Instagram Post Scraper - Captions, Likes and Comments by URL

Paste Instagram post or reel URLs and get caption, likes, comments, views, hashtags, music and owner stats. No login, no cookies and no API key: the actor reads Instagram's public surface directly.

This is a single-purpose instagram post scraper. It does one thing, takes a handful of inputs and returns one clean row per post.

What you get

• caption, hashtags and mentions - full caption text with tags and handles already parsed out
• likes, comments_count and views - engagement, as numbers rather than display strings
• owner_username, owner_followers and owner_is_verified - who posted it and how big they are
• music_title and music_artist - the audio track for reels
• video_url, image_url, thumbnail_url and duration_seconds - media URLs and length
• comments - the visible comments, when you switch them on

Why scrape this from Instagram

A post URL is the unit people actually work in. Someone sends you a link and the question is how it performed, who posted it and what audio it used. Getting that from the Graph API requires owning the account; getting it from the page requires parsing a render that changes shape regularly.

This actor takes the URL exactly as copied from the app or browser and returns the post as a row. Post, reel and TV URLs all work, including the canonical form with the username in the path. Hashtags and mentions come out as arrays rather than leaving you to regex the caption.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
search	array	yes	['https://www.instagram.com/p/C1sQZ1sLQ8w/']	Instagram post, reel or TV URLs, one per line.
includeComments	boolean	no	False	Also return the visible comments on each post.
maxComments	integer	no	20	Only used when comments are included.

Output

One row per post.

Field	Description
shortcode	Post shortcode from the URL
url	Public Instagram URL for this record
caption	Post caption text
likes	Like count
comments_count	Comment count
views	View count for video posts
posted_at	Publication timestamp
is_video	Whether the post is a video
video_url	Direct video URL when available
image_url	Full size image URL
thumbnail_url	Thumbnail URL
hashtags	Hashtags found in the caption
mentions	Accounts mentioned in the caption
owner_username	Handle that published the post
owner_followers	Follower count of the publishing account
owner_is_verified	Whether the publisher is verified
music_title	Audio track title
music_artist	Audio track artist
duration_seconds	Video length in seconds
comments	Comment records when comments are requested
record_type	Which kind of row this is

Use cases

Campaign reporting on creator posts. When creators deliver links rather than analytics screenshots, this turns a list of URLs into a performance table. owner_followers alongside likes gives an engagement rate per post, which is the number that survives scrutiny in a wrap report.

Competitive content teardowns. Collect a competitor's best-performing posts and pull them in one run. Caption structure, hashtag sets and audio choices become comparable across dozens of posts at once, which is where content patterns actually become visible.

Audio and trend tracking for reels. music_title and music_artist on every reel let you see which tracks are attached to the posts that performed. Audio choice is one of the strongest reach levers on reels and one of the least documented.

Compliance and disclosure auditing. For regulated categories, the caption and its parsed hashtags are the evidence trail for whether required disclosure was present. Running a creator's delivered links through this produces a dated, structured record.

How it compares

The closest competitor is apify/instagram-post-scraper, the platform-official actor, at $0.0017 per post. This actor is $0.0010, a 41% undercut. Theirs also offers a separate post-details event at $0.001. The honest comparison: theirs is the more configurable actor from the platform owner, this one takes URLs and returns rows at a lower rate with comments as a single switch.

Pricing

$0.0010 per post returned, which is $1.00 per 1,000 rows. All pricing is pay-per-event - you only pay for results you receive. No actor-start fee, no per-compute-unit charges.

Limits and gotchas

• Public posts only. Private accounts do not resolve.
• Comments are the visible set, not the complete thread. Very large comment counts are truncated by Instagram before this actor sees them.
• View counts exist for video posts only. Image posts return no view figure, which is Instagram's behaviour rather than a gap here.
• Media URLs are time-limited by Instagram's CDN. Fetch them promptly or re-run.
• Free Apify plans are capped at 10 rows per run. Paid plans have no cap.
• Deleted or region-blocked posts return an error row rather than a blank record.

FAQ

Can I scrape an Instagram post without logging in?

Yes. This actor reads the public post surface logged out, so there is no account involved and nothing to get rate limited.

Does it work on reels as well as posts?

Yes. Post, reel and TV URLs are all accepted, including the canonical form with the username in the path. The type is detected from the URL.

Can I get the comments?

Yes, switch on include comments and set how many per post. It is off by default because most reporting use cases only need the count.

Does it return video files?

It returns the video URL Instagram serves, plus the thumbnail and image URLs. It does not re-host or download the media.

What if the post is from a private account?

It will not resolve. Private posts have no public surface, and this actor does not authenticate.

Related Actors

• Instagram Profile Scraper
• Instagram Keyword Scraper
• Instagram Trending Scraper