
}

When includeHistorical is on, archived reels carry three extra fields: source: "archive", firstSeenAt, and lastSeenAt (ISO timestamps for when the reel was first and last captured). Live search reels have no source field. If Instagram's keyword search returns nothing for a term (it screens some diet/body-image terms), the Actor pulls reels from the term's hashtag feed instead and tags those rows source: "hashtag".

Both live and archived reels expose videoUrl — Instagram's own CDN link, which expires after a few hours, so fetch the video promptly if you need the file itself.

Pricing

Pay-per-event — you're charged only for the reels you collect. Rates decrease with your Apify plan tier.

Event	When it's charged	Rate (Free → Gold+)
Reel scraped	Once per reel row returned (live or archived)	$0.0015 → $0.001

No subscription, no per-run start fee. Historical reels (via includeHistorical) are charged at the same reel-scraped rate as live results.

Use Cases

Audience	How they use it
Marketers / trend analysts	Track what's going viral for a topic and who's driving it
Influencer scouts	Surface rising creators posting high-performing reels in a niche
Content teams	Study top-performing hooks, formats, and audio for a subject
Researchers	Build topic-level datasets of short-video engagement

FAQ

Do I search by keyword or by username? By keyword or Boolean expression — this Actor finds reels for a topic across all creators. For a single account's reels, use a per-profile Instagram scraper.

Does Boolean search work? Yes. AND, OR, NOT, quotes, and parentheses are parsed. Instagram is searched with the positive terms; each saved reel must match the full expression in caption / username / audio (whole words). bank NOT jobs is read as bank AND NOT jobs. Reels that fail the expression are not charged.

Do I need to log in or provide cookies? No. It never asks for a login, password, or session.

How fresh are the results? Fetched live at run time from Instagram's own reels search ranking.

Why did a common term like "fat loss" or "weight loss" return nothing before? Instagram screens certain diet/body-image search terms: instead of results, its search backend answers with a "Help is available" notice. In the app you can tap "Continue to search results"; an API caller can't, so the search comes back empty. The Actor now detects this and automatically serves reels from the term's hashtag feed (tagged source:"hashtag"). Default order is top; set hashtagFeedType: "recent" for newest-first on that fallback only. If recent is empty or missing for the tag, the Actor uses top so a screened term still returns reels. Adding a qualifier ("fat loss tips for women" instead of "fat loss") usually gets normal search results again.

Can I filter out non-English reels? Yes — set englishOnly: true. Keyword search already skews English, but hashtag-feed results are global, so this matters most for screened terms served via the hashtag fallback. The filter is deliberately conservative: it drops a reel only when the caption is confidently non-English (non-Latin script, or clear foreign function words), and captions that are pure hashtags/emoji always pass. You're never charged for filtered-out reels.

Can I filter by date or engagement? Yes. oldestPostDate / newestPostDate (YYYY-MM-DD, inclusive) and minimumLikes / minimumComments / minimumViews. They run after search, before charge — a reel that fails is not billed. A missing date or metric fails that bound when the bound is on.

Can I get reels that dropped out of the search? Yes, if they were captured on an earlier run for that keyword. Every run adds its reels to a permanent archive; turn on includeHistorical to also return archived reels the live search no longer surfaces, tagged source:"archive". Coverage depends on what's already in the archive, so it pays to run a keyword regularly.

Notes & Limitations

• Results follow Instagram's search ranking for the keyword; exact ordering and volume vary by term.
• Instagram withholds keyword-search results for some sensitive terms (diet-related and similar). Those queries are served from the matching hashtag feed instead, tagged source:"hashtag" — same fields, slightly different ranking.
• playCount is Instagram's own play/view metric and can differ from likes/comments.
• includeHistorical returns only reels already in the archive (captured on earlier runs). A keyword never run before has no history yet and returns nothing extra.

🤖 For AI Agents & LLM Apps

Purpose: Find Instagram Reels by keyword or Boolean query with engagement metrics and creator info.

Minimal tested input:

{ "queries": ["coffee"], "maxResultsPerQuery": 50 }

Boolean example: { "queries": ["(#fitness OR workout) AND nutrition AND NOT giveaway"], "maxResultsPerQuery": 50 }

Optional flags: includeHistorical: true also returns archived reels for the keyword from earlier runs (reels the live search no longer surfaces), tagged source:"archive" with firstSeenAt/lastSeenAt. Date/engagement: oldestPostDate, newestPostDate, minimumLikes, minimumComments, minimumViews (0 / empty = off; misses not charged). hashtagFeedType: top (default) or recent. contentType: "posts_and_reels" also keeps photo posts. searchCoverage: "comprehensive" probes each Boolean term plus hashtag feeds. strictBooleanSyntax: true rejects implicit AND.

Output: array of flat objects, one per reel. Fields: query, mediaPk, shortCode, url, playCount, likeCount, commentCount, videoDuration, videoUrl, thumbnailUrl, caption, takenAt, username, userId, userFullName, userIsVerified, musicTitle, musicArtist, downloadUrl. Archived rows (with includeHistorical) add source: "archive", firstSeenAt, lastSeenAt.

Behavior & billing: Pay-per-event, tiered — reel-scraped ($0.0015→$0.001 per reel, charged for both live and archived rows). No login or cookies required.

Support

Found a bug or need a field added? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab in Apify Console, or email muhamed.didovic@gmail.com.

⚠️ Disclaimer

This Actor scrapes only publicly available data and does not log into any Instagram account. Use it in compliance with Instagram's Terms of Use, applicable laws, and data-protection regulations (such as GDPR and CCPA). You are responsible for how you collect and use the data.

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