Instagram Post & Reel Scraper

An Apify Actor that scrapes public Instagram profile posts and reels, or looks up a single post/reel by URL. No Instagram login required.

Input

Provide one of:

• username — a public Instagram username to scrape posts and reels from
• postOrReelUrl — a direct URL to a single public post or reel to look up

At least one is required; the Actor rejects a run with neither. If both are given, postOrReelUrl takes priority and username is ignored.

Optionally:

• proxyConfiguration — route requests through your own proxy (or Apify Proxy, at your own cost). Left empty, the Actor runs proxy-less by default at no extra cost — see the limitation below.

Auth model

v1 is anonymous-only — no Instagram login, session cookie, or credentials are ever used or requested. This keeps the Actor simple and avoids handling user credentials, at the cost of two limits Instagram imposes on logged-out access:

• Only public profiles and public posts/reels are reachable. A private profile fails the run with a clear "private profile" error message rather than completing with a silent empty Dataset.
• Anonymous pagination has a hard wall: Instagram serves only the first page of a profile's posts/reels to a logged-out request and rejects further pagination with an explicit error. When a profile has more items beyond that first page, the run still completes successfully with whatever was collected, and reports a status message that results may be incomplete — rather than silently truncating or failing the run.

Output

One Dataset item per scraped post or reel, all sharing this schema:

Field	Type	Notes
shortcode	string	Instagram's short code for the item (from its URL)
ownerUsername	string | null	Null if Instagram didn't include it in the response
contentType	"post" | "reel"
caption	string | null
timestamp	number	Unix timestamp (seconds) the item was posted
likeCount	number | null
commentCount	number | null
mediaType	"image" | "video" | "carousel"
mediaUrl	string | null	A single representative URL: the video file for videos, or the cover/first image for images and carousels. Individual carousel slide URLs are not included in v1.

Reel-specific fields (view count, duration) are not included in v1 — Instagram doesn't expose them on the anonymous single-item query this Actor uses.

Pricing

This Actor uses Apify's pay-per-event pricing, charged per successfully scraped item via one of two events:

• post-scraped — charged for each post pushed to the Dataset
• reel-scraped — charged for each reel pushed to the Dataset

A single-URL lookup charges whichever of these two matches the looked-up item's content type; there is no separate "URL lookup" event. Both events are priced below the lowest current comparable competitor at the time of listing — see the Actor's Store page for current prices.

Known limitation: no bundled proxy

This Actor never uses a paid proxy by default — all requests run proxy-less unless you supply your own proxyConfiguration input (see above), so proxy cost, if any, stays entirely on you. Without a proxy, all runs share this Actor's IP reputation, so a higher block/ban rate from Instagram is possible, especially under heavy or repeated use. Supplying your own proxy reduces that risk.

Maintenance

This Actor is maintained best-effort: shipped, then revisited occasionally rather than under an ongoing SLA. Instagram's page structure and anonymous-access behavior can change without notice, which may break scraping until the next update.

Disclaimer

This Actor is provided for lawful and research use only. You are responsible for ensuring your use complies with Instagram's Terms of Service and all applicable laws — this Actor's developer makes no guarantee of ongoing compliance with Instagram's Terms of Service. Use it at your own risk.