Instagram Reel Scraper

Instagram Reel Scraper: every reel on a public profile, no login

Name a public Instagram handle and get its reels tab back as rows. Play count, likes, comments, the caption with hashtags and mentions split out, duration, a direct video file, the cover image and the audio track behind the reel.

The thing that catches people out: a creator can pin reels to the top of their own tab, so the first rows are not the newest ones. Pinned reels are kept by default and flagged with isPinned, and every row carries its real publication time so you can sort however you like.

🔍 What Instagram Reel Scraper does

It reads the public reels tab of the handles you name, one row per reel, and stops when it reaches your limit or your date cut-off. Several profiles are read at once, so a list of thirty handles is not thirty times slower than one.

Nothing to log into. No API key, no cookie, no app review.

Collab reels are handled properly, which matters more than it sounds. A reel published by two accounts sits on both tabs, so ownerUsername is whoever actually posted it and inputUsername is the handle you asked for. Those two differ often. The same reel found under two of your handles is delivered once, not twice.

A handful of otherwise-public accounts are closed to visitors who are not signed in. Those come back as a labelled row rather than silently empty, and your own cookie in sessionCookies is the one thing that opens them.

📥 What you give it

{
  "usernames": ["nasa", "natgeo", "https://www.instagram.com/nike/"],
  "resultsLimit": 30,
  "onlyPostsNewerThan": "3 months"
}

Start a run with nothing filled in and you get one labelled sample row showing the exact output shape. That row is not charged.

📤 What you get back

A real row from a real run, cut down to the interesting fields. The long media links are trimmed with ..., and the caption ends with an emoji that has been cut out of this block:

{
  "ok": true,
  "recordType": "reel",
  "inputUsername": "nasa",
  "shortCode": "DdhFkS7KGkZ",
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdhFkS7KGkZ/",
  "caption": "Our first Leader of the Uprising ...",
  "videoPlayCount": 5221170,
  "likesCount": 34374,
  "commentsCount": 260,
  "videoDuration": 23.381000518798828,
  "videoUrl": "https://scontent-dfw5-2.cdninstagram.com/o1/v/t2/f2/m86/...",
  "displayUrl": "https://scontent-dfw6-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.82787-15/...",
  "audioTitle": "Original audio",
  "audioIsOriginal": true,
  "audioDurationMs": 23000,
  "ownerUsername": "ravens",
  "ownerFullName": "Baltimore Ravens",
  "ownerIsVerified": true,
  "coauthorUsernames": ["astro_reid", "nasa"],
  "mentions": ["paramountplus", "nfloncbs"],
  "hashtags": [],
  "isPinned": false,
  "isPaidPartnership": false,
  "likesAndViewCountsDisabled": false,
  "timestamp": "2026-09-20T17:20:00.000Z",
  "inputUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/reels/",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-21T13:01:52.724Z"
}

That row is a good example of the collab case. It was found under nasa, but the Ravens posted it and NASA is one of the co-authors.

🧾 Reading the output

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

Filter on recordType == "reel" and you have your reels. Every row also carries a charged flag, which is how the actor labels its real rows against samples and diagnostics.

The errorCode on a diagnostic names the handle it belongs to and says what happened:

A bad handle never fails the run. It gets its row and the rest of your list carries on.

▶️ How to run it

1. Open Instagram Reel Scraper and click Try for free. 2. Put your handles into Instagram handles, one per line. 3. Set Reels per profile. Start at 10 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?

$0.35 per 1,000 reels. Flat on every Apify plan, no volume tiers.

One charge per reel row delivered. A reel filtered out by your date cut-off or by skipPinnedPosts never becomes a row, so it is never billed. The same reel found under two handles is billed once. Sample rows, diagnostic rows and a handle that turns out to have no reels are not billed for results.

💡 What people use it for

• Tracking a set of creators week by week, then diffing on shortCode to see what is new and how

the play counts moved.

• Working out what actually lands on an account before briefing a campaign: sort by

videoPlayCount and read the top ten captions.

• Building a reference library with the cover image and a playable video link already attached.
• Audio research. audioId and audioIsOriginal show which sounds an account leans on and which

of them it made itself.

🚧 What it does not do

• Reels tab only. No photo posts, carousels, stories or highlights, and a single reel link is

not valid input here.

• No private accounts, and no way around that.
• Counts are a snapshot. Two runs an hour apart will disagree, and both are right.
• Video and cover links expire within hours. Download what you want to keep.
• Deduplication is inside a run, not across runs. Two runs over the same handle return the same

reels again.

• Six empty handles in a row stop the run early, with a DEAD_LIST row saying so. It is there

to stop a list of dead handles quietly eating your time.

• No comment text, no liker lists, no follower counts. Those live in other actors.
• 100 handles and 1,000 reels per handle per run. Bigger jobs need splitting.

🧭 Which Instagram scraper do you need?

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need an account or an API key? No. Leave everything optional empty and it runs.

Then what is the cookie field for? The small number of accounts Instagram will not show to a signed-out visitor. They come back as NOT_AVAILABLE, and your own cookie is what opens them.

Why did I get a reel owned by someone else? Collab reels sit on both accounts' tabs. ownerUsername is who posted it, inputUsername is the handle you asked for.

How do I get only the newest reels? Set onlyPostsNewerThan. The run stops walking a profile once it passes your cut-off, so a daily schedule reads only what is new.

Is scraping Instagram legal? This reads public profiles 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. Nothing carries over between runs, so the same input is safe to repeat hourly or daily.

🆘 If something breaks

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