📊 Instagram Reels → Google Sheets

Automatically scrape Instagram Reels from any public account, transcribe the audio with OpenAI Whisper, calculate virality scores, and push everything to Google Sheets — on autopilot.

No Instagram cookies. No proxies. No API keys to manage. Just enter usernames and run.

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✨ What It Does

1. Scrapes Reels from any public Instagram accounts you specify
2. Extracts engagement data — likes, comments, follower count, captions, hashtags
3. Transcribes audio using OpenAI Whisper (optional)
4. Calculates virality scores based on engagement rate + volume
5. Sends everything to Google Sheets via a webhook

All fully automated. Schedule it daily or weekly and your spreadsheet stays up to date.

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🚀 Features

• ⚡ Zero config scraping — uses Apify's built-in Instagram actor, no cookies or logins needed
• 🎙️ Audio transcription — get the spoken script of every reel via OpenAI Whisper
• 📈 Virality scoring — automated scoring system ranks reels as Low / Medium / High / Viral
• 📊 Google Sheets integration — data lands directly in your spreadsheet
• 🔄 Schedulable — set it and forget it with Apify's built-in scheduler
• 📦 Clean dataset output — browse results directly in Apify with formatted table views

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💰 Cost

Component	Cost
Instagram scraping (12 accounts × 20 reels)	~$0.31 per run
Whisper transcription	~$0.006/min of audio
Google Sheets webhook	Free
Total per weekly run	~$1-2/month

Requires Apify Starter plan or higher to run the built-in Instagram scraping actor.

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📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
handles	string[]	No	10 sample accounts	Instagram usernames to scrape (without @)
daysBack	integer	No	7	Only collect reels posted within this many days
reelsPerAccount	integer	No	20	Max reels to fetch per account. Lower = cheaper
openaiApiKey	string	No	—	OpenAI API key for Whisper transcription. Leave empty to skip
webhookUrl	string	Yes	—	Google Apps Script web app URL for Sheets integration

Example Input

{
    "handles": ["hormozi", "garyvee", "hubaborhidi"],
    "daysBack": 7,
    "reelsPerAccount": 20,
    "openaiApiKey": "sk-...",
    "webhookUrl": "https://script.google.com/macros/s/your-id/exec"
}

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📤 Output

Each reel produces a row with the following fields:

Field	Type	Example
collected_at	datetime	2026-03-09T00:08:38.661Z
handle	string	hormozi
follower_count	integer	3200000
post_url	string	https://www.instagram.com/reel/ABC123/
posted_at	datetime	2026-03-07T14:22:00.000Z
likes	integer	45200
comments	integer	1830
total_engagements	integer	47030
engagement_rate_pct	number	1.47
caption	string	The #1 skill every entrepreneur needs...
hashtags	string	#entrepreneur #business
transcript	string	Here's what nobody tells you about starting a business...
virality_score	number	105.6
virality_tier	string	High

Dataset Views

The actor provides two pre-built views in the Apify Console:

• Overview — Handle, likes, comments, engagement rate, virality score and tier
• Content & Transcripts — Handle, caption, hashtags, full transcript, tier

Virality Scoring

Tier	Score Range	What It Means
🟢 Viral	150+	Exceptional engagement, way above average
🔵 High	80–149	Strong performance, above average
🟡 Medium	40–79	Solid engagement, typical for the niche
🔴 Low	0–39	Below average engagement

The score is calculated as:

Virality = (Engagement Rate × 40) + (log10(Total Engagements) × 10)

This balances relative performance (engagement rate vs followers) with absolute reach (total engagement volume).

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🔧 Setup Guide

Step 1: Create Your Google Sheets Webhook

1. Create a new Google Sheet with these column headers in Row 1:

Collected At | Handle | Followers | Reel URL | Posted At | Likes | Comments | Total Engagements | Engagement Rate % | Caption | Hashtags | Transcript | Virality Score | Virality Tier

2. Go to Extensions → Apps Script and paste this code:

function doPost(e) {
    var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getActiveSheet();
    var data = JSON.parse(e.postData.contents);
    var rows = data.rows || [];
    for (var i = 0; i < rows.length; i++) {
        sheet.appendRow(rows[i]);
    }
    return ContentService.createTextOutput(
        JSON.stringify({ status: "ok", rows: rows.length })
    ).setMimeType(ContentService.MimeType.JSON);
}

3. Click Deploy → New Deployment → Web App
4. Set Execute as: Me, Who has access: Anyone
5. Copy the web app URL — that's your webhookUrl

Step 2: Get an OpenAI API Key (Optional)

1. Go to platform.openai.com/api-keys
2. Create a new key
3. Paste it into the openaiApiKey input field

Skip this step if you don't need audio transcription.

Step 3: Run the Actor

1. Enter your Instagram handles (without @)
2. Paste your webhook URL
3. Optionally paste your OpenAI API key
4. Click Start

That's it! Your Google Sheet will populate automatically.

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📅 Scheduling

To run this automatically every day or week:

1. Go to your actor's page on Apify
2. Click Schedules → Create Schedule
3. Set the frequency (e.g., every Monday at 9am)
4. Save — your spreadsheet will update itself

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🔍 How It Works

Your Actor
    │
    ├─ Phase 1: Scraping
    │     │
    │     └─→ Calls apify/instagram-reel-scraper
    │           (handles all proxies, sessions, rate limits)
    │           └─→ Returns reels data (likes, comments, captions, video URLs)
    │
    ├─ Phase 2: Transcription (if OpenAI key provided)
    │     │
    │     └─→ Downloads each reel video
    │           └─→ Sends to OpenAI Whisper API
    │                 └─→ Returns text transcript
    │
    └─ Phase 3: Score + Send
          │
          ├─→ Calculates virality score for each reel
          ├─→ Sends rows to Google Sheets via webhook
          └─→ Saves results to Apify dataset

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❓ Troubleshooting

Problem	Solution
"Your Apify plan doesn't support running public actors"	Upgrade to the Apify Starter plan ($49/mo). The Creator and Free plans can't call other actors.
"Not enough Apify credits"	Add credits to your Apify account. Each run costs ~$0.31.
No reels found	Check that the handles are correct and the accounts are public. Try increasing daysBack.
Whisper errors	Verify your OpenAI API key is valid and has credits. Videos over 25MB are automatically skipped.
Webhook errors	Make sure your Google Apps Script is deployed as a web app with "Anyone" access. Redeploy if needed.
Missing transcripts	Some reels may not have a video URL available. The transcript field will be empty for those.
Follower count is 0	The Instagram actor may not return follower data for all accounts. Engagement rate will show as 0 for those.

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📁 Output Files

Location	What's There
Dataset	Every reel as a structured JSON row — browsable in Apify Console with Overview and Content views
Key-Value Store → RUN_SUMMARY	Quick stats: accounts scraped, total reels, transcribed count, rows sent, run time
Google Sheets	Same data in your spreadsheet, ready for charts and analysis

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🧑‍💻 API Usage

You can trigger this actor programmatically:

const Apify = require('apify');

const run = await Apify.call('your-username/instagram-reels-to-sheets', {
    handles: ['hormozi', 'garyvee'],
    daysBack: 7,
    reelsPerAccount: 20,
    openaiApiKey: 'sk-...',
    webhookUrl: 'https://script.google.com/macros/s/your-id/exec',
});

const { items } = await Apify.client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Or via REST API:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/your-username~instagram-reels-to-sheets/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "handles": ["hormozi", "garyvee"],
    "webhookUrl": "https://script.google.com/macros/s/your-id/exec"
  }'

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📝 Changelog

• v1.0.0 — Initial release
  • Instagram Reels scraping via Apify actor
  • OpenAI Whisper transcription
  • Virality scoring (Low / Medium / High / Viral)
  • Google Sheets webhook integration
  • Apify dataset output with Overview and Content views
  • Run summary in key-value store

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📄 License

MIT

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🙋 Support

• 🐛 Bug? Open an issue on the actor's GitHub page
• 💬 Questions? Ask on Apify Discord
• 📧 Contact: Reach out through Apify's messaging system