Instagram Related Users Scraper

The Actor expands one or more seed Instagram accounts into the accounts Instagram associates with them — the suggested-accounts set — and can follow those suggestions outward across several levels, producing a network of related accounts rather than a single list.

Because the association is Instagram's own, the result surfaces accounts of comparable audience and subject without requiring a query to describe them. Filters on verification, privacy, and follower count narrow the set, and the discovery graph itself can be exported alongside the accounts.

With enrichProfile and fullProfileDetails both on, each discovered account also carries its public business fields — category, email, phone, contact method, and address, where the account has published them — so the same run that maps a niche can hand back outreach-ready leads, not just a list of usernames.

Accepted input

Field	Type	Default	Description
username	array of strings	—	Required. Seed usernames or profile URLs.
maxItem	integer	100	Maximum accounts saved. 0 removes the limit.
chainDepth	integer	0	Levels to follow outward. 0 returns one level.
maxItemPerLevel	integer	5	Accounts followed per account, per level.
verifiedOnly	boolean	false	Keep only verified accounts.
skipPrivate	boolean	false	Discard private accounts.
minFollowers	integer	—	Minimum follower count. Requires profile enrichment.
maxFollowers	integer	—	Maximum follower count. Requires profile enrichment.
enrichProfile	boolean	false	Fetches the full profile for every account kept.
fullProfileDetails	boolean	false	Extends enrichment to the complete profile payload.
exportGraph	boolean	false	Emits the discovery edges as additional rows.
excludePosts	boolean	false	Omits post previews from enriched profiles.
excludeSavedMedia	boolean	false	Omits saved-media fields.
excludeInternalFlags	boolean	false	Omits Instagram's internal flags.
excludeBioLinkDetails	boolean	false	Omits expanded bio-link data.

{
  "username": ["nasa"],
  "chainDepth": 2,
  "maxItemPerLevel": 5,
  "maxItem": 100,
  "skipPrivate": true,
  "enrichProfile": false
}

Response fields

One record per discovered account.

Field	Contents
username	Discovered account's username
full_name	Display name
id	Instagram user ID
is_private	Whether the account is private
is_verified	Whether the account is verified
profile_pic_url	Profile image URL
discovered_from	The account this one was suggested from
depth	How many levels out from the seed it was found
chain_path	The full path of accounts leading back to the seed
enriched	Whether the full profile was fetched
is_business_account	Whether the account is set up as an Instagram Business account (fullProfileDetails only)
business_category_name	Public business category, e.g. "Food & Personal Goods" (fullProfileDetails only, where Instagram resolves it)
business_email	Public business contact email, where published (fullProfileDetails only)
business_phone_number	Public business contact phone number, where published (fullProfileDetails only)
business_contact_method	The contact action Instagram surfaces on the profile, e.g. "CALL", "EMAIL" (fullProfileDetails only)
business_address_json	Public business address as a JSON string — street, city, zip, lat/long — where published (fullProfileDetails only)
is_partial	true if Instagram's full-profile source failed for this account and a reduced fallback was used — business fields will be absent rather than genuinely empty

{
  "username": "esa",
  "full_name": "European Space Agency",
  "is_verified": true,
  "is_private": false,
  "discovered_from": "nasa",
  "depth": 1,
  "chain_path": ["nasa"],
  "enriched": false
}

With enrichProfile and fullProfileDetails both on, a discovered business account also carries its contact fields:

{
  "username": "cocacola",
  "full_name": "Coca-Cola",
  "is_verified": true,
  "is_private": false,
  "is_business_account": true,
  "business_category_name": "Food & Personal Goods",
  "business_contact_method": "CALL",
  "business_email": null,
  "business_phone_number": null,
  "discovered_from": "nasa",
  "depth": 1,
  "chain_path": ["nasa"],
  "enriched": true
}

business_email and business_phone_number are null whenever the account hasn't published one — nothing is inferred, guessed, or looked up elsewhere.

chain_path is what makes a multi-level run interpretable: an account found three levels out is only meaningful alongside the route that reached it.

Chained discovery

With chainDepth at 1 or more, discovery proceeds breadth-first. Each account's suggestions are fetched, up to maxItemPerLevel previously unseen accounts are queued for the next level, and the process repeats until the depth is reached or maxItem is met.

Depth is capped at 5. A larger value is clamped and a warning is logged rather than the run being rejected. The cap exists because breadth-first expansion is multiplicative: at maxItemPerLevel of 5, a single seed reaches 5 accounts at depth 1, 25 at depth 2, and 3,125 by depth 5.

Seed accounts are marked as visited before discovery begins, so a seed is never returned as a discovery of itself or of another seed. Accounts already seen anywhere in the run are skipped, so each appears once, attributed to the first path that reached it. A request for one account's suggestions that fails is logged and skipped; the traversal continues with the rest of the queue. Requests are spaced one second apart.

Setting exportGraph adds a row per edge — _type: "graph_edge" with from, to, and depth — interleaved with the account records. These rows describe connections rather than accounts, and are distinguished by the _type field.

How maxItem applies

The two modes bound results differently, which is worth knowing before comparing runs.

• Chained (chainDepth ≥ 1): maxItem is a single total across every seed and level.
• Flat (chainDepth of 0): maxItem applies to each seed independently. Three seeds with maxItem at 100 can therefore return up to 300 records.

Behaviour on partial results

verifiedOnly and skipPrivate are applied before enrichment, since both fields are present on the unenriched record. Accounts they reject cost nothing.

minFollowers and maxFollowers cannot work that way, because follower counts are not present until a profile is fetched. Supplying either without enrichProfile therefore enables enrichment automatically and logs a warning. The consequence is billing: every candidate is fetched and charged before the threshold can be tested, including the ones that fail it. A follower filter over a wide discovery is expensive for that reason.

Enrichment runs in batches of 25 and records are written as each batch completes, so a long run writes results progressively rather than producing nothing until the end.

With enrichProfile enabled and maxItem set to 0, the limit becomes 100 rather than unlimited — an unbounded enriched traversal would otherwise continue indefinitely.

Frequently asked questions

What determines which accounts appear? Instagram does. The set is the suggested-accounts list shown alongside a profile, and its composition and size are Instagram's. It typically favours accounts with overlapping audiences or subject matter.

Why did a run with chainDepth set to 4 return far more accounts than expected? Expansion is multiplicative rather than additive. Each level multiplies by maxItemPerLevel, so depth 4 at the default of 5 reaches 625 accounts from a single seed before deduplication. Lowering maxItemPerLevel is usually a better control than lowering depth, since it narrows each level while preserving reach.

Why were follower filters charged for accounts that were excluded? Follower counts are not present on the discovery record and only become available once the profile is fetched. The fetch must therefore happen before the comparison, and it is charged whether or not the account passes. Where cost matters, verifiedOnly and skipPrivate filter for free and should be applied first.

What is the difference between enrichProfile and fullProfileDetails? enrichProfile fetches the profile; fullProfileDetails determines how much of it is returned. Without the second, a condensed payload is attached. The exclude* fields trim it further — post previews, saved media, internal flags, and expanded bio links can each be dropped.

What are the graph_edge rows? Connections rather than accounts, emitted only with exportGraph. Each records that from suggested to at a given depth. They carry _type: "graph_edge", so filtering on that field separates the network structure from the account records.

Are seeds included in the output? No. Seeds are marked visited before discovery starts, so they are never returned as discoveries. To collect the seeds themselves, use Instagram User Info Scraper.

Why are business_email/business_phone_number/business_category_name missing for some enriched accounts? Two separate reasons. Most commonly, the account simply hasn't published that field — nothing is inferred or looked up elsewhere. Separately, Instagram is currently serving an upstream error for a subset of accounts (professional accounts whose category needs a subvertical tier Instagram deleted server-side), and the Actor falls back to a reduced profile for those rather than failing the run. Records affected this way carry is_partial: true and partial_reason: "upstream_schema_error", so they're distinguishable from accounts that genuinely have no business fields set. This is not something the Actor can fix client-side — it's an Instagram-side breakage, not lost or mishandled data.

Related Actors

Actor	Purpose
Instagram User Info Scraper	Profile details for accounts already known
Instagram Followers & Followings Scraper	An account's actual follower and following lists
Instagram Profile Content Scraper	Posts, reels, and story status for an account
Instagram Popular Search Scraper	Discovery by hashtag or keyword rather than by account