Instagram Scraper

Extract public Instagram profile data in bulk. No API key, no login. Supply a list of usernames or profile URLs and get structured profile records back: bio, follower and following counts, verification status, business category, external website, and up to 12 recent posts per profile with captions, thumbnails, media type, and post URLs.

HTTP-only, ~128 MB RAM, pay-per-result.

What It Does

For every public Instagram handle in the input, the actor returns one dataset row with:

• Identity: username, user_id, full_name, profile_url, profile_pic_url
• Bio: biography, external website
• Stats: follower_count, following_count, post_count
• Signals: is_verified, is_private, is_business_account, category_name
• Recent posts: up to 12 per profile, each with shortcode, caption, media_type (photo, video, carousel), media_url (thumbnail), post_url

Note on engagement metrics: Instagram does not expose like counts, comment counts, or post timestamps to anonymous access. Those fields are not returned by this actor. Private accounts return the profile row without post details. Not-found handles and profiles that trip Instagram's auth wall are logged and skipped so the rest of the batch keeps running.

Input

Accepts bare handles, @handle, or full profile URLs. Mix and match freely.

{
  "usernames": [
    "example_handle",
    "@another_example",
    "https://www.instagram.com/third_example/"
  ],
  "maxPostsPerProfile": 12,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Input Fields

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
usernames	string[]	Yes	-	Instagram handles or profile URLs to scrape
maxPostsPerProfile	integer	No	12	Recent posts per profile (0 to 12). Set to 0 to skip posts and run faster
proxyConfiguration	object	No	Residential US	Apify proxy settings. Residential proxies pinned to US are the default because Instagram's API is most permissive on US residential IPs. Override countryCode to use a different country

Output

One row per input handle, pushed to the default dataset.

{
  "username": "example_handle",
  "user_id": "1234567890",
  "full_name": "Example Company",
  "biography": "Example bio for a public Instagram profile.",
  "website": "https://example.com",
  "follower_count": 125000,
  "following_count": 420,
  "post_count": 1830,
  "is_verified": true,
  "is_private": false,
  "is_business_account": true,
  "category_name": "Retail Company",
  "profile_pic_url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/example.jpg",
  "posts": [
    {
      "shortcode": "Dci8yDORzci",
      "caption": "Example post caption.",
      "media_type": "video",
      "media_url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/example_thumb.jpg",
      "post_url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/Dci8yDORzci/"
    }
  ],
  "profile_url": "https://www.instagram.com/example_handle/",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-18T09:00:00Z"
}

profile_url echoes the input identifier and is safe to use as a merge key when joining back to your CRM or another actor's output.

Post fields available on anonymous access: shortcode, caption, media_type, media_url, post_url. Instagram does not include like_count, comment_count, or posted_at in its public HTML responses, so those fields are absent from the output.

Pricing

Pay-per-result via Apify Pay-Per-Event billing:

Event	Price	Description
Actor start	$0.001	Charged once per run
Profile scraped	$0.005	Charged per profile row returned

Scraping 1,000 profiles costs about $5. No monthly fees, no minimum spend.

Use with AI Agents (MCP)

Connect this actor to any MCP-compatible AI client: Claude Desktop, Claude.ai, Cursor, VS Code, LangChain, LlamaIndex, or custom agents.

Apify MCP server URL:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=santamaria-automations/instagram-scraper

Example prompt once connected:

"Use instagram-scraper to fetch the profile and last 12 posts for two example handles. Return a table with username, follower count, verification status, and each post's caption and media type."

Clients that support dynamic tool discovery (Claude.ai, VS Code) receive the full input schema automatically via add-actor.

Tips

• Bare handles run fastest. If you pass full URLs the actor strips them down to the handle for you.
• Set maxPostsPerProfile to 0 when you only need profile stats. Cuts response size and speeds up big runs.
• Every handle is scraped once per run even if it appears multiple times in the input list.
• Residential proxy pinned to US is the default and works reliably. Datacenter IPs are almost always blocked by Instagram. Override countryCode in proxyConfiguration if you have a specific regional requirement.

FAQ

What does "public profile" mean? Instagram profiles set to public are visible without logging in. This actor can only scrape public accounts. Private accounts return profile stats but no post details.

Why are like counts and comment counts missing? Instagram does not include engagement metrics in the HTML it serves to anonymous (non-logged-in) visitors. That data is only available to authenticated sessions, which this actor does not use. The fields are absent from output rather than returned as zero to avoid misleading downstream systems.

What happens if a handle does not exist? The actor logs a warning for that handle and continues. Not-found handles are not written to the dataset.

What if Instagram requires login? Individual profiles that hit Instagram's auth wall are skipped with a warning so the rest of the batch still completes. The actor only fails if every profile in the run is blocked.

Are results deduplicated? Each handle is scraped once per run regardless of how many times it appears in the input.

Related Actors

Discovery:

• Google Maps Scraper - collect places and companies in bulk
• Website Email Scraper - pull emails, phones and social handles from company sites

Enrichment:

• LinkedIn Company Scraper - enrich companies with LinkedIn data
• AI Icebreaker Generator - one personalized cold-outreach line per business
• GBP Completeness Audit - score Google Business Profiles for lead prioritization

Changelog

• v1.5 (2026-09-10): Rewrote HTML post extraction to use Instagram's new XIGPolarisMedia SSR shape (2026-09-08 format). The "code" anchor scan reliably returns 12 posts on anonymous HTML. Profile extraction now uses completeness-scored candidate ranking so the real profile object (containing follower_count) is selected over sidebar widgets that share the same username. Engagement fields (like_count, comment_count, posted_at) removed from promised output as they are not present in anonymous SSR. API path retained as primary (may recover); HTML is primary fallback and now populates posts. Added automatic HTML post supplement when API returns profile but 0 posts.
• v1.4 (2026-09-07): Expanded IP rotation to 12 attempts across US/GB/DE with User-Agent variation to reduce Instagram auth walls on aggressively-crawled handles.
• v1.3 (2026-09-07): Increased IP rotation attempts from 2 to 6 and pinned residential proxy to US by default to reduce Instagram auth-wall hits and restore posts[] population on Apify QA runs.
• v1.2 (2026-09-07): Added HTML embedded-JSON fallback. When the API returns 401, the actor now parses profile data from the public profile page. Login wall is only declared if both the API and HTML paths fail on the same IP.
• v1.1: Added per-profile residential IP rotation; deduplicated usernames; improved post edge extraction for both legacy graphql and current API shapes.
• v1.0: Initial release.

Issues & Feature Requests

If a field is missing or looks off for a given profile, open an issue on the actor's Issues tab and we will take a look.