Instagram Hashtag Scraper

Instagram Hashtag Scraper: posts and reels for any tag, no account needed

Give it a hashtag, get the posts back as rows. Caption, like and comment counts, image and video URLs, owner, mentions and timestamp, one row per post. If you already have /explore/tags/ links, paste those instead.

One thing to know before you start, because it changes what you should expect: a hashtag feed is a sample, not an archive. Instagram serves the slice it decides to show, which is nowhere near every post ever tagged. No scraper changes that.

🔍 What Instagram Hashtag Scraper does

You type tags, it returns the posts sitting under them. Photos, videos and carousels all come back in the same row shape, so you can drop the lot into a sheet without branching on type.

Instagram keeps hashtag feeds behind a login, and you do not have to deal with that. No account, no cookie, no app review, no business API approval. Nothing for you to set up and nothing that expires next week.

If you do have an Instagram cookie and want to use it, put it in sessionCookies. That adds the recent tab on top of the top posts. Most people never bother and do not need to.

The same post under two of your tags is delivered once, not twice.

📥 What you give it

{
  "hashtags": ["coffee", "latteart"],
  "resultsLimit": 50
}

Give it at least one tag. A run with nothing in either field fails rather than returning an empty dataset.

📤 What you get back

A real row from a recent run, with the long CDN URLs cut short so the block stays readable:

{
  "ok": true,
  "type": "video",
  "shortCode": "DdgWc82xb8n",
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/DdgWc82xb8n/",
  "caption": "#xingxing #monkey #nature #wildlife #monkeylife",
  "hashtags": ["xingxing", "monkey", "nature", "wildlife", "monkeylife"],
  "mentions": [],
  "likesCount": 906,
  "commentsCount": 33,
  "videoViewCount": 7801,
  "displayUrl": "https://instagram.frix7-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t51.82787-15/...",
  "videoUrl": "https://instagram.frix7-1.fna.fbcdn.net/o1/v/t2/f2/m86/...",
  "images": ["https://instagram.frix7-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t51.82787-15/..."],
  "isVideo": true,
  "dimensions": null,
  "ownerUsername": "cutexingxing",
  "ownerId": "44976210570",
  "timestamp": "2026-09-20T10:18:08.000Z",
  "accessibilityCaption": null,
  "hashtag": "nature"
}

Anything Instagram did not supply on a given post comes back null, as dimensions and accessibilityCaption do above. Nothing is guessed or padded.

🧾 Reading the output

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

Filter on ok == true and you have your posts.

The code on a diagnostic row tells you what happened:

A diagnostic row never fails the run and never bills you.

▶️ How to run it

1. Open Instagram Hashtag Scraper and click Try for free. 2. Type one or more tags into Hashtags. The # is optional. 3. Set Max posts. Start at 50 while you look at the output shape. 4. Click Start. 5. Download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel, or pull it from the Apify API.

💰 How much does it cost?

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

You pay per post delivered. The same post found under two of your tags is billed once. Sample rows, diagnostic rows and a tag that returns nothing cost you nothing.

💡 What people use it for

• Watching a niche tag for a week to see which accounts keep showing up in it.
• Pulling a few thousand captions to find out what wording actually gets engagement in a category.
• Building a shortlist of creators posting under a branded or event tag, then checking them by hand.
• Feeding image and video URLs into a labelling pipeline, where the caption doubles as a weak label.

🚧 What it does not do

• No comments. This returns posts. Comments are a separate actor, linked below.
• A tag feed is a sample. Instagram decides what to show, so you get a slice rather than the

full history of a tag, however high you set the limit.

• A big ask can stop early. A run that asks for thousands may deliver fewer and write a

PARTIAL row. You are charged only for what arrived.

• Media URLs expire. They are signed CDN links, not permanent addresses.
• No private accounts. Public posts on public tags, nothing else.
• The recent tab needs your own cookie. Without one you get the top posts for a tag.
• An empty run fails rather than returning an empty dataset. Give it at least one tag.

🧭 Which Instagram scraper do you need?

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need an Instagram account? No. Nothing to paste, nothing to keep alive. The cookie field is optional and only adds the recent tab.

Will I get every post ever tagged? No, and nothing can. Instagram publishes a curated slice of a tag feed. You get what it serves.

Is resultsLimit per tag or per run? Per run. Ask for 100 across three tags and you get 100 posts in total, not 300.

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

Can I run it on a schedule? Yes. Use Apify's scheduler, or start it from the API and read the dataset when it finishes.

What if a tag has nothing? You get a free labelled row saying so. The run succeeds and no posts are billed.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page. Include the hashtag you used and the run ID, and the log is enough for us to see what happened.