Instagram Followers Scraper — Followers & Following by Username

Paste the handles you care about and get the people who follow them, the people they follow, or both: handle, full name, user id, profile URL, profile picture, verified and private flags, and the position each one held in the list. No login, no cookies, no proxy to configure. Your result limit is exact — ask for 500 and you get 500, per account and per list, and a row we could not deliver is never charged. Nothing is charged for starting a run, which most actors in this niche do charge for.

Using an AI agent? Pin this actor in Apify's MCP server with one link: https://mcp.apify.com?tools=steadyfetch/instagram-followers-scraper

• Actor id: steadyfetch/instagram-followers-scraper
• Input: { "usernames": ["nasa"], "mode": "followers", "resultsLimit": 500 } — usernames is the one field you have to set.
• Cap the bill: set maxTotalChargeUsd on the run (a run option, not Actor input), e.g. 0.50 — the run stops cleanly when it reaches it.
• Price: from $0.50 per 1,000 rows on Gold and above ($0.0005 a row), $2.00 per 1,000 on the Apify free plan — the same price for a followers row and a following row. No start fee, and a row we could not deliver is never charged. Full table below.
• How often it changes: follower lists churn daily on an active account, so a weekly or daily schedule is where this earns its keep — the rows you already have are skipped rather than charged again, so a schedule pays only for what changed.

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

What you get

One row per person, in the order the list served them:

Column	What it holds
username · fullName · userId	who they are, and Instagram's own numeric id
profileUrl · profilePicUrl	their profile link, and their picture
isPrivate · isVerified · accountBadges	their account flags, as Instagram reports them
followerOf	this person follows the named account (a followers run)
followingOf	the named account follows this person (a following run)
direction · seedUsername · seedUserId · listPosition	which list this row came from, for which of your handles, and where it sat in it
source · input · sourceIndex · scrapedAt	always instagram, the exact value you typed, its place in your list, and when it was read
repeat · charged · status · retryable · statusReason	whether your account already had this row, whether it was billed, and why

followerOf and followingOf are not the same fact, and exactly one of them is filled on any row. A run in both mode returns both lists, and a person who appears in each gets two rows — that is two different facts, and the mutual-follow check people usually want is a join on those two columns.

What a row looks like

One delivered row from a real run — the following list of nasa, 2026-09-11. Every person on the list is one follower charge, and direction plus listPosition say which list the row came from and where it sat in it. Profile pictures are signed and time-limited by Instagram, so they are shown here as placeholders.

{
  "userId": "3443079229",
  "username": "jaxajp",
  "fullName": "JAXA（宇宙航空研究開発機構）",
  "profileUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/jaxajp/",
  "profilePicUrl": "https://…",
  "isPrivate": false,
  "isVerified": true,
  "accountBadges": [],
  "followerOf": null,
  "followingOf": "nasa",
  "direction": "following",
  "seedUsername": "nasa",
  "seedUserId": "528817151",
  "listPosition": 3,
  "source": "instagram",
  "input": "nasa",
  "sourceIndex": 0,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-11T10:25:49.238Z",
  "repeat": false,
  "charged": true,
  "status": "delivered",
  "retryable": false,
  "statusReason": null,
  "#k": "following:nasa:3443079229",
  "#ce": {"follower":1},
  "#ask": {"delivered":1}
}

Price

One charged event, follower, and it lands only on a row that was actually delivered. It covers both directions at the same price — a row from the followers list and a row from the following list cost the same, because they cost us the same.

Apify plan	Per row	Per 1,000 rows
Free plan	$0.002	$2.00
Bronze	$0.0012	$1.20
Silver	$0.00075	$0.75
Gold and above	$0.0005	$0.50 per 1,000

Platform usage is included in that price — there is no separate compute bill on top, no start fee, and no second charge for "details": every column below is in the row at that one price. Set maxTotalChargeUsd on the run and it is a hard ceiling: the run stops cleanly under it and the last row says what is left.

Honest rows: what "not charged" actually means

Every run closes its own books. A row that was asked for and not delivered leaves an uncharged row of its own saying which of ten things happened, in plain words, and none of them is billed:

• account_not_found — Instagram has no account at that handle. Proved by Instagram's own account lookup, not guessed from an empty list.
• private_account — the account is private, so Instagram publishes no follower list for it and nobody can read one without being approved by the account. Answered from the account lookup, before a single list read is spent.
• capped_by_instagram — the account is large enough that Instagram stops showing its list. See the section below; this is the one every competing actor leaves out.
• no_list — the list ran out before your limit did. That is the whole list Instagram publishes for the account, not a limit on the run.
• vendor_unavailable — the read did not go through. Temporary, says nothing about the account, and a re-run is the fix.
• source_refused — Instagram refused that read outright, and it refuses it the same way every time, so a re-run cannot change it. Check the handle in a browser; if it works there, say so on the Issues tab.
• unsupported_shape — Instagram answered in a shape this actor does not read yet. That is on us, not on the account, and a re-run gets the same answer — tell us on the Issues tab which handle it was and support for it will be added.
• vendor_budget — this actor reached its own monthly collection allowance and stopped rather than collecting more.
• stopped_at_limit — one of your own limits, the run clock, or one of this actor's own reading bounds stopped it first: it stops after three pages in a row that held nothing but rows you already have, and it reads at most 2,200 pages for any one list. The row names which one, so you raise the right setting. When a list is left unfinished this way, the run's last row carries a resumeCursor: pass that object back in Continue a stopped run, with the same usernames, and the next run picks up at exactly that point — no page is read twice, nothing already delivered is charged again, and nothing in between is skipped.
• user_input — a handle, a list value or a setting could not be used. The row names the field and the fix, and the rest of your handles still run.

The last row of every run is a receipt: delivered, asked for, what was skipped, what stopped it, and the charged-event totals, so your invoice reconciles from the dataset itself. A time limit ends the collecting, never the delivering — rows already in hand are always written out.

Instagram caps very large accounts, and this actor says so

Instagram limits how much of a very large account's follower list it will show to anyone. No tool can go past it, however it is priced.

Measured live on 2026-09-11: nasa, with 104,378,996 followers, returned 49 follower rows and then stopped. An account with 19 followers returns all 19. The two look identical on the wire, so this actor decides the difference against the account's own stated follower count rather than guessing from a short list.

When it happens you get a capped_by_instagram row naming how many rows were reached and how many the account reports having — and the rows past the cap are not charged. This is Instagram's own limit, not a setting on your run, and raising your result limit will not move it. The "following" list is not capped this way in our measurements: nasa's 91 following walked to the end in four pages.

So: this actor is at its best on the accounts whose lists are actually reachable — small and mid-size accounts, and the full "following" list of accounts of any size.

Settings

• Usernames — one handle or profile URL per line: nasa, @nasa, or the profile URL you copied out of the address bar. A pasted block of links is split on link boundaries, and a value that cannot be used becomes one uncharged row naming the fix while the rest of your handles still run.
• Which list (mode) — followers, following or both. Default followers.
• Max results per account (resultsLimit) — per account and per list, default 100. Three handles in both mode at 100 each asks for 600 rows, and every one of those 600 is either delivered or named by a row of its own. This actor delivers up to 50,000 rows per list; ask for more and the run still starts, continues at 50,000, and leaves one uncharged row saying what you asked for and what bound it.
• Include rows you already have (includeSeen) — hand back the rows your account already holds instead of skipping them. Still uncharged, marked repeat: true.
• Skip rows in this dataset (resumeFromDatasetId) — carry the same memory across Apify accounts, or resume a chain, by naming a dataset whose rows should not be collected again.
• Continue a stopped run (resumeCursor) — paste the resumeCursor object from a previous run's last row to carry on from exactly where it stopped. It positions the lists you ask for on this run, so keep the same usernames beside it; leave it empty to start from the top. A value that cannot be read is refused on an uncharged row rather than quietly restarting the list from page one.
• Max run seconds (maxRunSeconds) — default 600. The clock ends the collecting, never the delivering. It runs between 30 seconds and 1 hour; set it outside that and the run still starts, at the nearest one, with one uncharged row saying so. No setting here is ever refused for being too big or too small — the run starts, it runs at the nearest limit, and the row tells you which.

Press Start with nothing filled in and you get three built-in sample rows so you can see the column shape: nothing is read from Instagram on that run and there is no result fee for it.

How often this data changes, and the second run

Follower lists churn daily on an active account — people follow and unfollow constantly, so the answer to "who follows this account" is a moving one and a weekly or daily schedule is where this actor earns its keep.

Re-running the same handle would otherwise re-buy the rows you already have, so it does not. Every run remembers what it delivered to your account, in the key-value store ig-followers-account in your own Apify account, and a later run skips those: not delivered again, not charged, and the slot goes to the next new follower instead — so you still get the number you asked for, and a schedule costs only what changed. The memory is a key-value store in your own Apify account, so a run started with a scoped API token in restricted-access mode needs key-value store Read, Write and Create permission (Write is what lets the run remember what it delivered; without it every run pays again) or Actor runs set to Full access; without it the run says so on its status line and on an uncharged row, and cannot skip the rows you already have — so the schedule pays for them again until the token is allowed to open that store.

Reliability

The rows come from a licensed data feed rather than from scraping Instagram's own web pages, which is why there is nothing to log into and nothing to configure. When that feed cannot answer, the run says so on an uncharged row and finishes successfully — a failed read is never billed and never dressed up as an account with no followers.

Related actors

• One account's own posts and reels: Instagram Profile Posts Scraper — https://apify.com/steadyfetch/instagram-profile-posts
• The spoken words inside a reel: Instagram Reel Transcript Scraper — https://apify.com/steadyfetch/instagram-reel-transcript-scraper

Limits and good manners

Only public accounts return a list; a private one is answered as private and charged nothing. Instagram's own cap on very large accounts is described above and applies to every tool equally. Profile picture links are signed and time-limited by Instagram, and the requesting network address is stripped out of every link before it reaches your dataset. This actor may stop working if Instagram changes how the data is served; if it does, failed rows are never charged.

Support

Something off, or a column you need that is not here? Open an issue on the Issues tab — we usually reply within a couple of hours.

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