Instagram Reels Keyword Search Scraper — Reels Search to Text

Type the phrases you want and get the reels Instagram ranks top for each: caption, hashtags, mentions, engagement, media links, owner and the permalink — and, on request, the spoken words of every reel as a timestamped transcript. No login, no cookies, no proxy to configure. Your result limit is exact — set 30 and you get 30, and a reel we could not deliver is never charged. A transcript is charged only when it was actually produced. Nothing is charged for starting a run.

See a real run before you spend anything: sample dataset — twenty reels for "pasta recipes" from one verified run with transcripts on: twelve with their spoken words, eight with no speech and no transcript charge. Unedited, with the run's own summary row last.

Coming back for fresh reels? Instagram re-ranks a keyword continuously: on one buyer's own schedule — the same five phrases every three minutes for five hours — about a third of the reels each read met were new to that account, and the share rises the longer you leave between runs. To collect on a schedule, open Schedules in Apify Console, add this actor (or a task saved from it) with the same input — e.g. { "keywords": ["sourdough bread"], "resultsLimit": 30 } — and pick how often. Every run remembers the reels it delivered to your account, so a later run skips them — not delivered again, not charged — and only reels new to you are charged; switch Include reels you already have on to get them back, still uncharged. Daily suits a busy phrase; weekly is enough for a niche one. More on how often this data changes.

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

• Actor id: steadyfetch/instagram-keyword-reels-scraper
• Input: { "keywords": ["sourdough bread"], "includeTranscripts": true, "resultsLimit": 30 } — "keywords" is the one field you have to set; "includeTranscripts" adds the spoken words.
• Cap the bill: set maxTotalChargeUsd on the run (a run option, not Actor input), e.g. 0.50 — the run stops when it reaches it, and the last row says what it did not deliver.
• Price: from $0.60 per 1,000 reels on Gold and above, $2.40 per 1,000 on the Apify free plan; a transcript is a flat $0.006, and only when one was actually produced. No start fee, and a reel we could not deliver is never charged. Full table below.

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

What you get

One row per reel, with everything the reel exposes at one price — there is no second charge for "details":

Column	What it holds
shortCode · url	the reel's own code and its permalink
caption · hashtags · mentions	the caption, and the tags and @handles pulled out of it
takenAt	when it was posted, ISO-8601 UTC
productType · isVideo · hasAudio	it is a reel (clips), and whether the video carries an audio track
likeCount · commentCount · playCount · videoDuration	engagement, and the length of the reel
ownerUsername · ownerFullName · ownerId · ownerIsVerified	who posted it
displayUrl · videoUrl · videoUrlExpiresAt	the media links, and when the signed link stops working
transcript · transcriptLanguage · transcriptSegments	the spoken words, the language detected, and the timestamped segments
transcriptStatus · transcriptReason · transcriptCharged	whether a transcript was produced, why not when it was not, and whether it billed
keyword · input · source	which of your phrases found it (source is always instagram)
charged · chargedEvents · status · statusReason	whether this row was billed and for which events, so your invoice reconciles from the dataset itself

Media links are signed and time-limited by Instagram: videoUrlExpiresAt tells you exactly how long each one stays fetchable, so download what you need in the same session. The requesting network address is stripped out of every link before it reaches your dataset.

What a row looks like

One delivered row from a real run — the phrase latte art, 2026-09-12. This row charges one reel; the transcript is a second event and this run did not ask for one, so transcriptCharged is false. Media links are signed and time-limited, so they are shown here as placeholders.

{
  "postId": "3975943623665444663",
  "shortCode": "DctY6kHjuc3",
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/DctY6kHjuc3/",
  "type": "video",
  "productType": "clips",
  "caption": "#learnbarista #barista #LearnWithBBTA #CareerGrowth #baristaacademy #baristacourse #baristaskill #professionalbaristacourse #coffeepassion #baristatrainingdhaka #latteart #BaristaLife",
  "hashtags": [
    "learnbarista",
    "barista",
    "learnwithbbta",
    "careergrowth",
    "baristaacademy",
    "baristacourse",
    "baristaskill",
    "professionalbaristacourse",
    "coffeepassion",
    "baristatrainingdhaka",
    "latteart",
    "baristalife"
  ],
  "mentions": [],
  "takenAt": "2026-08-31T15:17:49.000Z",
  "takenAtTimestamp": 1788189469,
  "likeCount": 44379,
  "commentCount": 50,
  "playCount": 2947422,
  "videoDuration": 21.799999237060547,
  "displayUrl": "https://…",
  "videoUrl": "https://…",
  "videoUrlExpiresAt": "2026-09-14T07:11:13.000Z",
  "carouselCount": null,
  "dimensionsWidth": 1080,
  "dimensionsHeight": 1920,
  "ownerId": null,
  "ownerUsername": "bbta.bd",
  "ownerFullName": "Bangladesh Barista Training Academy-BBTA",
  "ownerIsVerified": false,
  "taggedUsers": [],
  "coauthors": [],
  "locationName": null,
  "locationId": null,
  "isPinned": false,
  "isSponsored": false,
  "postSource": "keyword-search",
  "profileHandle": null,
  "profileFullName": null,
  "profileFollowers": null,
  "profileIsVerified": null,
  "profilePostCount": null,
  "source": "instagram",
  "keyword": "latte art",
  "isVideo": true,
  "hasAudio": true,
  "transcript": null,
  "transcriptLanguage": null,
  "transcriptDurationSeconds": null,
  "transcriptSegments": null,
  "transcriptStatus": "not_requested",
  "transcriptRetryable": false,
  "transcriptReason": "Transcripts were not requested on this run — switch on \"Include transcripts\" to add the spoken words.",
  "transcriptCharged": false,
  "input": "latte art",
  "sourceIndex": 0,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-12T20:43:40.500Z",
  "repeat": false,
  "charged": true,
  "chargedEvents": {"reel":1,"reel-transcript":0},
  "status": "delivered",
  "retryable": false,
  "statusReason": null,
  "#k": "3975943623665444663",
  "#ce": {"reel":1},
  "#ask": {"delivered":1}
}

Price

Two charged events, and each lands only on work that was actually delivered.

reel — one per delivered reel row, tiered by your Apify plan:

Apify plan	Per reel	Per 1,000 reels
Free plan	$0.0024	$2.40
Bronze	$0.0014	$1.40
Silver	$0.0009	$0.90
Gold and above	$0.0006	$0.60 per 1,000 reels

reel-transcript — $0.006 per reel whose spoken words were actually produced, the same on every plan. It is off by default; switch on Include transcripts to get it. A reel with no speech, no audio track, an expired media link, or longer than the 180-second transcript ceiling is still delivered as a reel row with an explicit null transcript and a reason — and no transcript charge.

Platform usage is included in both prices — there is no separate compute bill on top, and no start fee. Set maxTotalChargeUsd on the run and it is a hard ceiling: with transcripts on, a reel and its transcript are reserved together, so the run stops cleanly under your maximum rather than half-billing a unit.

For a faster run, raise the memory. A run starts at 512 MB by default. With transcripts on, much of a run's time goes into pulling the sound out of each reel, and that step gets faster with more memory: set Memory to 1 GB or 2 GB under Run options before you press Start. A run without transcripts spends its time reading search pages and gains little from it. The price per reel is the same at any memory, because platform usage is already included.

Honest rows: what "not charged" actually means

Every run closes its own books. A reel that was not delivered leaves an uncharged row saying which of seven things happened, and none of them is billed:

• no_reels — the ask was not filled, and the row says WHICH of four endings closed the search: Instagram had nothing more to give; Instagram's search came back holding no reels at all on two independent reads of the same phrase, so starting the same run again in the next minute buys the identical answer; this actor stopped at its own ceiling on how deep one search is read; or its own backstop closed a search whose later pages only re-served reels you already have. Instagram's reel search re-ranks rather than paging cleanly, so the last two are bounds of ours over a feed still serving — the row names them as ours and says what you can change, rather than calling a full shelf an empty one.
• stopped_at_limit — one of your own limits, your maximum total charge, the run clock, or the Apify free plan's daily allowance stopped it first. The row names which.
• vendor_unavailable — the read did not go through. Temporary, says nothing about your phrase, and a re-run is the fix. An answer holding no reels at all is asked once more, ranked differently, before it is ever booked as one of these. If the search had already delivered reels when it stopped answering, the row opens with how many you were handed and charged for, and asks for the re-run only on the rest.
• source_refused — Instagram would not run that phrase as a search at all. The refusal is the same every time, so the row says plainly that re-running cannot change it, and there was no result fee.
• unsupported_shape — Instagram answered in a shape this actor does not read yet. That is on us, not on your phrase; the answer is the same every time, so the row asks you to tell us the phrase rather than asking you to re-run. No result fee.
• vendor_budget — this actor's own data budget stopped the run rather than collecting more. Usually that is its budget for one run, and a new run on the same searches continues, skipping reels you already have; rarely its data source is paused until the start of next month. The row says which.
• user_input — a value that is not a search phrase (a profile link, a reel link, several phrases pasted into one line). The row names the mistake and, where another actor of ours takes that value, names that actor too.

On a delivered reel, transcriptStatus carries the same honesty for the transcript leg: no_speech, no_audio_stream, expired, transcript_too_long, failed_download, asr_failed, asr_unavailable. Each is an explicit null transcript with a reason on the row, and none of them is charged.

The last row of every run is a receipt: delivered, asked for, transcripts produced, what was skipped, what stopped it, and the charged-event totals for both events.

How often this data changes

Instagram's keyword search re-ranks continuously: the same phrase asked twice an hour apart returns an overlapping but different slice, and popular phrases take new reels every few minutes. Measured on a real schedule — one account running the same five phrases every three minutes for five hours on 2026-09-21 — about a third of the reels each read met were new to that account, and 5,549 reels were collected across those runs. The longer you leave between runs, the higher that share. So re-running the same phrase keeps finding reels the earlier runs did not — but it would also re-buy the ones you already have, so it does not. Every run remembers what it delivered to your account, in the key-value store ig-keyword-reels-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 reel instead. Where the reels you already have sit in FRONT of the new ones in Instagram's ranking, the search pays its way past a bounded number of pages of them to reach the new ones; past that it stops, and one uncharged row says so and names the bound as this actor's rather than reporting a full shelf as an empty one. 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 reels you already have. That makes a daily schedule cost only what is new, and — as long as the token the schedule runs on can open that store — it never re-transcribes a reel you already paid a transcript for. Switch Include reels you already have on to get them back anyway, marked repeat: true and still uncharged, and use Skip reels in this dataset to carry the same memory across accounts.

What a second run costs

Only reels new to your account are charged. Reels you already have are skipped and cost nothing — or, with Include reels you already have on, are handed back as rows marked repeat: true, delivered with no result fee. A transcript is a separate event and is charged only when one was actually produced, and never on a reel that came back as a repeat. Nothing is charged for starting a run.

So the bill for a scheduled run is exactly the new reels it found, and the receipt row at the end of every run says both halves: how many reels were new and charged, and how many came back from your account's memory for nothing. The run page's own line says it too.

Reliability

The reels 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 empty search. The transcripts are produced by a speech-recognition service from the reel's own audio; when it cannot answer, the reel is still delivered and only the transcript is left null.

Related actors

• One reel you already have the link to, transcribed: Instagram Reel Transcript Scraper — https://apify.com/steadyfetch/instagram-reel-transcript-scraper
• Posts and reels under a hashtag: Instagram Hashtag Scraper — https://apify.com/steadyfetch/instagram-hashtag-scraper
• One account's own posts: Instagram Profile Posts Scraper — https://apify.com/steadyfetch/instagram-profile-posts

Limits and good manners

Max reels and Max run seconds take any number you type: this actor delivers at most 2,000 reels in one run and runs for at most an hour (and for at least 30 seconds), so a bigger ask runs at the ceiling instead of being refused, and one uncharged row says what was asked for and what was used.

On the Apify free plan this actor reads at most 60 pages of Instagram search results per account in any 24 hours (about 400-700 reels), and all accounts on the free plan share one daily allowance on this actor. Past either, the run keeps everything it already delivered, ships one uncharged row saying when it resets (UTC), and charges nothing past it. Reels you already have are still skipped from your account's memory as usual. Paid Apify plans carry no daily allowance.

Only public reels are returned. Instagram's keyword search serves a ranked slice rather than a complete archive — you can see the same surface yourself on Instagram's own keyword search page — so a very deep ask on one phrase runs out around 60-100 distinct reels and the run says so instead of padding. Transcripts are capped at reels of 180 seconds or less. This actor may stop working if Instagram changes how the data is served; if it does, failed items 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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