Instagram Reel Analytics — Verified Play Count & Engagement

Get the play count Instagram actually shows in the app — not the lower view_count that most scrapers return.

Instagram keeps two different view numbers for the same Reel. Measured on an @instagram Reel, 2026-08-12:

If your reporting has ever looked wrong, this is why.

What you actually get, stated plainly. The two numbers come from two different Instagram endpoints. This Actor returns playCount — the app number — on every post. It returns videoViewCount next to it only when Instagram's feed endpoint carries it; today that endpoint usually omits it, so the field is null. Null means null: never guessed, never quietly filled with the other number.

What you get per post

playCount · videoViewCount · viewCountsDiffer · likes · comments · engagementTotal · engagementRatePctOfPlays · takenAtIso · ageHours · isReel · productType · durationSec · hasAudio · audioTitle · caption · commentsDisabled · shortcode · url

Built around four things people complain about elsewhere

• Wrong view numbers → both counts returned and named, never silently merged.
• No date filter → sinceDate / untilDate, plus ageHours on every record so you can see at a glance how fresh the data is.
• Duplicate posts you still get charged for → deduplicated by shortcode before billing. Filtered-out and duplicate rows are never charged.
• Runaway costs → maxCostUsd stops the run cleanly at your limit.

Input

{
    "usernames": ["natgeo", "nasa"],
    "maxPostsPerProfile": 12,
    "onlyReels": true,
    "sinceDate": "2026-06-01",
    "maxCostUsd": "1.00"
}

Private profiles are skipped with an explicit reason in the run's SUMMARY record — never a silent empty result.

Pricing

Pay per result: $2.50 per 1,000 posts returned. Apify platform usage is included in that price. Filtered-out posts and duplicates are not billed.

Limits, stated up front

• Returns the most recent 12 posts per profile. Deeper history is not available through the public endpoint this Actor uses.
• Public profiles only.
• shares is not exposed by Instagram publicly and is therefore not returned. No estimate is invented for it.