Instagram Comments Scraper

Instagram Comments Scraper: comments and replies from a public post or reel

Paste a post or reel link and get the thread back as flat rows. Who wrote each comment, by username and by name, what it says, when, how many likes it picked up, how many replies hang off it, and whether the author is verified. A comment that is only a GIF comes back with the GIF's title and a link to it. Replies arrive as their own rows pointing at the comment they answer.

Here is the part worth knowing before you start, because it changes what you should ask for. This reads the top of a thread, not the whole thing. One run comes back with roughly 75 rows on a plain thread and up to 150 when Instagram inlines a lot of replies. Running it again does not reach further down. It reads from the top each time.

🔍 What Instagram Comments Scraper does

You give it links, it gives you the conversation under them. Comments and replies land in the same row shape, so you can drop the lot into a sheet without branching on type. A reply carries isReply: true and a parentCommentId, which is enough to rebuild the tree or to filter replies out with one condition.

Nothing to log into. No cookie to paste, no app review, no business API approval.

If you do happen to have an Instagram sessionid and would rather the run read through your own account, put it in sessionCookies. When it is set it is used on its own. Most people leave it empty and never think about it again.

Instagram serves comments ranked rather than strictly newest first, so what you get is the top of the thread the way Instagram orders it.

📥 What you give it

{
  "postUrls": ["https://www.instagram.com/p/Db9IVmrDvQ4/"],
  "maxComments": 100
}

A shortcode that cannot be a real one, wrong length or wrong characters, is rejected before any lookup happens. You get a labelled row saying so.

📤 What you get back

A real row from 26 September 2026, a brand account commenting on a football post. Its closing emoji is cut from this block:

{
  "ok": true,
  "type": "comment",
  "id": "18107041583611449",
  "mediaId": "3993517018170036322",
  "text": "THE GOAT",
  "hasGif": false,
  "gifTitle": null,
  "gifUrl": null,
  "likeCount": 17841,
  "replyCount": 108,
  "createdAt": "2026-09-24T21:18:00.000Z",
  "ownerUsername": "luxury",
  "ownerFullName": "Luxury",
  "ownerId": "1122059043",
  "ownerVerified": true,
  "isReply": false,
  "parentCommentId": null
}

A GIF-only comment from the same run, link shortened:

{
  "text": "",
  "hasGif": true,
  "gifTitle": "The Boys Messi GIF",
  "gifUrl": "https://cdn.fbsbx.com/v/t59.2708-21/822297128_..._n.gif?..."
}

Nothing is guessed. A field Instagram did not send comes back null.

🧾 Reading the output

Three kinds of row can land in your dataset, and only the first kind is billed.

Filter on ok == true and you have your thread. Sample rows appear only when you start a run without naming a post, so a run that names a real post never answers with invented data.

The code on a diagnostic row says what happened:

A run that could not read what it was asked for ends as failed, with a labelled row telling you why, because a green tick over an empty dataset is the worst answer a scraper can give. Four cases succeed instead, each with its own row: a post with no comments (NO_RESULTS), comments switched off (COMMENTS_DISABLED), a link that is not a post (BAD_INPUT) and a post that no longer exists (NOT_FOUND). If at least one link produced comments, the run succeeds and the rest get their own rows. No diagnostic row is billed as a comment.

▶️ How to run it

1. Open Instagram Comments Scraper and click Try for free. 2. Paste your links into Post URLs, one per line. 3. Set Max comments. Start at 15 while you look at the output shape. 4. Click Start. 5. Download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read it from the Apify API.

💰 How much does it cost?

$0.40 per 1,000 comment rows. Flat on every Apify plan, no volume tiers.

You pay per row delivered. The same comment is never delivered twice in a run, so you never pay for it twice. Sample rows and diagnostic rows are not billed, and neither is a post that turns out to have nothing under it.

💡 What people use it for

• Reading what people actually said under a launch post, rather than counting the likes.
• Pulling the commenters on a giveaway or a competition post into a list to work through by hand.
• Collecting a few hundred comments across a set of posts to see which complaint keeps coming up.
• Checking whether a creator's engagement looks like a conversation or like the same ten accounts.

🚧 What it does not do

• No full export of a big thread. Roughly 75 rows, up to 150 with a lot of inlined replies, and

then it stops. A 4,000-comment post returns the top of the thread and says so.

• Running it again does not go deeper. It starts from the top every time.
• Replies come back only where Instagram sends them alongside the comment. There is no separate

pass that walks into each reply thread.

• Order is Instagram's ranking, not newest first, and you cannot change it.
• No private accounts. Public posts and reels only.
• No comment likers, no editing, no posting, no deleting. This reads.
• A run that gets nothing anywhere ends as failed, with a labelled row saying why, except the

four cases above.

🧭 Which Instagram scraper do you need?

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need an Instagram account? No. Leave sessionCookies empty and it works.

Then why is the cookie field there? Because some people would rather the run read through their own account. Paste a sessionid and it is used on its own. Use a throwaway account if you do.

Posts or reels? Both, and IGTV. /p/, /reel/ and /tv/ links all work.

Why did I get fewer rows than I asked for? Either the thread ran out, or the run reached the end of what it reads in one pass. The NO_RESULTS or PARTIAL row in your dataset says which.

Can I get every comment on a huge post? No, and that is a real limit rather than a setting you can turn up.

Is scraping Instagram legal? This reads public posts only, never private accounts or messages. Comments still contain personal data, which GDPR and similar laws cover, so have a reason for collecting them. Apify's write-up on the legality of web scraping is a good starting point, and we are not lawyers.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page. Send the post link you used and the run ID. The code on the diagnostic row usually explains it on its own.