Instagram Followers: With Bot Profile checker

Instagram Followers Scraper — Quality Score, Bot Risk and Rank

Instagram Followers: With Bot Profile checker scrapes followers or following lists from any public Instagram profile and scores every collected account with a heuristic quality/authenticity score — plus a run-level breakdown of how much of that audience looks genuine versus low-effort or likely-bot. The scoring runs on data already present in the follower payload, so it costs no extra requests and works on every run. It's built for influencer marketing teams vetting followings before a partnership, agencies auditing multiple accounts, and researchers who need an audience-quality signal at scale.

What is Instagram Followers: With Bot Profile checker?

Instagram Followers: With Bot Profile checker is an Apify Actor that collects followers or following lists from one or more Instagram profiles and layers a heuristic authenticity score on top of each collected account. An Instagram sessionid cookie is optional but recommended — the Actor still runs logged-out, but may get blocked more often without it. Key capabilities:

• Scrape either followers or following for one or many target profiles in a single run
• Score every collected profile 0-100 for quality/authenticity, using only signals already present in the followers/following payload (no extra requests)
• Get a per-target quality-summary row with high/medium/low tier counts and percentages
• Filter output to only high-enough-quality rows with minQualityScore, or drop low-tier rows entirely with excludeLowQuality
• Automatic proxy fallback (direct → datacenter → residential) on repeated blocks

What data can I extract with Instagram Followers: With Bot Profile checker?

Field	Example Value	Use Case
username / full_name	"nike_fan_92" / "Alex Rivera"	Identify the follower/following account
type / isChild	"follower" / false	Distinguish individual profile rows from the per-target summary row
is_verified / is_private	false / true	Filter to verified accounts, or exclude private ones from further enrichment
qualityScore	72	Rank accounts from most to least likely genuine
likelyBotScore	28	The inverse view — how much penalty this account accumulated
qualityTier	"high"	Quick bucket for filtering (high/medium/low)
qualityFlags	["no_avatar", "digit_heavy_username"]	See exactly which signals triggered the score
totalScored / highQualityCount / mediumQualityCount / lowQualityCount	500 / 310 / 140 / 50	Per-target audience-quality breakdown (summary rows only)
highQualityPercent / mediumQualityPercent / lowQualityPercent	62.0 / 28.0 / 10.0	Percentage view of the same breakdown
profile_pic_url	CDN image URL	Visual reference for a moderation or CRM UI
rank	14	Position in the collected list
profileUrl	"https://www.instagram.com/nike_fan_92/"	Direct link to the profile
scrapedAt	"2026-07-26T14:02:11+00:00"	Record when the row was collected
success	true	Confirm the row completed without error

Quality and authenticity scoring

qualityScore/likelyBotScore/qualityTier/qualityFlags come from a fully documented, deterministic penalty system computed purely from fields already in the followers/following payload — no extra HTTP requests, and it can't be blocked the way post-history-dependent features can. Penalties: 30 points for no profile picture set, 25 points for a missing full name, up to 25 points for a suspicious username pattern (all-digits scores highest, a long trailing digit run scores less), and a 20-point "stacked-suspicion" bonus penalty when private + no avatar + no name all occur together. qualityScore = 100 − total penalty, and qualityTier buckets at high (≥70), medium (40-69), or low (<40). This is explicitly a heuristic, not a certainty: a genuine, camera-shy private account can score low, and a well-run bot farm that fills in a name and avatar can score high. Treat qualityTier as a triage signal to prioritize review, not a verdict.

Target, mode and volume controls

profileTargets accepts one or many profile URLs or bare usernames processed in the same run. listMode switches between followers (who follows the target) and following (who the target follows). maxProfilesPerTarget caps how many accounts are collected per target (0 = unlimited, collect until pagination ends).

Why not build this yourself?

Instagram's Graph API only exposes a Business/Creator account's own follower count to that account's own access token — it has no endpoint for pulling another profile's follower or following list, and offers no built-in authenticity scoring at all. Building an equivalent tool means reproducing Instagram's mobile-web followers/following pagination, a three-tier proxy escalation ladder for handling blocks, and designing and tuning a quality-scoring heuristic from scratch. All of that is implemented and documented in this Actor's source.

How to use data extracted from Instagram?

Influencer marketing and partnership vetting

Run a creator's profileTargets with listMode: "followers" before a paid partnership to see the highQualityPercent/lowQualityPercent split in the summary row — a following with an unusually high low-quality percentage is a signal worth investigating before committing budget.

Agencies auditing multiple accounts

Agencies managing several client or prospect accounts can run one target per client and compare qualityTier distributions side by side, using minQualityScore to standardize what counts as a "real" follower across every account in the comparison.

Market and audience research

Track how highQualityPercent changes for a brand's own following over time (e.g. before and after a giveaway campaign, which often attracts low-quality follow-for-follow accounts), using qualityFlags to see which specific signals are driving the shift.

AI agents and automated pipelines

An agent can call this Actor to pre-screen a target's audience before triggering downstream outreach or analysis — filtering on qualityTier and is_private to focus only on genuine, public accounts worth engaging.

🔼 Input sample

Parameter	Required	Type	Description	Example Value
profileTargets	No	array	Profile URLs or usernames whose followers/following to scrape	["https://www.instagram.com/nike/"]
listMode	No	string (enum)	followers (default) or following	"followers"
maxProfilesPerTarget	No	integer (0-100,000)	Max profiles to collect per target; 0 = unlimited	100 (default)
resultsPerPage	No	integer (1-50)	Page size per underlying API request	12 (default)
igSessionCookie	No	string (secret)	Instagram sessionid cookie; optional but recommended	"(your session cookie)"
excludeLowQuality	No	boolean	Drop qualityTier: "low" rows from individual output	false (default)
minQualityScore	No	integer (0-100)	Drop rows with qualityScore below this value	0 (default)
proxyConfiguration	No	object	Proxy settings; auto-escalates on repeated blocks	{"useApifyProxy": true}

{
  "profileTargets": ["https://www.instagram.com/nike/"],
  "listMode": "followers",
  "maxProfilesPerTarget": 500,
  "excludeLowQuality": true
}

Common pitfall: excludeLowQuality and minQualityScore only drop individual profile rows from the output — the run's quality-summary row always reflects the true full audience distribution regardless of these filters, so summary percentages and the count of rows you actually receive can legitimately differ.

🔽 Output sample

Output is typed, normalized JSON — one row per collected follower/following account, plus one summary row per target profile (exportable as JSON, CSV, or Excel).

{
  "pk": "7891234567",
  "username": "nike_fan_92",
  "full_name": "Alex Rivera",
  "type": "follower",
  "isChild": false,
  "rank": 14,
  "profile_pic_url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/...",
  "is_verified": false,
  "is_private": false,
  "followed_by": null,
  "qualityScore": 72,
  "likelyBotScore": 28,
  "qualityTier": "high",
  "qualityFlags": [],
  "pk_id": "7891234567",
  "id": "7891234567",
  "fbid_v2": "7891234567",
  "third_party_downloads_enabled": null,
  "strong_id__": "7891234567",
  "profile_pic_id": null,
  "has_anonymous_profile_picture": false,
  "account_badges": [],
  "latest_reel_media": 0,
  "is_favorite": false,
  "profileUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/nike_fan_92/",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-26T14:02:11+00:00",
  "success": true
}

All 34 fields shown across this section (including the summary-only fields totalScored, highQualityCount, mediumQualityCount, lowQualityCount, and their percentage equivalents) are the Actor's real dataset columns.

How do you filter and target specific profiles?

listMode is the primary axis — followers versus following for the same target profile answers different questions (who follows a brand versus who a brand follows). Scope is controlled by profileTargets, which accepts multiple profiles per run so you can compare audiences side by side. The genuine quality thresholds here are minQualityScore (numeric cutoff) and excludeLowQuality (tier-based cutoff) — combine both if you want a strict, high-confidence-only output. Volume is controlled by maxProfilesPerTarget, with 0 meaning unlimited collection until Instagram's own pagination ends.

{ "profileTargets": ["https://www.instagram.com/nike/"], "listMode": "following", "maxProfilesPerTarget": 1000 }

{ "profileTargets": ["cristiano", "nike"], "listMode": "followers", "minQualityScore": 60, "excludeLowQuality": true }

{ "profileTargets": ["https://www.instagram.com/nike/"], "listMode": "followers", "maxProfilesPerTarget": 0 }

▶️ Want to try other Instagram scrapers?

Scraper Name	What it extracts
Instagram Followers Count Scraper	A lightweight follower-count-only lookup
Instagram Followers Scraper: Related Profile Expansion	Followers plus related/lookalike profile discovery
Instagram Following Scraper: Related Profiles List	Following lists with related-profile expansion
Instagram Related Person Scraper With Profile Enrichment	Related/lookalike networks for a given account
Instagram Profile Scraper & Account Privacy Checker	Full profile details plus privacy-status checking
LinkedIn Company Employees Scraper With Growth Tracker	Comparable audience-composition data for LinkedIn companies

How to extract Instagram data programmatically

Every run is a standard Apify Actor call — one API request with your token, JSON input, JSON results back.

Python example

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN>")

run_input = {
    "profileTargets": ["https://www.instagram.com/nike/"],
    "listMode": "followers",
    "maxProfilesPerTarget": 500,
}

run = client.actor("<YOUR_USERNAME>/instagram-followers-with-bot-profile-checker").call(run_input=run_input)

for row in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(row["username"], row["qualityTier"], row["qualityScore"])

Export to spreadsheets or CRM

Export the dataset directly as CSV or Excel, then map username/profileUrl to your CRM's contact fields and qualityTier/qualityScore to a segmentation column for prioritizing outreach or partnership review.

Is it legal to scrape Instagram followers?

Follower usernames, full names, and profile pictures are personal data, so GDPR and CCPA obligations apply to storing and using this data — the same as any audience-analysis dataset containing individual identities. Public Instagram follower/following lists are visible to any logged-out visitor on the profile itself, but downstream storage for research or vetting purposes should follow applicable data-protection rules. Consult legal counsel for commercial applications involving bulk storage of personal data.

❓ FAQ

How accurate is the bot/quality detection?

It's an explicitly disclosed heuristic, not a certainty — full transparency is built in via qualityFlags, which shows exactly which signals (missing avatar, missing name, suspicious username pattern, or the private+no-avatar+no-name combination) contributed to the score. A genuine private account can score low, and a well-maintained fake account can score high; treat qualityTier as a triage signal to prioritize review, not a verdict.

Can I get both followers and following in one run?

Not in the same run — listMode is a single choice per run (followers or following). Run twice with the same profileTargets and different listMode values to get both.

How many profiles can I get per run?

maxProfilesPerTarget (0-100,000, default 100) caps collection per target profile; 0 means unlimited, collecting until Instagram's own pagination ends.

Do I need an Instagram account to use this?

No, but it's recommended — the Actor runs logged-out by default but may get blocked more often. Supplying your Instagram sessionid cookie via igSessionCookie improves reliability.

Does the quality summary row count filtered-out profiles?

Yes — the per-target summary row's tier counts and percentages always reflect the true full audience, even when excludeLowQuality or minQualityScore drops individual rows from the output. The summary is never affected by those filters.

Does Instagram Followers: With Bot Profile checker work with Claude, ChatGPT, and AI agent frameworks?

It has no dedicated MCP server registration in this Actor's current setup, but it is callable as a standard Apify API endpoint by any agent framework that can make an authenticated HTTP request and parse JSON.

How does this compare to other Instagram follower scrapers?

No independently verifiable competitor listing could be confirmed at the time of writing, so no specific comparison is made here. This Actor's distinguishing feature is the built-in quality/authenticity scoring layer computed at no extra request cost.

Can I use this without any Instagram credentials at all?

Yes — igSessionCookie is optional. The run will attempt logged-out access, though Instagram may block requests more aggressively without a session.

What happens to rows that fail to process?

Failed rows still push with success: false rather than being silently dropped, so you can see exactly how many profiles in a target's list didn't resolve.

Conclusion

Instagram Followers: With Bot Profile checker turns a raw followers or following list into a scored, triage-ready dataset — quality/authenticity signals computed at no extra request cost, with full transparency into exactly why each account scored the way it did. It's built for influencer marketing teams, agencies, and researchers who need an audience-quality signal before committing budget or outreach. Start a run with your target profiles and listMode, and add minQualityScore when you only want the accounts most likely to be genuine.