Instagram & Threads Scraper — Search, Profiles & Posts in one API

🧵 Also need the wider social graph? Pair this with our other scrapers on apify.com/trakk — Instagram and Threads here, plus TikTok, YouTube, Reddit and X/Twitter, all with the same clean output shape.

One Actor for both of Meta's text networks. Search Instagram and Threads by keyword in a single run, or pull full profiles and posts from any creator on either platform — accounts, hashtags with post counts, Threads posts with like / reply / repost / quote counts, and one consistent, flat output shape across both.

🔓 Signed-in search is built in. Instagram's own search answers 401 when signed out and Threads shows nothing at all — so rich results normally need a logged-in session. This Actor brings its own managed session pool, so you get the signed-in results with nothing to paste and no cookies to manage. If the pool is ever busy, search automatically falls back to public results so a run never fails outright.

No login, no browser, no setup. Existing API integrations that send the original mode values keep working unchanged.

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▶️ Your first run

1. Open Input. The first question is What to scrape — leave it on 🔎 Instagram + Threads search, which searches both networks in one run.
2. Under Search, add a keyword or hashtag per row — marketing, #travel, ai startup.
3. Ignore everything else — Profiles & posts only matters for the profile/post modes, and Advanced has sensible defaults. Click Start. For a first run, use one or two queries.
4. Open Output → Main results. Every row carries platform and type, so accounts, hashtags and posts stay easy to filter.
5. Use Export to download CSV, Excel or JSON. JSON keeps the nested objects; All fields gives the full record.

Copy this into Input → JSON for a first run:

{ "mode": "META_SEARCH", "queries": ["marketing", "ai startup"], "maxResults": 50 }

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🚀 Pick your mode

Mode (as shown in the input)	Best for	What you receive
🔎 Instagram + Threads search (META_SEARCH)	Broad discovery	Instagram accounts + hashtags and Threads posts + authors, in one run
📸 Instagram search (INSTAGRAM_SEARCH)	Finding accounts & hashtags	Matching accounts (with the Threads-presence flag), hashtags with post counts, places
🧵 Threads search (THREADS_SEARCH)	Topic & post monitoring	Matching Threads posts with engagement, plus one row per author found
📸 Instagram profiles (INSTAGRAM_PROFILES)	Creator research	One profile row per Instagram username / URL
🧵 Threads profiles (THREADS_PROFILES)	Creator research	One rich profile row per Threads username / URL
📸 Instagram posts (INSTAGRAM_POSTS)	Content pull	Recent posts for each Instagram creator
🧵 Threads posts (THREADS_POSTS)	Content pull	Recent posts for each Threads creator
👥 Profile comparison (PROFILE_COMPARISON)	Cross-platform audit	One row per creator lining up their Instagram and Threads presence side by side
🌐 All content (ALL_CONTENT)	Everything on a creator	Profiles, posts and the comparison together

Pricing is on the Actor's Pricing tab. Empty and duplicate rows are never charged, and filters (date cutoff, limits) are applied before billing.

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🧾 What you get — fields

Every row carries platform (instagram / threads) and type / recordType, so mixed results stay easy to filter. Field names match the mainstream Instagram/Threads scrapers (ownerUsername, likesCount, followersCount, shortCode, timestamp, …) and our native names, so the output drops into tooling built for either.

👤 Accounts & profiles

Field	Meaning
username, fullName, userId	identity
url, profilePicUrl, profilePicUrlHD	links & avatar (HD on Threads)
followersCount / followerCount, followsCount, postsCount	audience & output size
verified, isPrivate	status flags
biography, externalUrl / externalUrls, bioLinks	bio & links
emails, phones	lead-gen — contacts extracted from the bio
hasThreadsProfile	our cross-platform signal — an Instagram account that also exists on Threads
accountBadges, isRingCreator, hasActiveReel, socialContext	Instagram search extras
profileTags, podcastName/podcastUrl, newsletterName/newsletterUrl, hasThreadsBadge	Threads profile extras

📝 Posts

Field	Meaning
shortCode, url, postId, type / postType	identity & kind (image / video / carousel / text)
ownerUsername, ownerFullName, ownerId	author
text, hashtags, mentions, language	content
timestamp / publishedAt	when it was posted
likesCount, commentsCount, replyCount, repostCount, quoteCount, shareCount, videoViewCount	engagement
displayUrl, imageUrls, videoUrls, mediaUrls	media
dimensionsWidth, dimensionsHeight, isPinned, isPaidPartnership, isAffiliate, coauthorProducers, sponsors	Instagram extras
isReply, replyToUsername, isRepost, isQuote, quotedPostUrl, linkPreviewUrl, linkPreviewTitle, accessibilityCaption	Threads extras

#️⃣ Hashtags & 📍 places (Instagram search)

name, url, mediaCount (post count), subtitle, hashtagId · places add latitude, longitude, address, city, placeId.

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🧩 Input reference

Field	What it does
mode	which workflow to run (see the table above)
queries	search phrases, one per row — marketing, #travel, ai startup
usernames	creators to pull — username, @handle, or profile URL
directUrls	paste Instagram/Threads profile, post or hashtag URLs; routed to the right scraper automatically
searchSort	order search results top (relevant) or recent (newest)
onlyPostsNewerThan	keep only posts newer than a date, an ISO timestamp, or a relative value (7 days, 2 months, 1 year)
maxResults	hard stop for the whole run
resultsLimit	posts per profile, or hits per query
maxResultsPerQuery / maxPostsPerProfile	advanced per-target overrides
proxyConfiguration	optional proxy (residential recommended for the largest runs)
rawOutput	keep the untouched source payload alongside the clean row

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🧪 Recipes

Find creators in a niche, with their Threads presence

{ "mode": "INSTAGRAM_SEARCH", "queries": ["sustainable fashion"], "maxResults": 200 }

Filter to type = account, then to hasThreadsProfile = true.

Track a topic on Threads and rank by engagement

{ "mode": "THREADS_SEARCH", "queries": ["ai regulation"], "searchSort": "recent", "maxResults": 300 }

Filter to type = post and sort by likesCount or repostCount.

Pull a creator's recent posts from the last 3 months

{ "mode": "INSTAGRAM_POSTS", "usernames": ["natgeo"], "resultsLimit": 30, "onlyPostsNewerThan": "3 months" }

Compare a creator across both platforms

{ "mode": "PROFILE_COMPARISON", "usernames": ["nike"] }

Just paste links

{ "mode": "META_SEARCH", "directUrls": ["https://www.instagram.com/natgeo/", "https://www.threads.com/@zuck", "https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/travel/"] }

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⚙️ Notes & limits

• Signed-in search is managed for you and spreads across a rotating session pool with built-in pacing, so no single account is hammered.
• Instagram profiles & posts come from public sources, so follower counts, bios and media are returned without touching any account. Some fields that Instagram now exposes only behind its throttled private API (business category, business e-mail) are therefore not returned for Instagram; Threads returns its full bio-link and contact set.
• Instagram occasionally omits a profile's recent media from its public payload; when that happens the profile row is still returned with its counts.
• Empty fields simply mean the platform did not expose that value for that item.