Instagram Hashtag Scraper 📸

A high-performance, native Instagram hashtag scraper engineered for reliability, deep data fidelity, and ultra-competitive pricing.

1:1 Drop-in Replacement for apify/instagram-hashtag-scraper at $0.0010/result, below Apify's $0.0026 Free-plan list price.

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⚡ Features & Advantages

• Zero Upstream Dependencies: Powered by native browser extraction with stealth headers and proxy rotation. No 3rd-party actor delegation or hidden markups.
• Full Apify Schema Compatibility: Drop-in replacement for existing workflows, pipelines, and integrations.
• Pay-Per-Event Monetization: Only pay for the posts and reels you actually scrape ($0.0010 per post).
• Rich Data Extraction:
  • Post metadata (ID, shortCode, URL, post type, captions, timestamps)
  • Creator insights (ownerUsername, ownerId)
  • Engagement metrics (likesCount, commentsCount, videoPlayCount, videoViewCount)
  • Media assets (high-res displayUrl, direct videoUrl, alt accessibility text)
  • Parsed hashtags and user mentions

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💰 Pricing

$0.0010 per delivered result ($1.00 per 1,000 posts), plus a $0.00005 actor-start event. You are charged only for posts and reels that reach the dataset.

How this compares

The output schema matches apify/instagram-hashtag-scraper, so an existing pipeline swaps over without reshaping. At $1.00 per 1,000 posts it is below apify/instagram-hashtag-scraper ($2.60) and apify/instagram-hashtag-analytics-scraper ($2.30, plus a $0.001 start event per run and $0.007 per top-posts or latest-posts call). apidojo/instagram-hashtag-scraper lists $0.40 per 1,000 dataset items but charges $0.016 per keyword query on top, and scraping_solutions/instagram-hashtag-scraper-pro-no-cookies lists $1.25.

Actor	Price per 1,000 posts	Platform usage
subimpact/instagram-hashtag-scraper	$1.00	not billed separately
apify/instagram-hashtag-scraper	$2.60	see listing
apify/instagram-hashtag-analytics-scraper	$2.30	see listing
apidojo/instagram-hashtag-scraper	$0.40 plus $16.00 per keyword query	see listing
scraping_solutions/instagram-hashtag-scraper-pro-no-cookies	$1.25	see listing

Prices are Apify Store list prices on the Free plan, checked 24 October 2026. Competitor prices can change; check their listings.

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📥 Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
hashtags	Array of Strings	Yes	["malaysianfood"]	List of Instagram hashtags to scrape (with or without #). Runs are capped at the first 20 hashtags.
resultsLimit	Integer	No	20	Max posts or reels to extract per hashtag (1–1000).
resultsType	Enum	No	posts	posts or reels — which content type to scrape. When reels is requested, photo posts are never returned.
keywordSearch	Boolean	No	false	Treat search terms as keyword phrases instead of single hashtags. Keyword search requires a logged-in session (sessionCookie): logged-out keyword terms hit Instagram's login wall, so the run stops after 2 consecutive walled terms and pushes one clear, un-charged error row per remaining term instead of retrying for hours.
dryRun	Boolean	No	false	Run input validation without extracting live posts or triggering billing.
proxyConfiguration	Object	No	{ "useApifyProxy": true }	Apify Proxy configuration. Note: with the default options (no groups) the run uses Apify datacenter IPs, which Instagram heavily blocks. Enable the RESIDENTIAL proxy group — or supply sessionCookie, which uses its own residential lane — for reliable extraction.
sessionCookie	String	No	empty	Optional sessionid cookie for logged-in mode. Used for this run only, never stored or logged.
feedType	Enum	No	top	Logged-in mode only: top (ranked grid) or recent (newest posts first).

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🆘 When a run delivers 0 posts

Instagram blocks most datacenter IP ranges outright, so the default proxy options (Apify datacenter proxies, no session cookie) often yield 0 results for the logged-out lane. When that happens, the run is deliberately marked failed (never a silent success) with a status message that names the fix:

• enable the RESIDENTIAL proxy group in the proxyConfiguration input, or
• supply a sessionCookie — the logged-in lane runs through its own sticky residential proxy.

Nothing is charged for the blocked run's placeholder/error rows.

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🔐 Logged-in mode

Logged out, Instagram caps a hashtag at roughly 12 posts and hides play counts. With a session cookie, this actor calls the Instagram hashtag API directly instead and returns the full feed: up to resultsLimit posts per hashtag (hard cap 1,000), real videoPlayCount for reels, and a choice of feed.

• Bring your own cookie (optional): paste the sessionCookie input, either a raw Cookie: ... header string or just the sessionid value. Credentials are used only to call Instagram from within the run and are never stored, logged, or included in the dataset.
• Owner deployments: cookies can also be supplied through the IG_SESSION_COOKIES environment variable as a JSON object. An input cookie takes precedence over the env var.
• Feed types: top returns the ranked grid the hashtag page shows by default; recent returns the newest posts first. Both paginate automatically with polite 1.5-3.5 s delays between page requests, capped at 40 pages per hashtag.
• Graceful fallback, with a wall guard: if Instagram rejects the session (login wall, challenge, rate limit), the run logs a warning and automatically continues with the logged-out mode for the remaining hashtags. Logged-out keyword search is not available, so after 2 consecutive keyword terms hit the wall the run stops trying them (one un-charged login_wall error row per remaining term, no browser work) and the status message summarises delivered vs walled/skipped terms. Every term is also capped by a per-term time budget. The run summary (KV OUTPUT) reports authMode, sessionStatus (ok, invalid, or not_provided) and the walled/skipped terms.
• Account risk: use a secondary throwaway account, never your main one. Automated API calls from a shared hosting IP range may violate Instagram's terms and can lead to account restrictions. Rows produced by logged-in mode are marked enrichmentSource: "session" in the dataset.

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📤 Output Dataset Format

Every post pushed to the default dataset follows the standard schema:

{
  "id": "3350192837482910293",
  "type": "Image",
  "shortCode": "C7AB123xyZ",
  "caption": "Delicious artisan coffee in Tokyo #tokyocafe #coffeelover Photo by @tokyobarista",
  "hashtags": ["tokyocafe", "coffeelover"],
  "mentions": ["tokyobarista"],
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/C7AB123xyZ/",
  "commentsCount": 128,
  "displayUrl": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51/sample.jpg",
  "alt": "Delicious artisan coffee in Tokyo #tokyocafe #coffeelover Photo by @tokyobarista",
  "likesCount": 3420,
  "timestamp": "2026-05-01T12:00:00.000Z",
  "ownerUsername": "tokyobarista",
  "ownerId": "1029384756"
}

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🛠️ Local Development & Testing

npm install
npm test
npm start