Instagram, creators

Vet Instagram creators on public signals, for about $0.025 each

Before you pay for a sponsored post, check what's public: how many people follow the account, how its recent posts actually perform, whether it already runs paid partnerships and which accounts Instagram considers similar. One profile row plus its 12 latest posts is 13 results, about $0.025 per creator.

• About $0.025 per creator
• $1.90 per 1,000 results
• Up to 50 similar accounts
• Public signals only

What you can check

The math

• One creator is a profile row plus 12 recent posts: 13 results x $0.0019 = $0.0247 on the Free and Starter plans ($0.0195 on Scale, $0.0143 on Business).
• 200 creators come to about $4.94; 1,000 creators about $24.70.
• For comparison, Modash's Essentials plan is $199 a month billed yearly ($299 month to month) for 300 opened profiles, about $0.66 each at the yearly rate (Modash pricing page, 2026-10-15).

That comparison isn't like for like. Modash includes audience demographics and fake-follower analysis that this Actor does not have. What this gives you is a cheap first pass on public data, so the paid audits go only to the shortlist.

A vetting workflow that works

1. Seed. Start with a few creators you already like, or your own brand's account. For a longer list of handles, see profile data to CSV.
2. Expand. scrapeRelatedProfiles also scrapes up to 50 accounts Instagram suggests as similar to each seed. includeRelatedProfiles lists them on the profile row without scraping them.
3. Filter. Set minFollowers and maxFollowers to your tier, for example 10,000 to 100,000, and add businessOnly, withContactOnly or verifiedOnly as needed. Rows your filters remove aren't billed.
4. Score. Average engagementRate over each creator's last 12 posts, count paid partnerships and check how regularly they post.
5. Reach out through the channel the creator published, and follow anti-spam and privacy laws such as CASL, CAN-SPAM and GDPR.

Read engagement numbers with care

• Compare like with like. Engagement rates fall as follower counts rise, so compare creators within a tier.
• Hidden counts. When a creator hides likes, likeCount and engagementRate are null for that post.
• Views are a rough signal. Logged-out play counts can undercount or be missing. They are fine for comparing reach, but not for verifying views behind creator payouts or contracts. Ask for the creator's own insights for that.
• A snapshot, not a history. Each run shows today's numbers. Schedule a run and keep the results to build your own trend line; tracking accounts daily shows the monitor-mode setup.

Run it from code

One seed account plus 20 similar accounts, each with a profile row and its 12 latest posts, keeping only accounts with 10,000+ followers: at most 273 results, about $0.52.

// 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/"
  ],
  includeDetails: true,
  includeRelatedProfiles: true,
  scrapeRelatedProfiles: 20,
  maxItemsPerQuery: 12,
  minFollowers: 10000
});

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

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/"],
    "includeDetails": True,
    "includeRelatedProfiles": True,
    "scrapeRelatedProfiles": 20,
    "maxItemsPerQuery": 12,
    "minFollowers": 10000,
})
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("engagementRate"))

# 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/"],"includeDetails":true,"includeRelatedProfiles":true,"scrapeRelatedProfiles":20,"maxItemsPerQuery":12,"minFollowers":10000}'

Last updated 2026-10-06.