Instagram Search Scraper

What does Instagram Search Scraper do?

Search Instagram by keyword and get back the matching accounts, posts, reels or hashtags as structured data — the link, a title and a short description of each one.

No Instagram account, login, or cookie is needed. Type what you are looking for, choose what kind of result you want, press Start, and download the results as JSON, CSV or Excel — or pull them straight from the Apify API.

Why use Instagram Search Scraper?

• Find creators and influencers — search by niche and location, and export the accounts in one go.
• Research a topic — collect posts and reels about a subject and see who is making them.
• Find hashtags — discover which tags are used around a theme before you post.
• Build a prospect list — find businesses by what they do and where they are.
• Feed other tools — the links this Actor returns drop straight into the Instagram Profile or Post Actor for the full details.

How to use Instagram Search Scraper

1. Enter your Search keywords, for example travel photographer bali.
2. Choose What to search for — accounts, posts, reels or hashtags.
3. Set Maximum results to how many you want.
4. Optionally add Extra search terms to narrow it down.
5. Click Start, then open the Output tab when it finishes.

Getting better results

A few ways to sharpen a search:

• Put a phrase in quotes to require it exactly: "wedding photographer"
• Add a city or brand to narrow things down: coffee roaster Melbourne
• Put a minus in front of a word to exclude it: bakery -franchise

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
Search keywords (keywords)	string	Yes	What to look for.
What to search for (search_type)	select	No	Accounts, posts, reels or hashtags. Default accounts.
Maximum results (limit)	integer	No	How many results to return. Default 50.
Extra search terms (extra_terms)	string	No	Extra words to add to the search.
Language (language)	string	No	Two-letter language code. Default en.

Example input:

{
  "keywords": "travel photographer bali",
  "search_type": "profiles",
  "limit": 20
}

Output

One record per Instagram page found:

{
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/sutarahady",
  "identifier": "sutarahady",
  "title": "Bali Photographer | Suta (@sutarahady)",
  "snippet": "Bali based photographer · 12K followers",
  "search_type": "profiles",
  "search_keywords": "travel photographer bali"
}

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

Data fields

Field	Description
url	Link to the Instagram page.
identifier	The username for an account, the short code for a post or reel, or the tag name. Handy as a unique key.
title	The page's title, usually the account name or the start of the caption.
snippet	A short description of the page.
search_type	Which kind of result this is.
search_keywords	The search that produced this row, handy when you merge several runs.

What it returns

For every match you get the link, a title and a short description — enough to review a list of results, sort it, or hand it to something else.

Fuller detail such as follower counts, full captions, like counts or a post's images is not part of a search result. To get those, run the links through:

• Instagram Profile Scraper — for account links, to get followers, bio and post count.
• Instagram Post Scraper — for post and reel links, to get the caption, likes, comments and media.

Two other things worth knowing:

• Results come back by relevance, not newest first. Something posted in the last few hours may not appear straight away.
• Very large result counts are not possible. A search realistically returns up to a couple of hundred results; narrow the keywords instead of raising the limit.

How much does it cost to search Instagram?

Very little. Twenty results took about twenty seconds and cost around a cent. Cost scales with how many results you ask for.

Tips

• Be specific. wedding photographer tuscany returns far more useful results than photographer.
• Run several narrow searches rather than one broad one — you will get better coverage overall.
• Search hashtags first when you are exploring a new niche, then search accounts using the tags you found.
• Chain it. Search here, then feed the links into the Profile or Post Actor to enrich them.

FAQ and support

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

Why is there no follower count or caption? Those are not part of a search result. Use the Profile or Post Actor on the links to get them.

Why do I get fewer results than the limit I set? Because the search ran out of matches. Broaden the keywords or try a different phrasing.

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.