Apify Instagram Scraper
Apify Instagram Scraper
Actor model isolates each scraping task; profile/posts/hashtag/comments priced separately
Pay-per-result pricing accumulates fast at scale ($1.50 per 1,000 items)
Sign up at apify.com to get an API token, then call the Apify Instagram Scraper actor with directUrls or a username list as input.
Uptime · 30-day window
About this API
Officially maintained by the Apify team, this is one of the most-installed Instagram actors on Apify Store. The actor model splits each scraping job into its own unit — scrape profiles, scrape posts, scrape comments, scrape hashtags, scrape reels are priced separately, billed dually by result count ($1.50 per 1,000 results) or compute units. The $5/month free credit converts to roughly 2,100 Instagram comments, enough for a personal project to validate the full pipeline. Starter plan is $29/month including $29 of store credit. SDKs available for Node.js (apify-client) and Python (apify-client). Built on top of Apify residential/datacenter proxies and dataset/key-value storage infrastructure.
What you can build
- 1Public Instagram data scraping (profile, posts, comments, reels)
- 2Hashtag monitoring and brand tracking
- 3E-commerce competitor analysis and influencer evaluation
- 4Dataset building for BI or ML training
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Actor model isolates each scraping task; profile/posts/hashtag/comments priced separately
- $5/month free credit is enough for small projects to validate end-to-end
- Residential and datacenter proxies built in — no need to source your own
Limitations
- Pay-per-result pricing accumulates fast at scale ($1.50 per 1,000 items)
- When Instagram changes anti-scraping logic, actors may need to wait for community/official patches
- Different actors return slightly different schemas — switching actors means rewriting parsers
Official quickstart
Read the official quickstart at docs.apify.com.
Getting started
Sign up at apify.com to get an API token, then call the Apify Instagram Scraper actor with directUrls or a username list as input.
FAQ
How is Apify Instagram Scraper billed?+
Dual track: $1.50 per 1,000 results, or by compute units — Starter $0.20/CU, Scale $0.16/CU, Business $0.13/CU. Free tier includes $5 of credit per month.
Is the free tier enough?+
The $5 monthly credit covers about 2,100 Instagram comments — enough to validate a pipeline, not enough for sustained production.
Can I scrape stories?+
The official actor focuses on profile/posts/comments/reels/hashtags. Stories typically require a different actor from Apify Store or a custom one.
Technical details
- Auth type
- api_key
- Pricing
- freemium
- Rate limit
- $1.50 / 1,000 results (actor pricing); platform compute units billed at $0.13 - $0.20 per CU depending on plan
- Free tier quota
- $5 free credits per month — about 2,100 Instagram comments via the official actor
- Protocols
- REST
- SDKs
- javascript, python
- Response time
- 761 ms
- Last health check
- 7/4/2026, 6:02:39 AM