🔗 Instagram Related Profiles Scraper

🚀 Find the accounts Instagram itself considers similar to any profile, in seconds. Enter a username and get back up to 50 related accounts per profile, each with followers, bio, website, verified badge and Threads handle, then chain the search up to 5 levels deep to map a whole niche. 300 enriched accounts took 28 seconds in our test run.

This Actor reads the "Accounts you might like" list that Instagram shows under a profile to anyone who opens it without logging in. That list is Instagram's own similarity ranking: for @natgeo it returns Animal Planet, PBS Nature, National Geographic Society and NASA Goddard, in that order. The Actor keeps the order as a rank column, adds each account's public profile details, and can follow the suggestions outward level by level while recording the path that led to every account.

Every row has 24 fields: identity, audience size, bio and links, activity flags (active story, reels), and the discovery context (seed, suggested by, level, rank, full path). No login, no cookie, no session token, and it works on business and creator accounts where Instagram's older profile endpoint fails.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Influencer marketing teams	Find lookalike creators for a brand that already works
Social media agencies	Map the competitive set around a client's account
Brands and growth marketers	Build partnership and collaboration shortlists
Sales and lead generation	Turn one great account into a list of similar prospects
Market and audience researchers	Chart who sits next to whom in a niche
Data and ML teams	Collect similarity graphs for recommendation research

📋 What the Instagram Related Profiles Scraper does

1. Accepts Instagram usernames, @handles or profile URLs as seed accounts.
2. Looks up each seed and reads Instagram's related-accounts list for it: up to 50 accounts, in Instagram's own ranking order.
3. Adds each related account's public profile: followers, following, bio, bio links, website, privacy, Threads handle, active story and reels flags.
4. Applies your filters: verified only, private accounts out, follower minimum and maximum.
5. With Chain depth above 0, repeats the search for the top related accounts of each profile, level by level, never returning the same account twice.
6. Writes one row per related account with the seed, the account that suggested it, the level, the rank and the full path.

💡 Why it matters: a keyword search tells you who uses a word; Instagram's related list tells you who shares an audience. That is the list brands actually want when they ask "who else is like this creator?", and it comes ranked by Instagram's own model instead of a guess.

🎬 Full Demo (🚧 Coming soon)

📊 Output

Each dataset row is one related account. 24 columns per row.

Field	Type	Description
🖼 imageUrl	string	Profile photo
👤 username	string	Instagram username
📌 fullName	string	Display name
🔗 url	string	Profile URL
🆔 id	string	Instagram user ID
✅ isVerified	string	Yes or No
🔒 isPrivate	string	Yes or No
👥 followerCount	number	Followers
➡️ followingCount	number	Accounts followed
📝 biography	string	Bio text
🌐 externalUrl	string	First link in the bio
🧵 threadsUsername	string	Threads handle shown on the profile
⭕ hasActiveStory	string	Yes when a story was posted in the last 24 hours
🎬 hasReels	string	Yes when the account has reels
🕯 isMemorialized	string	Yes for memorialized accounts
🌱 seedUsername	string	The seed account this row descends from
🔎 discoveredFrom	string	The account whose related list contained this one
📶 depth	number	1 = related to the seed, 2 = related to a related account, and so on
🏅 rank	number	Position in Instagram's related list (1 = most similar)
🔗 bioLinks	array	Every bio link with its title
💬 pronouns	array	Pronouns shown on the profile
🧭 chainPath	array	Accounts from the seed down to the one that suggested this row
🕒 scrapedAt	string	When the row was collected
❌ error	string	Populated only on failed rows

Profile details show N/A when Add profile details is off, and Not Disclosed when the account has not published that item.

Real sample records

{
  "imageUrl": "https://scontent-iad3-2.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-19/471307838_1123917355849999_3742640417869698375_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s150x150_tt6&_nc_cat=105&ccb=7-5&_nc_sid=f7ccc5&efg=eyJ2ZW5jb2RlX3RhZyI6InByb2ZpbGVfcGljLnd3dy44MDAuQzMifQ%3D%3D&_nc_ohc=mmA6WgGm4SsQ7kNvwGzJvPq&_nc_oc=AdqrmoBE0jY1TaRZnn8eEwZOihKUYjiy6zfeeD_eiTJ3xA0TKDs5DW4acK9s_2rzTJk&_nc_zt=24&_nc_ht=scontent-iad3-2.cdninstagram.com&_nc_ss=7f689&oh=00_AQLwFNdUbAqrEDvHLmmLj8GmkT9WQVY4gYWm3VyE55mQPQ&oe=6ABB50C3",
  "username": "animalplanet",
  "fullName": "Animal Planet",
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/animalplanet/",
  "id": "378353537",
  "isVerified": "Yes",
  "isPrivate": "No",
  "followerCount": 5391467,
  "followingCount": 863,
  "biography": "Keeping the childhood joy and wonder of animals alive.",
  "externalUrl": "http://puppybowl.com",
  "threadsUsername": "animalplanet",
  "hasActiveStory": "No",
  "hasReels": "Yes",
  "isMemorialized": "No",
  "seedUsername": "natgeo",
  "discoveredFrom": "natgeo",
  "depth": 1,
  "rank": 1,
  "bioLinks": [
    { "title": "", "url": "http://puppybowl.com" },
    { "title": "11-in-1 Smartphone Lens Kit", "url": "https://amzlink.to/az0eWa4Wz47di" }
  ],
  "pronouns": [],
  "chainPath": ["natgeo"],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-24T19:25:42.300Z",
  "error": null
}

{
  "username": "marcusrashford",
  "fullName": "MR",
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/marcusrashford/",
  "id": "182044648",
  "isVerified": "Yes",
  "isPrivate": "No",
  "followerCount": 22318810,
  "followingCount": 298,
  "biography": "England ⚽",
  "externalUrl": "Not Disclosed",
  "threadsUsername": "marcusrashford",
  "hasActiveStory": "No",
  "hasReels": "Yes",
  "seedUsername": "leomessi",
  "discoveredFrom": "leomessi",
  "depth": 1,
  "rank": 1,
  "bioLinks": [],
  "chainPath": ["leomessi"],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-24T19:25:42.402Z",
  "error": null
}

{
  "username": "natgeobooks",
  "fullName": "Nat Geo Books",
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/natgeobooks/",
  "id": "57601166705",
  "isVerified": "Yes",
  "isPrivate": "No",
  "followerCount": 140246,
  "followingCount": 186,
  "biography": "We've been exploring the world since 1888, and we make books about everything we see. Official Instagram account of @natgeo Books.",
  "externalUrl": "https://shorturl.at/fLMUV",
  "threadsUsername": "Not Disclosed",
  "hasActiveStory": "Yes",
  "hasReels": "Yes",
  "seedUsername": "natgeo",
  "discoveredFrom": "animalplanet",
  "depth": 2,
  "rank": 1,
  "bioLinks": [{ "title": "shop", "url": "https://shorturl.at/fLMUV" }],
  "chainPath": ["natgeo", "animalplanet"],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-24T19:25:54.633Z",
  "error": null
}

✨ Why choose this Actor

• Instagram's own ranking, kept. The rank column is the position in Instagram's related list, so you can take the top 10 most similar accounts instead of an unordered pile.
• Profile details included at no extra charge. Followers, following, bio, website, all bio links, Threads handle, active story and reels flags come on every row, with no enrichment add-on to switch on and pay for.
• Works on business and creator accounts. Instagram's older profile endpoint fails with a server error on accounts that carry a business sub-category, including @natgeo and @leomessi. This Actor reads the related list through the source the public profile page uses, which has no such gap.
• Network discovery with the path. Chain up to 5 levels. Every account appears once, and chainPath shows how it was reached, so a level-3 result is explainable.
• Fair across seeds. With several seeds and a small limit, results are interleaved by rank (every seed's #1, then every #2), so no seed is starved.
• Filters that do not bill you. Verified only, private accounts out, follower minimum and maximum. Accounts your filters drop are never charged.
• No credentials. You never hand over an Instagram login or a session cookie, so no account of yours is ever at risk.
• Fast and light. Plain HTTP against Instagram's public web endpoints, no browser. 300 enriched accounts in 28 seconds in our test.

📈 How it compares to alternatives

	This Actor	Tools built on Instagram's older profile endpoint	Cookie based scrapers	Manual research
Requires your Instagram login	No	No	Yes	Yes
Related accounts per profile	Up to 50, ranked	Up to 50 where the endpoint answers	Varies	What you can scroll
Business accounts with a sub-category	Supported	Server error	Supported	Yes
Profile details per account	Included	Often a paid add-on	Varies	Slow
Multi-level discovery with path	Up to 5 levels	Some	Some	No
Small accounts (under 250k followers)	Few or none, see below	Few or none	Yes	Yes
Account risk	None	None	Your account can be flagged	None

Instagram computes the related list it shows to logged-out visitors mainly for larger accounts. In our measurement on 42 accounts: accounts with over 1M followers returned a median of 41 related accounts (none returned zero), 250k to 1M a median of 4, and most accounts under 250k returned none. If your seeds are small creators, start from a larger account in the same niche and use Chain depth to reach the smaller ones.

🚀 How to use

1. Create a free Apify account. New accounts include $5 of free platform credit, which is plenty to try this out: console.apify.com/sign-up
2. Open the Actor and go to the Input tab.
3. Add one or more seed accounts: natgeo, @leomessi or https://www.instagram.com/nasa/ all work.
4. Set how many related accounts to collect with Max Items.
5. Optionally add filters (verified only, private out, follower range) and a Chain depth to explore beyond the first level.
6. Click Start. The log prints how many accounts each profile suggests as it goes.
7. Open the Dataset tab and download as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML, or pull it from the API.

{
  "usernames": ["natgeo", "leomessi"],
  "maxItems": 500,
  "chainDepth": 1,
  "expandPerProfile": 10,
  "minFollowers": 50000,
  "maxFollowers": 2000000
}

💼 Business use cases

Lookalike creators for influencer campaigns

A creator who delivered for your brand is the best brief you have. Seed the Actor with that account, set Max followers to your budget tier, and get Instagram's own list of similar creators with follower counts, bios and websites, ranked by similarity. Chain one level to widen the pool while chainPath shows why each name is there.

Competitive landscape for agencies

Seed a client's account and its two closest competitors. The interleaved output shows which accounts Instagram groups them with, which ones appear for all three seeds, and where the client's audience overlaps with brands it is not yet tracking.

Partnership and collaboration pipelines

Brands looking for co-marketing partners can start from their own account and keep verified accounts with a website. externalUrl and bioLinks point straight to the partner's store, press page or booking link, ready for a CRM.

Prospect lists from one great customer

Sales teams selling to Instagram-first businesses can seed a best customer and get a ranked list of similar businesses, with audience size to qualify them and bio links to find the contact route.

🔌 Automating Instagram Related Profiles Scraper

• Make and Zapier: run the Actor when a new creator is added to your roster and push the related accounts into a review board.
• Slack: post each run's top-ranked new accounts into a campaign channel.
• Airbyte: sync datasets into Snowflake, BigQuery or Postgres and build a niche graph over time.
• GitHub: schedule runs from Actions and keep versioned snapshots of how Instagram's suggestions change.
• Google Drive: drop a CSV or Google Sheet into a shared folder after every run.
• API and webhooks: every run emits a dataset ID; subscribe to the run succeeded webhook and pull the rows into any system.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

• Research: study how Instagram clusters accounts by topic, language or region using chainPath and depth.
• Personal: discover new accounts similar to the ones you already enjoy.
• Non-profit: find organisations and advocates working on the same cause to build coalitions.
• Experimentation: the seed, suggested-by and rank columns form a clean weighted graph for network analysis and recommendation experiments.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Paste this into ChatGPT, Claude or any assistant to get help designing your run:

I am using the ParseForge Instagram Related Profiles Scraper on Apify. It takes Instagram seed accounts and returns one row per related account (Instagram's "Accounts you might like" list, up to 50 per profile, ranked) with 24 fields including username, fullName, isVerified, isPrivate, followerCount, followingCount, biography, externalUrl, bioLinks, threadsUsername, seedUsername, discoveredFrom, depth, rank and chainPath. It can chain up to 5 levels and filter by verified, private and follower range. Larger accounts return more related accounts than small ones. Help me design a run to answer this question: [your question here].

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🔐 Do I need an Instagram account or cookie? No. The Actor reads only what Instagram shows to a logged-out visitor. You never supply credentials, so no account of yours is exposed.

🧭 Where does the related list come from? From the "Accounts you might like" block Instagram renders under a public profile for logged-out visitors. The order is Instagram's own, and rank preserves it.

📉 Why did my seed return few or no related accounts? Instagram computes this list for logged-out visitors mainly for larger accounts. In our measurement, accounts over 1M followers returned a median of 41, accounts from 250k to 1M a median of 4, and most accounts under 250k returned none. Start from a bigger account in the same niche and use Chain depth to reach smaller ones.

🔢 How many related accounts can I get per profile? Up to 50, which is Instagram's own cap. For more, raise Chain depth: each level explores the top related accounts of the previous one.

💳 Am I charged for accounts my filters remove? No. Only rows written to the dataset are charged. Accounts dropped by the verified, private or follower filters, and error rows, are free.

➕ Do profile details cost extra? No. Followers, bio, links and the other profile fields are included in the same price. Turning Add profile details off only makes the run faster.

🏢 Does it work for business and brand accounts? Yes. That includes accounts with a business sub-category, which Instagram's older profile endpoint rejects with a server error.

📧 Does it return business emails or phone numbers? No. Instagram does not include business contact fields in anything it shows to logged-out visitors, so the Actor does not invent them. Bio links and the website are included.

🔁 Can the same account appear twice? No. Each account is returned once per run, attributed to the first path that reached it.

⏱ How long does a run take? About 30 seconds for 300 accounts with profile details in our test.

🌐 Do I need a proxy? Usually not. The Actor connects directly and switches itself to a residential proxy if Instagram starts throttling mid-run. Avoid datacenter proxies: Instagram refuses them on this surface.

📥 What export formats are supported? CSV, Excel, JSON, XML, plus direct API access and integrations with Make, Zapier, Airbyte, Slack, Google Drive and more.

⚖️ Is this legal? The Actor collects publicly available profile information that Instagram shows to any visitor. You remain responsible for how you use the data, including compliance with GDPR, CCPA and Instagram's terms.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Every run writes to an Apify dataset reachable through a REST API, so the output drops into whatever you already use. Native integrations cover Make, Zapier, Airbyte, Slack, Google Drive, GitHub, Google Sheets and webhooks, and the API covers everything else.

🔗 Recommended Actors

• Instagram Profile Scraper - Bio, Links & Counts - full profiles for the accounts you shortlist.
• Instagram Posts Scraper - 47 Fields, Engagement Scores - check how the related accounts actually perform.
• Instagram Reel Scraper - Views, Audio & Captions - reel views and audio for creator vetting.
• Instagram Search Scraper - Users, Tags & Places - find seed accounts by keyword.
• TikTok Profile Scraper - Bio, Counts & Videos - check the same creators on TikTok.

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form

⚠️ Disclaimer: independent tool, not affiliated with Instagram or Meta; only publicly available data.