Instagram Fake Follower Checker & Audience Audit

Audit any public Instagram account for fake followers and bots. The actor samples the account's real follower list, scores every sampled follower on proven bot signals, and returns a fake-follower percentage, an audience quality grade, and the full per-follower evidence — the same audit influencer-marketing platforms charge hundreds per month for.

What you get

One audit summary:

• Fake follower % and suspicious % from a real follower sample (not an estimate)
• Audience quality grade (A–D)
• Signal breakdown — how many sampled followers had no profile picture, zero posts, suspicious follow ratios, spammy handles, or empty bios
• Sample statistics — private %, verified count, average follower/following counts across the sample

Plus one record per sampled follower:

• Bot score (0–100) with a likely_fake / suspicious / likely_real verdict
• The exact flags that fired, follower/following/post counts, and profile URL
• Optional deep check: each follower's account creation date — brand-new accounts are the strongest bot signal

Export everything to JSON, CSV, Excel, or Google Sheets from the Apify console.

Use cases

• Influencer vetting — check an influencer's audience authenticity before signing a sponsorship deal
• Agency audits — screen creator rosters and report audience quality to clients
• Brand safety — verify partner accounts aren't inflated with purchased followers
• Competitor benchmarking — compare audience quality across accounts in your niche
• Account purchase due diligence — know how much of an audience is real before buying

How it works

The actor samples up to 1,000 real followers of the target account and scores each one on bot signals: missing profile picture, zero posts, follow-ratio anomalies, machine-generated handle patterns, empty bios, and (with deep check) account age under 6 months. The fake-follower percentage is the share of sampled followers scoring as likely fake.

How to use

1. Enter the Instagram username to audit (with or without @)
2. Choose a sample size (200 is a good default; 500+ for large accounts)
3. Optionally enable Deep check for account-age verification
4. Run the actor — the summary is the first record in the Dataset tab, follower evidence follows

Output format

Summary record:

{
  "recordType": "summary",
  "auditedUsername": "example",
  "followerCount": 152340,
  "sampleSize": 200,
  "fakeFollowerPct": 18.5,
  "suspiciousPct": 12.0,
  "qualityGrade": "B",
  "signalBreakdown": { "no_profile_picture": 31, "zero_posts": 44, "suspicious_follow_ratio": 19 },
  "sampleStats": { "privatePct": 41.5, "verifiedCount": 2, "noPostsPct": 22.0, "anonymousAvatarPct": 15.5, "avgFollowers": 412, "avgFollowing": 890 }
}

Follower record:

{
  "recordType": "follower",
  "auditedUsername": "example",
  "followerUsername": "user12345678",
  "botScore": 65,
  "verdict": "likely_fake",
  "flags": ["no_profile_picture", "zero_posts", "spammy_handle"],
  "followers": 3,
  "following": 1840,
  "posts": 0,
  "profileUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/user12345678/"
}

Free tier limits

Runs on a free Apify plan are limited to:

• 20 followers sampled per run (the sample size input is capped automatically)
• 3 runs per day
• 10 minutes between runs

Upgrade to any paid Apify plan to remove all three limits and audit with full sample sizes.

FAQ

Do I need to log in or provide cookies? No. No login, no cookies, no risk to your own account.

How accurate is it? The sample is drawn from the account's live follower list. At 200 followers the fake percentage is typically within a few points of a full audit; increase the sample size for tighter confidence.