Instagram Latest Posts Scraper

Feed this actor a list of Instagram handles and it hands back each profile's newest posts — captions, likes, comments, timestamps, media URLs and video view counts. You get one dataset row per post, ready to drop into a sheet, a database or the next step of your pipeline.

Under the hood it talks to Instagram's own public web_profile_info endpoint (the same request the instagram.com website makes). There's no headless browser involved, so runs are fast, light and cheap.

What you can do with it

• Track what your competitors or favourite creators just posted.
• Pull recent captions and engagement for content research.
• Build a lightweight feed monitor across many accounts at once.
• Grab media URLs and video view counts for reporting.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
usernames	array of strings	yes	Handles to scrape (with or without @, plain handle or full profile URL).
maxPosts	integer	no	Cap on recent posts per profile. Omit to return everything available (~12).
sessionCookie	string (secret)	no	Value of your Instagram sessionid cookie. Boosts success rate and unlocks otherwise-blocked profiles.
proxyCountry	string	no	Two-letter country code for the residential proxy (e.g. US, GB, DE).

The original instagramUsernames, sessionId and proxyCountryCode field names are still accepted as aliases, so existing configs keep working unchanged.

Input example

{
    "usernames": ["nasa", "instagram"],
    "maxPosts": 12
}

Output

One row per post, each prefixed with the owning username:

Field	Description
username	The profile the post belongs to.
shortcode	Instagram post shortcode.
url	Canonical post URL (https://www.instagram.com/p/<shortcode>/).
caption	Post caption text.
likes	Like count.
comments	Comment count.
timestamp	Post time as an ISO 8601 string.
isVideo	Whether the post is a video.
videoViewCount	View count (videos only, otherwise null).
displayUrl	Full-size media URL.
thumbnailSrc	Thumbnail media URL.
isPinned	Whether the post is pinned on the profile.
accessibilityCaption	Auto-generated alt-text describing the image.

Output sample

{
    "username": "nasa",
    "shortcode": "DABc123XyZ",
    "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/DABc123XyZ/",
    "caption": "A stunning view of a distant galaxy captured by our telescope.",
    "likes": 482913,
    "comments": 1204,
    "timestamp": "2026-07-15T18:30:00.000Z",
    "isVideo": false,
    "videoViewCount": null,
    "displayUrl": "https://instagram.f...cdn.net/....jpg",
    "thumbnailSrc": "https://instagram.f...cdn.net/....jpg",
    "isPinned": false,
    "accessibilityCaption": "Photo by NASA on July 15, 2026."
}

If a handle can't be fetched (invalid handle, private/empty profile, or a block), the actor writes a single { "username": "...", "error": "..." } row for that handle instead of crashing the whole run.

Pricing — pay per event

This actor uses Apify's pay-per-event pricing. You're charged one post-scraped event per delivered post row. Error and empty-profile rows are never charged, and the run stops automatically once your event budget is reached so you're never billed beyond it.

Notes

• Proxies: Residential proxies are strongly recommended — Instagram aggressively rate-limits datacenter and cloud IPs. If proxies aren't available on your account, the actor gracefully falls back to a direct connection.
• Session cookie: Supplying your sessionCookie markedly increases reliability and reaches profiles that are otherwise blocked for anonymous requests.
• Post count: The web_profile_info endpoint returns roughly the 12 most recent posts per profile. maxPosts can only cap that set, not exceed it.
• Private profiles: Posts from private accounts are not returned.