Instagram Latest Posts Monitor

Check any public Instagram profile for what it has posted lately — caption, likes, comments, images, video files, carousels and the full account record. 12 latest posts per profile — or 24 with the video tab switched on — newest first, 57 fields each.

$3 per 1,000 profiles read — Apify platform usage and residential proxy included, nothing else to pay. The charge is per profile and does not depend on how many posts come back, so a full read and a check that finds one new post cost the same. A profile that cannot be read is never charged.

No login, no cookies, no API key, no account of yours involved. There is no session to keep alive and nothing of yours to get restricted.

Unofficial. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Instagram or Meta.

Read this before you start: 12 posts per profile from the main grid, and 12 more if you turn on the video tab. That is Instagram's limit for a logged-out reader, not a setting. This is built to check many accounts often — if you need one account's back catalogue, this is the wrong tool.

What you get

One dataset item per post:

• The post — caption, permalink, publish time, type (image, video, carousel)
• Engagement — likes, comments, and play counts on video
• Media — full-size image URL and every smaller rendition; for video, a direct file URL; for a carousel, every slide with its own image or video
• Context — hashtags and mentions read from the caption, tagged accounts, collaborators, location, music credits on reels, alt text
• The account — bio, bio links, followers, following, total posts, category, business contact details, verification, profile pictures

{
  "type": "Sidecar",
  "shortCode": "DcJ2mQxFabc",
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/DcJ2mQxFabc/",
  "caption": "Hold the dots and scroll to switch between…",
  "likesCount": 216896,
  "commentsCount": 716,
  "timestamp": "2026-08-14T21:48:00.000Z",
  "childPostCount": 20,
  "hashtags": ["NASA", "space", "astronomy"],
  "ownerUsername": "nasa",
  "owner": { "followersCount": 104409230, "isVerified": true }
}

Two timelines for one request

Instagram serves a second timeline alongside the grid — the account's long-form and IGTV videos — in the same request, sharing no posts with the grid. Set includeVideoTab to double what a run returns at no extra cost. Every item says which one it came from in source (grid or videos).

It is off by default because that tab reaches years further back, and folding it in silently would change what "latest" means.

Related accounts

Instagram also ships up to fifty suggested accounts with every profile. Set includeRelatedProfiles to get them under owner.relatedProfiles, each with a username, name, ID, verification and link — a ready-made way to widen a watchlist.

How to use it

{ "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/" }] }

If you have usernames rather than links, put them in usernames instead — both lists are read as one:

{
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/" }],
  "usernames": ["natgeo", "@who"]
}

Residential proxy is required

Instagram allows one address about nineteen requests before refusing it, and the refusal lasts far longer than the message claims — measured still in force 33 minutes after "please wait a few minutes". So every attempt goes out from a different IP, which is what residential proxy provides.

The default is already set correctly. If you switch to datacenter, the pool is too small to rotate through and runs will come back rate_limited.

A post on a profile is not always by that profile

Instagram collaborations appear on both accounts' grids but are owned by one of them. ownerUsername is read from the post, so a collaboration is attributed to its real owner rather than to the profile you asked for — and coauthors lists the credited accounts.

What an empty result means

An empty dataset means the account was read and has posted nothing in the window you asked for. It never means "we could not look".

An account that cannot be read is reported as its own row with error and errorDescription, so one bad account never costs you the rest:

error	Meaning
not_found	No such account
private	Posts are visible only to approved followers, so a login would be needed
instagram_error	Instagram itself returned an internal error for this account — see below
rate_limited	Instagram refused every IP tried; use residential proxy, or fewer accounts per run
window_too_wide	onlyPostsNewerThan reaches further back than this run can see
read_failed	Instagram did not serve a readable response after several attempts

If every account in a run fails, the run itself fails, so a scheduled job cannot mistake a bad run for a quiet day.

About instagram_error

Some business accounts currently make Instagram's own endpoint return an internal error about a deleted asset. It is reproducible per account and is a fault on Instagram's side — not the account, and not this Actor. Nothing here can work around it; those accounts are reported so you can see exactly which ones and why, rather than being told the read simply failed.

What it costs

$3 per 1,000 profiles read. One profile is one charge, so asking for five profiles in one run costs five. There is no per-post fee and no per-run fee.

Two consequences worth knowing:

• Turn on the video tab. It doubles what you get — 24 posts instead of 12 — for exactly the same charge, because it arrives in the same request.
• Take all the posts. Fewer posts cost you no less; the price is for reading the profile.

Because the charge is per profile, what you pay per post depends on how many come back:

Posts returned	Works out at
24 — grid plus video tab	$0.13 per 1,000 posts
12 — grid only	$0.25 per 1,000 posts
1 — a poll that found one new post	$3.00 per 1,000 posts

If you are polling with onlyPostsNewerThan and most checks come back empty, budget by profiles checked, not posts collected — that is what you are billed on. A profile that cannot be read is never charged, so a list containing dead or private accounts costs only for the live ones.

Settings

Setting	Default	What it does
startUrls	—	Profiles to read, as links.
usernames	—	Profiles to read, as usernames. Combined with startUrls.
maxPosts	all	How many latest posts per account. Ceiling is 12, or 24 with the video tab.
includeVideoTab	false	Also read the long-form/IGTV timeline — roughly doubles the output, same request.
includeRelatedProfiles	false	Attach the accounts Instagram suggests alongside this one.
onlyPostsNewerThan	—	Keep only posts after a point: "20 hours", "3 days", or 2026-08-01.
includeRaw	false	Attach Instagram's untouched post object under raw.
proxy	Residential	Leave this alone unless you know why you are changing it.

onlyPostsNewerThan will refuse rather than mislead

A run sees an account's latest posts and no further back. If your window reaches past them, posts inside it were never fetched — and returning what was found would read as "this is everything since then". So the account is reported with window_too_wide instead, telling you how far back it could actually see. A pinned post does not count towards that reach, since it can be years old.

Limits

12 posts per profile from the grid, 24 with the video tab — Instagram's numbers, not settings.

Media URLs expire. Image and video URLs are signed by Instagram and die within hours. Download them promptly; the post's url is the durable one.

No comment text. This endpoint carries comment counts but no comments. firstComment and latestComments are present and empty so existing code does not break on their absence.

Private accounts cannot be read. They need an approved follower's login, which this deliberately does not have.

Call it from the API

curl -s "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/simple.actors~instagram-profile-posts/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"usernames":["nasa"]}'

Note

This reads publicly visible posts only — the same ones anyone can see without logging in. It does not log in, does not use cookies, and cannot reach private accounts, stories, direct messages, or anything else behind a login.