Instagram Profile Scraper

What does Instagram Profile Scraper do?

Give it an Instagram username and it returns that account's public profile as structured data — follower and following counts, the number of posts, the bio, the website link, whether the account is verified or private, the profile picture, and the account's most recent posts.

No Instagram account, login, or cookie is needed. Type a username, press Start, and download the result as JSON, CSV or Excel — or pull it straight from the Apify API.

Why use Instagram Profile Scraper?

• Track growth — record follower counts on a schedule and watch them move over time.
• Vet influencers — check real follower numbers, post counts and recent activity before working with someone.
• Research competitors — pull the profiles of every account in your niche into one sheet.
• Build lead lists — collect bios, websites and categories for a set of accounts at once.
• Monitor your own accounts — keep a running history of how your profiles are performing.

How to use Instagram Profile Scraper

1. Enter one or more usernames in the input.
2. Leave Include recent posts ticked if you want each profile's latest posts as well.
3. Click Start.
4. When the run finishes, open the Output tab to preview the data or export it.

Which inputs work

Any of these formats is accepted, and you can mix them freely:

nasa
@nasa
https://www.instagram.com/nasa/
instagram.com/nasa

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
Instagram usernames or profile URLs (usernames)	array	Yes	One or more accounts to scrape.
Include recent posts (include_recent_posts)	boolean	No	Adds each profile's latest posts. On by default.
Max concurrent requests (max_concurrency)	integer	No	How many profiles to fetch at once. Default 1.
Include raw data (include_raw)	boolean	No	Adds the unprocessed profile data to each record, for debugging. Off by default.

Example input:

{
  "usernames": ["nasa", "@natgeo", "https://www.instagram.com/nike/"],
  "include_recent_posts": true
}

Output

One record per account:

{
  "username": "nasa",
  "user_id": "528817151",
  "full_name": "NASA",
  "biography": "Making the seemingly impossible, possible. ✨",
  "external_url": "https://www.nasa.gov/",
  "followers": 104405085,
  "following": 92,
  "posts_count": 4882,
  "is_verified": true,
  "is_private": false,
  "is_business_account": true,
  "category": "Government Agencies",
  "profile_pic_url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/…",
  "highlight_reel_count": 5,
  "profile_url": "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/",
  "recent_posts": [
    {
      "shortcode": "DcCH2ZygIiP",
      "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/DcCH2ZygIiP/",
      "caption": "America's newest and most exciting aerospace technology…",
      "like_count": 48213,
      "comment_count": 312,
      "is_video": true,
      "thumbnail": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/…",
      "taken_at": 1786580820
    }
  ],
  "is_unavailable": false,
  "error": null
}

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

Data fields

Field	Description
username	The account's handle.
user_id	Instagram's own id for the account.
full_name	The display name.
biography	The bio text.
external_url	The website link in the bio.
followers	Follower count.
following	How many accounts it follows.
posts_count	Total posts.
is_verified	Whether the account has a blue tick.
is_private	Whether the account is private.
is_business_account	Whether it is a business account.
category	The account category, e.g. "Government Agencies".
profile_pic_url	Profile picture, in the largest size available.
highlight_reel_count	How many story highlights the account has.
profile_url	Link to the profile.
recent_posts	The latest posts, each with caption, likes, comments, thumbnail and date.
is_unavailable	true if the account does not exist or could not be read.
error	Filled in only if something went wrong with that account.

What it cannot return

• Anything from a private account. You get the profile itself — name, bio, follower count, private flag — but no posts.
• Email addresses or phone numbers. These are not public, even when a business account displays a contact button.
• Stories, followers lists or who an account follows. Only the counts are public.
• Complete post history. recent_posts is the latest handful, not the whole feed. posts_count is the true total.

For a small number of accounts, Instagram serves a reduced version of the profile. Those records come back with the counts and bio filled in but posts_count empty. This is Instagram's behaviour, not a failure of the run.

How much does it cost to scrape Instagram profiles?

Very little. Five accounts took twelve seconds and cost well under a cent. Cost scales roughly with how many accounts you submit.

Tips

• Batch your accounts into one run rather than starting a run per account.
• Turn off Include recent posts if you only care about follower numbers — it makes runs slightly cheaper.
• Schedule a daily run on the same list of accounts to build a growth history you can chart.

FAQ and support

Do I need an Instagram account or cookie? No. Nothing to log in with and nothing to keep alive.

Can it scrape private accounts? Only the public part — name, bio, follower count and the private flag. Posts from private accounts are not visible to anyone who is not an approved follower.

Why does one account have no post count? Instagram sometimes serves a reduced profile for certain accounts. Everything else on the record is still correct.

Is scraping Instagram legal? This Actor collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for how you use it, and you should not collect personal data without a legal basis. If in doubt, take legal advice.

Found a bug, or need a field that is not here? Open an issue on the Issues tab.