Instagram Mention Scraper

Instagram Mention Scraper 🚀 — Pull mentions from public posts in bulk

Manually reviewing profiles to find who gets tagged or mentioned is slow, inconsistent, and doesn’t scale. Instagram Mention Scraper helps you extract detailed metadata (including user mentions, hashtags, and tagged users) from the latest posts of any public Instagram account. It’s an Instagram mention scraper built for marketers and researchers who need an Instagram mentions monitoring tool or an export-ready Instagram mentions collector. Use it when you want to find Instagram mentions automatically and turn them into structured data for analysis and outreach. In one run, you can scrape up to your selected maximum number of posts and immediately export the results for downstream workflows.

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See the Data: Sample Output

Here's a real record from a single run:

{
  "inputUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/natgeo",
  "id": "123456789012345",
  "type": "Image",
  "shortCode": "CzQwXyZaBcD",
  "caption": "Amazing places! Follow @natgeo and explore #wildlife #travel",
  "hashtags": ["wildlife", "travel"],
  "mentions": ["natgeo"],
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/CzQwXyZaBcD/",
  "commentsCount": 42,
  "latestComments": [
    {
      "id": "987654321098765",
      "text": "Incredible!",
      "ownerUsername": "travel_fan",
      "ownerId": "111222333444555",
      "timestamp": "2025-06-01T09:14:22.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "dimensionsHeight": 1350,
  "dimensionsWidth": 1080,
  "displayUrl": "https://example.com/image.jpg",
  "images": [],
  "likesCount": 12800,
  "videoPlayCount": 0,
  "timestamp": "2025-06-01T09:14:22.000Z",
  "childPosts": [],
  "locationName": "Somewhere on Earth",
  "ownerFullName": "National Geographic",
  "ownerUsername": "natgeo",
  "ownerId": "2244668800112233",
  "productType": "feed",
  "taggedUsers": [
    {
      "full_name": "National Geographic",
      "id": "2244668800112233",
      "username": "natgeo"
    }
  ],
  "status": "success",
  "error_message": null
}

Output Fields

Field	Type	What It Tells You
inputUrl	string	The profile page URL used as the input source for this record.
id	string	A stable identifier for the post within the scraped dataset.
type	string	Whether the post is an Image, Video, or Sidecar (useful for media performance analysis).
shortCode	string	The post’s short code, which you can use to reference the post directly.
caption	string	The full caption text, which often contains mention and hashtag signals.
hashtags	array	Extracted hashtag names (without the #) found in the caption.
mentions	array	Extracted @username-style mentions found in the caption text.
url	string	The public post URL for quick verification and linking in reports.
commentsCount	number	Engagement context from how many comments the post has.
latestComments	array	A list of preview comments including comment text, owner username, and timestamp.
dimensionsHeight	number	Media height in pixels—handy if you compare layouts or creatives.
dimensionsWidth	number	Media width in pixels—handy if you compare layouts or creatives.
displayUrl	string | null	The main display URL for the media (when available).
likesCount	number	Engagement context from how many likes the post has received.
videoPlayCount	number	For video content, a play count metric (0 when not applicable).
timestamp	string	When the post was taken (formatted as a timestamp string).
locationName	string | null	Location name attached to the post, when present.
ownerFullName	string | null	The display name for the post owner.
ownerUsername	string | null	The Instagram username of the post owner.
ownerId	string | null	The post owner’s numeric ID as provided by the source data.
productType	string	The product type value returned with the post (e.g., feed).
taggedUsers	array	Users tagged via user tags (full name, id, username).
status	string	A simple success indicator for easier filtering during analysis.
error_message	string | null	Any error message when something goes wrong for a record/run.

Export your full dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel from the Apify dashboard.

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Setting It Up

Drop this into your input.json and you're ready to go:

{
  "username": "natgeo",
  "maxPosts": 50
}

Input Parameters

Parameter	Required	What It Does
username	✅	The Instagram username you want to scrape (for example, natgeo).
maxPosts	⬜	Total number of latest posts to scrape from that profile (default is 50, minimum is 1).

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What It Does

Instagram Mention Scraper scrapes posts from a public Instagram profile and returns structured post-level records that include mentions, hashtags, and tagged users.

Scrape mentions, hashtags, and tagged users from each post

For every scraped post, it extracts hashtags and mentions from the caption text, and also returns taggedUsers from the post’s tagged users data. This makes it a solid Instagram hashtag mention scraper and Instagram profile mention scraper for building mention-based datasets.

Works as a “mention monitoring” export pipeline

If you’re using an Instagram mentions monitoring tool, you can schedule repeated runs and compare how mentions, hashtags, and taggedUsers evolve over time. The output is designed to be analysis-ready, so exporting Instagram mentions CSV-style workflows is straightforward.

Clean, structured JSON output for analysis

Each record includes core post metadata like url, timestamp, likesCount, commentsCount, and media dimensions. It also includes latestComments with text, ownerUsername, ownerId, and timestamp, which helps you do follow-up qualitative review alongside quantitative mention analysis.

Includes support for images, videos, and sidecars

The actor maps the media content type into type (Image / Video / Sidecar) and provides childPosts for sidecar content. That means your Instagram reel mention scraper and Instagram story mention scraper style workflows can still generalize across different post types—without changing your pipeline.

Pushes results immediately and stops when you hit your cap

It processes posts until it reaches your maxPosts limit, and pushes each post_data record to the dataset as it goes. This lets you start exporting sooner and avoids waiting for the entire run to finish.

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Why Instagram Mention Scraper?

There are plenty of ways to pull data from Instagram — here's why Instagram Mention Scraper stands out.

Built for mention-focused datasets (not just post links)

Instagram Mention Scraper is specifically aimed at collecting the mention signals you care about: mentions, hashtags, and taggedUsers. That focus makes it easier to build an Instagram mentions collector without re-parsing captions and tags yourself.

High-quality structured metadata per post

Each record includes useful enrichment fields like ownerUsername, ownerId, locationName, and latestComments. If you’re building Instagram analytics mention scraper workflows, these fields reduce the amount of cleanup you need after export.

Designed to be easy to run and integrate

The actor is configured via a simple input schema (username, maxPosts) and writes a consistent JSON structure per post. It’s a practical foundation for “find Instagram mentions automatically” projects that feed dashboards, spreadsheets, or downstream pipelines.

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Real-World Use Cases

Here's how different teams put Instagram Mention Scraper to work:

Influencer Marketing Managers
A marketing team needs to understand how often a brand account is referenced and who is tagging them in recent posts. They run Instagram Mention Scraper for the profile, export the structured results, and use the extracted mentions, hashtags, and taggedUsers to build a shortlist of likely partners and communities.

Sales and Partnerships Teams
When outreach depends on finding relevant creators and communities, the partnerships lead uses the scraped post captions and tags as a fast source of “who shows up with whom.” They export the dataset and filter for the handles that appear repeatedly across posts, speeding up prospecting time dramatically.

Social Media Analysts
An analyst wants to quantify engagement themes by linking mentions and hashtags to content performance. They run scrape Instagram mentions tool jobs for key profiles, then model mention frequency over time using timestamp, likesCount, and commentsCount alongside hashtags and mentions.

Automation & Data Engineering Specialists
A developer needs an automated dataset that downstream systems can consume without reformatting. They trigger runs via the Apify API, ingest results as JSON, and store mention-focused records for dashboards and alerting based on changes in taggedUsers and mentions.

Community Moderation Researchers
Researchers studying brand communities want structured evidence of user interactions and context. They analyze the latestComments text and timestamps alongside caption mentions and hashtags, producing cleaner datasets for qualitative coding.

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How to Run It

No code required. Here's how to get your first results in under 5 minutes:

1. Open the actor on Apify — go to the actor page at console.apify.com.
2. Enter your inputs — set username (required) and optionally set maxPosts (defaults to 50).
3. Configure proxy settings — if you need improved reliability, enable proxy support in the run settings.
4. Start the run — launch and watch the live logs to track progress.
5. Open the Dataset tab — your post records appear as they’re processed, including mentions, hashtags, and taggedUsers.
6. Export your results — download from the Apify dashboard in your preferred format (JSON, CSV, or Excel).
7. Adjust for your needs — increase or decrease maxPosts to match how much history you want per run.

The whole setup takes under 5 minutes — results start appearing within seconds of launch.

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Export & Integration Options

Once your data is collected, Instagram Mention Scraper fits directly into your existing workflow.

You can export your Apify dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel from the Apify dashboard. This is ideal when you want an export Instagram mentions CSV workflow for spreadsheets, offline analysis, or reporting.

For automation, you can connect to your stack using Apify API (to fetch results programmatically) and Zapier / Make-style no-code automations that move data into tools you already use. You can also set up scheduled runs on a cron schedule so your Instagram mentions monitoring tool stays up to date.

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Pricing

Instagram Mention Scraper runs on Apify, which includes a free tier — no credit card needed to start.

Apify offers a small amount of platform credits on sign-up, enough to run a few real tests. After that, runs are typically billed based on Apify’s platform compute model (Actor compute units), so you pay for processing. For heavier workloads or sustained monitoring, use Apify’s pricing plans—check the Apify pricing page for the latest details.

Start free at apify.com — scale up when you need to.

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Reliability & Limitations

What We Handle	How
Proxy support	Uses built-in proxy support to improve reliability for scraping runs.
End-of-feed stopping	Stops when there are no more posts available or when the run reaches your maxPosts cap.
Error handling	Detects and logs failures (including access/rate-limit scenarios) and stops the run when it can’t proceed.
Resilience	Includes pacing delays between pages to reduce the chance of overloading requests.
Structured output	Pushes structured post records (post_data) to the dataset for clean downstream use.

Limitations: This actor targets public Instagram profiles and works based on publicly available data. If a profile is private, login-gated, or otherwise restricted from public access, you may get fewer results or errors.

For enterprise-scale needs or custom configurations, reach out and we'll help.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a free plan?

Yes. Apify provides a free tier with monthly usage credits so you can test Instagram Mention Scraper before committing to larger jobs.

Do I need to log in or create an account on Instagram?

No. This actor is designed to scrape data from publicly available sources and does not require you to provide Instagram login credentials.

How accurate is the extracted data?

The accuracy depends on what’s actually present in the public post captions and tagged-user data. Instagram Mention Scraper extracts hashtags and mentions from caption text and returns taggedUsers from tagged users data, without guessing.

How many results can I get per run?

You control the maximum number of posts via the maxPosts input parameter (minimum 1). The actor stops when it reaches that cap or when the feed ends.

How fresh is the data?

The data freshness matches the “latest posts” concept during the run. Since it scrapes your selected most recent posts at the time you launch, repeated runs will reflect newer activity.

Is this legal? Does it comply with GDPR / CCPA?

It’s intended to collect data from publicly available data. You are responsible for complying with GDPR, CCPA, Instagram’s Terms of Service, and any applicable local regulations when using, storing, or processing the output.

Can I export to Google Sheets or Excel?

Yes. You can export your dataset from the Apify dashboard as JSON, CSV, or Excel, then import it into Google Sheets or your preferred analysis tool.

Can I schedule this to run automatically?

Yes. You can schedule the actor on a cron schedule in Apify, which is useful for tracking mentions over time with an Instagram mentions monitoring tool approach.

Can I access results via the API?

Yes. You can trigger runs and fetch dataset results programmatically via the Apify API, which works well for developers building Instagram analytics mention scraper pipelines.

What happens when the actor encounters an error?

The actor logs failures and stops the run when it can’t proceed (for example, if access is denied or rate limits are hit). You’ll see the outcome reflected in the dataset results you successfully pushed before the run ended.

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Get Help & Use Responsibly

Got a question about Instagram Mention Scraper or a feature you'd like added? Reach out at dataforleads@gmail.com. We welcome feedback and can help with practical setup ideas like improving your mention-based exports and refining how you structure your downstream analysis.

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Disclaimer: This actor collects data only from publicly available data. It does not access private accounts, login-gated pages, or password-protected content. You are responsible for ensuring your use complies with GDPR, CCPA, and Instagram’s Terms of Service. For data-removal requests, contact dataforleads@gmail.com. Use responsibly, ethically, and only for lawful purposes.