Instagram, API alternative

An Instagram Graph API alternative for public profiles, posts and comments

Meta shut down the Instagram Basic Display API on December 4, 2024. What remains is built for professional accounts working with their own data. If you need public posts, profiles and comments from accounts you don't manage, this page maps each Graph API call to a no-login input, says what neither route can do, and prices it: $1.90 per 1,000 results on the Free and Starter plans, $1.50 on Scale and $1.10 on Business.

• $1.90 per 1,000 results
• No app review or token
• Any public account
• Logged-out limits stated

What changed, and what Meta's APIs still do

Meta announced on September 4, 2024 that the Basic Display API, the one that connected personal Instagram accounts to consumer apps, would stop working on December 4, 2024, and that "there will no longer be a set of Instagram APIs for consumer developer apps" (Meta for Developers blog). The Instagram API that remains, with Facebook Login or Instagram Login, is for professional (business and creator) accounts. Read on October 6, 2026, Meta's reference pages set these limits:

• Business Discovery returns data about other business or creator accounts, through a professional account, with Facebook Login, and not for age-gated accounts (reference, updated August 12, 2026). Personal accounts are out of reach.
• Hashtag Search needs the Instagram Public Content Access feature, and you can query at most 30 unique hashtags in 7 days (reference).
• Comments come from media the token's own user created, at most 50 per query (reference).

Each call, mapped

The rows are not Graph API responses: field names follow the Actor's own schema (followerCount, likeCount, createdAt, owner), so map them once. Profile rows include instagramGraphId, the account's id in Meta's Instagram Graph API, so you can join them to data you already pull from Meta.

What you get for accounts you don't manage

• Profile rows: bio, all bio links, followers and following counts, category, account type, Threads username, Meta Verified status, emails and phones written in the bio, and up to 50 related accounts.
• Every public comment on a post, sorted by likes if you want, with keyword, like and date filters applied before billing.
• Add-ons per post: Instagram's own AI title and summary, view counts, and speech-to-text transcripts at $0.004 per started minute.

What a no-login scraper can't do

These are visible only to logged-in accounts, so no logged-out tool can return them: follower and following lists, who liked a post, stories and the contents of highlights, posts a profile is tagged in, replies to comments, Instagram's own profile and place search, and the email and call buttons of business profiles (contacts written in the bio are included). Hashtags without a public Instagram page return nothing and cost nothing.

When to stay on Meta's API

If you manage the account, use Meta's API: it is free, first-party and the only route to your own insights, publishing, messages and comment moderation. Use a public-data scraper for accounts you don't manage, for more than 30 hashtags a week, or when an app review isn't worth it for the job.

What it costs

Ask for it from ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor

The Instagram Scraper works as a tool in ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and VS Code through Apify's hosted MCP server. Add this URL as a custom connector and sign in with your Apify account; runs bill to that account. Then ask in plain English, for example "get the profile details of these 50 brand accounts and list their bio links and follower counts".

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,yugenox/instagram-scraper

claude mcp add --transport http yugenox-instagram "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,yugenox/instagram-scraper"

The AI setup guide walks through each client.

Run it from code

Two accounts' profile rows plus 12 recent posts each: at most 26 results, $0.0494 on the Free plan.

// Save as run.mjs, then: npm i apify-client && APIFY_TOKEN=... node run.mjs
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });

const run = await client.actor('yugenox/instagram-scraper').call({
  startUrls: [
    "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/",
    "https://www.instagram.com/natgeo/"
  ],
  includeDetails: true,
  maxItemsPerQuery: 13
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
for (const item of items) console.log(item.dataType, item.url, item.likeCount);

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient  # pip install apify-client

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])

run = client.actor("yugenox/instagram-scraper").call(run_input={
    "startUrls": ["https://www.instagram.com/nasa/", "https://www.instagram.com/natgeo/"],
    "includeDetails": True,
    "maxItemsPerQuery": 13,
})
if run is None:
    raise RuntimeError("Run did not finish")

for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item.get("dataType"), item.get("url"), item.get("likeCount"))

# Small jobs: runs the Actor and returns the rows in one call (up to 5 minutes).
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/yugenox~instagram-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"startUrls":["https://www.instagram.com/nasa/","https://www.instagram.com/natgeo/"],"includeDetails":true,"maxItemsPerQuery":13}'

Last updated 2026-10-06.