Instagram Hashtag Scraper - Filtered Post Search

Disclaimer: This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Meta Platforms, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. "Instagram" is referenced only to describe the publicly available website this Actor collects data from.

Search Instagram hashtags and keywords without a login and get back only the posts you actually want - filtered by date range, minimum likes, minimum comments, minimum plays, media type and excluded hashtags.

Why this one

The popular hashtag scrapers take a four-field input (hashtags, result type, limit, keyword) and hand you a firehose you then filter yourself. That means your result limit gets eaten by posts you were going to throw away, and you pay for every one of them.

This actor filters inside the crawl loop. Set minPlays: 500000 and your 100-result budget returns 100 posts that actually cleared half a million plays. Cheap filters (plays, excluded hashtags) are applied to the discovery payload before any paid detail fetch, so posts you filtered out cost you nothing.

	This actor
Date range filter	✅ postedAfter / postedBefore
Engagement floors	✅ minLikes, minComments, minPlays
Media-type filter	✅ image / video / reel / carousel
Hashtag exclusions	✅ drop #ad, #giveaway, …
Keyword search	✅ multi-word phrases
Filters applied before billing	✅
Location with coordinates	✅ name, id, lat, lng
Login required	❌ never

What you get per post

postUrl · shortCode · mediaId · mediaKind (image/video/reel/carousel) · isReel · caption · hashtags[] · mentions[] · likeCount · commentCount · playCount · engagementRate · countsHidden · postedAt · takenAtTimestamp · thumbnailUrl · videoUrl · width · height · hasAudio · accessibilityCaption · locationName · locationId · locationLat · locationLng · coauthors[] · taggedUsers[] · ownerUsername · ownerFullName · ownerId · ownerIsVerified · ownerProfilePicUrl · ownerProfileUrl · query · queryType · scrapedAt

Input

{
  "hashtags": ["travel", "vanlife"],
  "keywords": ["sourdough starter"],
  "minPlays": 500000,
  "postedAfter": "2026-06-01",
  "excludeHashtags": ["ad", "sponsored"],
  "mediaType": "reel",
  "maxResults": 100,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Field	What it does
hashtags	Tags to search, with or without #
keywords	Multi-word phrases (matched as Instagram tags)
mediaType	all / image / video / reel / carousel
postedAfter / postedBefore	Date window (YYYY-MM-DD)
minLikes / minComments	Engagement floors (need post details)
minPlays	Video play floor - applied before any paid detail fetch
excludeHashtags	Drop posts carrying these tags
includePostDetails	Adds likes, comments, exact date, location, tagged users, owner. On by default
maxResults	Total cap across all queries. 0 = no limit
onlyNewPosts	Monitor mode for brand tracking on a schedule

Honest limits - read before you buy

Instagram gates some hashtags for logged-out visitors. This is the single most important thing to know, so here is the measurement rather than a promise. Across a 16-tag sample (2 attempts each, fresh residential IP per attempt) on 2026-07-30:

• 12 of 16 tags returned data (22 of 32 attempts).
• Reliable on every attempt: #travel, #nature, #vanlife, #yoga, #crossfit, #homedecor, #streetphotography, #sourdoughstarter, #marathontraining, #specialtycoffee.
• Intermittent (recovered on retry): #dogsofinstagram, #skincareroutine.
• Login-walled on every attempt: #sunset, #coffee, #food, #fitness.

The actor retries a walled tag up to 4 times on fresh IPs, and if Instagram still refuses it says so in the run status and bills you nothing for that tag. Specific tags behave better than ultra-generic one-word tags.

Other limits:

• Instagram's logged-out discovery returns 12-18 posts per tag. Volume comes from breadth - pass many tags/keywords - not from deep pagination, which requires a rotating internal token this actor deliberately does not hardcode.
• Keywords are matched as tags. "sourdough starter" is resolved to #sourdoughstarter. Instagram's logged-out keyword-search endpoint is a login wall on every request, so routing keywords through the tag lane is the only version of this feature that actually returns data.
• playCount, videoUrl and hasAudio are video-only - null on image and carousel posts by definition.
• No sponsorship flag. Instagram does not expose is_paid_partnership to logged-out callers (probed across 8 posts, zero sponsorship keys), so rather than ship a column that is always null, this actor omits it. Use excludeHashtags: ["ad","sponsored"] for a caption-level proxy.

Pricing (pay per event, no start fee)

Event	Price	What it covers
post	$0.0025	One matching post: caption, hashtags, play count, thumbnail, owner handle
postDetail	$0.008	Adds likes, comments, exact date, dimensions, location + coordinates, tagged users, collaborators, full owner record

Posts are billed before they are written, and filtered-out posts are never billed at all.

Use with AI assistants (MCP)

This actor works as a tool for LLM agents through the Apify MCP server - ask for "travel Reels over 500k plays from June" and it can call this actor directly.

Agent-ready: autonomous payments (x402 & Skyfire)

This actor is agent-ready — AI agents can discover it, run it, and pay for it autonomously, with no Apify account and no human in the loop. It uses pay-per-event pricing and limited permissions, so it qualifies for Apify's agentic-payment standards:

• x402 — an open, HTTP-native payment protocol. Agents pay per run in USDC on the Base network directly through the Apify MCP server — no account, no API key.
• Skyfire — agent-to-service payments for fully autonomous AI-agent workflows.

Building an AI agent, MCP tool, or autonomous data pipeline? This scraper is ready to plug in and pay as it goes.

Integrations

Make, Zapier, Slack, Google Drive, Airbyte, GitHub, the Apify API, Schedules and Webhooks.

Monitor mode

Set onlyNewPosts: true and the actor remembers which posts it has already returned for that query set, emitting only new ones - a clean brand-monitoring feed when paired with Apify Schedules.

Automate & schedule

Run this Actor on autopilot and pull results into your own stack:

• Apify API - start runs, fetch datasets and manage schedules over REST.
• apify-client for JavaScript and apify-client for Python - official SDKs.
• Schedules - run it hourly, daily or weekly and keep your dataset current.
• Webhooks - trigger downstream actions (CRM import, Slack alert, email sequence) the moment a run finishes.

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'MY_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('scrapesage/instagram-hashtag-scraper').call({
    "hashtags": [
        "travel",
        "vanlife"
    ],
    "includePostDetails": true,
    "maxResults": 24,
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true,
        "apifyProxyGroups": [
            "RESIDENTIAL"
        ]
    }
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Got ${items.length} records`);

FAQ

Do I need a login or cookies? No.

Why did one of my tags return nothing? Instagram serves a login wall for some tags to logged-out visitors (see the measured list above). The run still succeeds, says so in the status, and bills nothing for that tag.

Why are likes null? You ran with includePostDetails: false. Likes, comments and the exact date live on the post page, not in the discovery payload.

Can I filter by language? Not reliably - Instagram does not expose a language field logged-out, and guessing from caption text would be a false promise.

Related scrapers by scrapesage

• Instagram Reels Scraper - play counts, view counts and Reel analytics
• Facebook Ad Library Scraper - Meta ad creatives and advertiser intel
• Threads Scraper - profiles, posts and replies
• TikTok Scraper - hashtag and creator analytics on TikTok

Data & lawful use

This Actor reads only what Instagram publishes to logged-out visitors: it does not log in, use cookies or session tokens, create accounts, or reach anything behind a sign-in. Names, handles, bios and engagement figures are public, but they relate to identifiable people, so treat the output as personal data. If you are in the EU or UK you are the data controller for what you do with it: have a lawful basis (usually legitimate interest for research, marketing analytics or B2B prospecting), honour access and deletion requests, and do not use the output for spam or unsolicited messaging.

Under Apify's Standard Actor Contract, which governs your use of this Actor, you are the controller of any personal data in your input and output and scrapesage acts only as your processor: that data is processed solely to run your job, written only to your own Apify storage, never used for any other purpose and never shared onward. If you need help with a data-subject request that involves this Actor's output, open an issue on the Issues tab.

Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Meta Platforms, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

"Instagram" and any related marks are the property of their respective owners and are used here only in a descriptive, nominative sense - to identify the publicly accessible website from which this Actor collects data. This Actor is not an official Instagram product, is not authorised or certified by Meta Platforms, Inc., and does not distribute Instagram software. It collects only publicly available information; you are responsible for ensuring your use of that data complies with applicable laws, regulations and the terms of the source website.

Need help?

Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab, or visit the Apify help center. Feature requests are welcome - this Actor is actively maintained.