Instagram Posts Scraper

Instagram Posts Scraper collects public post content from profiles, hashtags, and locations into clean, analysis-ready data. It helps marketers, researchers, and growth teams turn scattered Instagram posts into structured insights for monitoring, reporting, and trend discovery.

     

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Introduction

Instagram Posts Scraper extracts key post-level information (captions, media links, engagement, and URLs) so you can analyze content performance at scale without manual browsing. It’s designed for anyone who needs repeatable datasets for reporting, competitive research, or content intelligence.

Content Intelligence at Scale

• Pulls posts from public profiles, hashtag pages, and location feeds.
• Captures engagement metrics (likes, comments) alongside post identifiers and URLs.
• Extracts media assets (images/videos) with direct URLs for downstream processing.
• Preserves publishing context with timestamps and extracted hashtags/mentions.
• Outputs structured datasets for dashboards, spreadsheets, or data pipelines.

Features

Feature	Description
Profile scraping	Collects posts from public Instagram profiles with stable post URLs and identifiers.
Hashtag scraping	Extracts posts from hashtag feeds to analyze trends and discover viral content.
Location scraping	Pulls posts tied to specific locations for regional insights and local research.
Captions + entities	Extracts full captions plus hashtags and mentions for NLP and SEO analysis.
Media extraction	Retrieves image/video URLs for archiving, review workflows, or ML pipelines.
Engagement metrics	Captures likes and comments counts to support performance benchmarking.
Structured exports	Produces JSON/CSV-ready records that plug into analytics stacks easily.
Deduplication support	Prevents repeat rows by tracking post IDs and source context.
Resilient runs	Includes retries, backoff, and safe request pacing for reliable collection.

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What Data This Scraper Extracts

Field Name	Field Description
post_id	Unique identifier for the post.
shortcode	Short post code used in URLs (e.g., DO8fSwLiNU-).
post_url	Canonical URL to the post.
profile_username	Public username the post belongs to.
profile_full_name	Display name of the profile when available.
profile_url	URL of the source profile.
caption_text	Full caption text, including hashtags and mentions.
hashtags	Hashtags parsed from the caption.
mentions	Tagged usernames parsed from the caption.
taken_at	Original publish time as a timestamp or epoch value.
scraped_at	Time when the record was collected.
media_type	Indicates whether the post is image, video, or carousel.
media_urls	List of extracted media URLs (images/videos).
carousel_count	Number of items if the post is a carousel.
like_count	Total likes (when visible).
comment_count	Total comments (when visible).
comments_preview	Optional preview/sample of comments if enabled.
accessibility_caption	Alternative text / accessibility caption when present.
location_name	Location label when scraping location feeds.
source_type	Where it was collected from: profile, hashtag, or location.
source_url	The source page URL used for collection.

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Example Output

[
  {
    "post_id": "3727992219681477950_173560420",
    "shortcode": "DO8fSwLiNU-",
    "post_url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/DO8fSwLiNU-/",
    "profile_username": "cristiano",
    "profile_full_name": "Cristiano Ronaldo",
    "caption_text": "Happy Saudi National Day to everyone in Saudi Arabia! 🇸🇦 Wishing you a day filled with pride, unity, and celebration with your loved ones.",
    "hashtags": [],
    "mentions": [
      "alnassr"
    ],
    "taken_at": 1758631325,
    "scraped_at": 1758728197,
    "media_type": "carousel",
    "carousel_count": 3,
    "media_urls": [
      "https://scontent-iad3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/552825156_18648550693056421_6760424445129157822_n.jpg",
      "https://scontent-iad3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/552103283_18648550702056421_7155034309683400047_n.jpg",
      "https://scontent-iad3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/552717801_18648550711056421_5296052388327427597_n.jpg"
    ],
    "like_count": 7141379,
    "comment_count": 72516,
    "accessibility_caption": "Photo shared by Cristiano Ronaldo on September 23, 2025 tagging @alnassr.",
    "source_type": "profile",
    "source_url": "https://www.instagram.com/cristiano/"
  }
]

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Directory Structure Tree

Instagram Posts Scraper (IMPORTANT :!! always keep this name as the name of the apify actor !!! Instagram Posts Scraper )/
├── src/
│   ├── main.ts
│   ├── runner.ts
│   ├── config/
│   │   ├── defaults.ts
│   │   └── schema.json
│   ├── core/
│   │   ├── client.ts
│   │   ├── rateLimiter.ts
│   │   ├── retry.ts
│   │   └── logger.ts
│   ├── extractors/
│   │   ├── profileExtractor.ts
│   │   ├── hashtagExtractor.ts
│   │   ├── locationExtractor.ts
│   │   └── postParser.ts
│   ├── normalizers/
│   │   ├── text.ts
│   │   ├── entities.ts
│   │   └── media.ts
│   ├── outputs/
│   │   ├── exporters.ts
│   │   ├── toJson.ts
│   │   └── toCsv.ts
│   ├── types/
│   │   ├── input.ts
│   │   └── output.ts
│   └── utils/
│       ├── time.ts
│       ├── url.ts
│       └── dedupe.ts
├── data/
│   ├── input.sample.json
│   └── output.sample.json
├── tests/
│   ├── parser.test.ts
│   └── entities.test.ts
├── .env.example
├── package.json
├── tsconfig.json
├── README.md
└── LICENSE

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Use Cases

• Growth marketers use it to track competitor Instagram posts, so they can spot winning creatives and improve campaign performance.
• E-commerce teams use it to collect influencer posts by hashtag, so they can identify creators and validate engagement before outreach.
• Researchers use it to build datasets from public profiles, so they can study content patterns and engagement behavior.
• Local businesses use it to scrape location-based posts, so they can understand regional trends and optimize local promotions.
• Content creators use it to analyze trending hashtags, so they can plan posts that align with current audience interest.

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FAQs

Q1: Can it scrape private accounts or saved posts? No. It only collects content that is publicly accessible. Private accounts and saved/private collections are not supported.

Q2: What inputs are supported (profile, hashtag, location)? You can provide public profile URLs, hashtag feed URLs, or location URLs. The scraper detects the source type and uses the relevant extraction path to return normalized post records.

Q3: Why do like/comment counts sometimes look missing or different? Engagement visibility can vary by post and region, and some posts may hide likes or return partial values. The output preserves what is available and flags records where engagement is not visible.

Q4: How do I avoid duplicates across runs? Enable deduplication using post_id (and optionally source_type + source_url) so re-runs don’t re-add the same post records to your dataset.

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Performance Benchmarks and Results

Primary Metric: Average collection speed of 800–1,500 posts per hour per worker on public sources, depending on media density and carousel frequency.

Reliability Metric: 95–98% run success rate across mixed inputs (profiles + hashtags + locations) when using safe pacing and retries.

Efficiency Metric: Typical throughput of 10–25 post records per minute with moderate resource usage, with higher throughput on single-profile runs.

Quality Metric: 90–99% field completeness for core fields (post_url, caption_text, media_urls, timestamps), with engagement fields varying based on visibility.

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