Instagram Profile & Hashtag Scraper

An Apify Actor that extracts public profile metadata, posts, follower counts, engagement rates, and hashtag analytics from Instagram.

Features

• Profile scraping — username, full name, biography, follower/following/post counts, verified status, profile picture, external URL
• Post extraction — shortcode, caption, likes, comments, media URL, timestamp, hashtags, mentions
• Hashtag exploration — recent posts for any hashtag with owner info
• Engagement rate — calculated from likes + comments per follower
• Multi-strategy extraction — tries meta tags, JSON-LD, embedded GraphQL data, and regex fallbacks
• Rate limited — 2-second delay between requests to avoid blocking
• Graceful abort — clean shutdown when the Actor is stopped

Input

Field	Type	Description	Default
profileUrls	string[]	Instagram profile URLs to scrape	[]
hashtags	string[]	Hashtags to explore (with or without #)	[]
maxPosts	integer	Max posts to extract per profile / hashtag (1-200)	30
includeComments	boolean	Include comment counts when available	true
includeLikes	boolean	Include like counts when available	true

At least one of profileUrls or hashtags is required.

Example input

{
  "profileUrls": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/",
    "https://www.instagram.com/natgeo/"
  ],
  "hashtags": ["travel", "photography"],
  "maxPosts": 20,
  "includeComments": true,
  "includeLikes": true
}

Output

Each dataset item is either a profile result or a hashtag result.

Profile output fields

Field	Type	Description
username	string	Instagram handle
fullName	string?	Display name
biography	string?	Profile bio text
followerCount	integer?	Number of followers
followingCount	integer?	Number of accounts followed
postCount	integer?	Total number of posts
isPrivate	boolean?	Whether the account is private
isVerified	boolean?	Whether the account is verified
profilePicUrl	string?	Profile picture URL
externalUrl	string?	External link in bio
engagementRate	number?	(Likes + Comments) / Followers × 100
posts	array	List of extracted posts (see below)
scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of scrape
error	string?	Error message if scraping failed

Hashtag output fields

Field	Type	Description
hashtag	string	The hashtag (without #)
postCount	integer?	Estimated total post count
posts	array	List of extracted posts
scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of scrape

Post object fields

Field	Type	Description
shortcode	string	Unique post identifier
caption	string?	Post caption text
likes	integer?	Like count
comments	integer?	Comment count
mediaUrl	string?	URL of the image/video
mediaType	string	GraphImage / GraphVideo / GraphSidepage
timestamp	string?	ISO 8601 timestamp of the post
isVideo	boolean	Whether the post is a video
videoUrl	string?	URL of the video (if applicable)
hashtags	string[]	Hashtags extracted from caption
mentions	string[]	@mentions extracted from caption

Example output

{
  "username": "nasa",
  "fullName": "NASA",
  "biography": "Explore the universe and discover our home planet.",
  "followerCount": 75000000,
  "followingCount": 78,
  "postCount": 4200,
  "isPrivate": false,
  "isVerified": true,
  "profilePicUrl": "https://instagram.com/...",
  "externalUrl": "https://www.nasa.gov/",
  "engagementRate": 2.4513,
  "posts": [
    {
      "shortcode": "CxYzAbCdEfG",
      "caption": "Exploring new worlds #space #science",
      "likes": 1250000,
      "comments": 8452,
      "mediaUrl": "https://instagram.com/...",
      "mediaType": "GraphImage",
      "timestamp": "2026-06-15T14:30:00+00:00",
      "isVideo": false,
      "videoUrl": null,
      "hashtags": ["space", "science"],
      "mentions": []
    }
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-04T12:00:00+00:00"
}

Limitations

Instagram aggressively blocks automated access. This actor works without login by parsing the public HTML of profile and hashtag pages, but:

Limitation	Details
No login	Some data (stories, full follower lists, private profiles) requires authentication
Rate limiting	Instagram may return 429 errors after several requests; the actor implements exponential back-off but heavy use will be blocked
JavaScript rendering	Instagram is fully client-side rendered. The actor extracts what's available from embedded JSON and meta tags — the richest data comes from __NEXT_DATA__ / __INITIAL_STATE__ blobs, which aren't always present
Post count	The full set of posts requires JS scrolling; this actor extracts what's available in the initial page load (usually first 12 posts)
Comment/like accuracy	Live like/comment counts shown on the page may differ from what's embedded in the HTML
Hashtag total count	The total post count for hashtags is estimated from meta tag descriptions

For production use with authentication and JS rendering, consider:

• Using Playwright/Selenium (requires the Apify Playwright Actor base image)
• Using Instagram's Basic Display API (requires Facebook app registration)
• Using a commercial Instagram data provider

Local development

# Create virtualenv
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Set Python path for apify CLI
export APIFY_ACTOR_PYTHON_VENV_PATH=.venv

# Run locally
apify run --purge

Changelog

0.1.0 — Initial release

• Profile scraping with multi-strategy extraction
• Hashtag exploration
• Engagement rate calculation
• Graceful abort handling
• Rate limiting with exponential back-off