Instagram scraping APIs compared: price, data and limits
If you need Instagram data in code, you have three kinds of options: Meta's official API, an open-source library you run yourself, or a hosted API that returns JSON. Each one is the right answer for a different job. This post lines them up so you can pick in a few minutes.
The short version
| Option | Reads other accounts | Price model | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instagram Graph API | Professional accounts only, via Business Discovery | No fee | App Review and Business Verification for Advanced Access |
| instaloader | Public profiles; more with login | Free, open source | Hashtags, stories and locations need login; you run and maintain it |
| Bright Data | Profiles, posts, reels, comments | $1.50 per 1,000 records, or $499 a month for 384,000 | Each scraper has its own output format |
| EnsembleData | Profiles, posts, reels, comments, hashtags, followers | $100 to $1,400 a month, daily units | Units reset daily at 00:00 UTC |
| HikerAPI | Profiles, posts, stories, reels, comments, hashtags | $0.60 to $1 per 1,000 requests, prepaid | Instagram only; 403 and 404 answers are billed |
| Data365 | Profiles, posts, comments, search | From €300 a month for 500,000 credits | Monthly plan; a profile costs 9 credits |
| ScrapeIO | Any public account: profiles, posts, reels, comments, transcripts, search | $47 for 25,000 credits; credits never expire | Public data only; cannot post or act as a user |
Instagram Graph API
Meta's API is built for accounts you own or manage. Your app users need a professional account, and serving accounts you do not own needs Advanced Access, which means App Review and Business Verification source. To read someone else, you use Business Discovery. It only returns other professional accounts, not age-gated ones, and gives followers, media count and per-post likes, comments and views source.
Good at: your own insights, reach, story metrics and publishing. No third party can give you those. Weak at: personal accounts, comments on other people's posts, and anything outside Instagram.
instaloader
A free Python tool and library. It downloads profiles, posts, comments, captions, reels and highlights source. Hashtags, locations, stories and your feed require a login source. Its docs warn that anonymous access from cloud, VPN and shared IPs may get much stricter limits source.
Good at: small, one-off archives of public profiles at zero cost. Weak at: running on servers, and anything that needs a logged-in session, because then your own account is the one making the requests.
Bright Data
A large web data company with Instagram scrapers for profiles, posts, reels and comments, plus a separate hashtag scraper. Pay as you go is $1.50 per 1,000 records, and the Scale plan is $499 a month for 384,000 records. There are 5,000 free records a month source.
Good at: bulk collection and pre-built datasets. If you need millions of records for a warehouse, it is built for that. See our Bright Data comparison.
EnsembleData
A high-volume API with Instagram endpoints for user info, posts, reels, comments, hashtag posts, tagged posts, music and followers source. Plans run from $100 a month for 1,500 units a day to $1,400 for 50,000 a day, with a 50-unit daily free trial source.
Good at: steady daily volume, where you use the whole budget every day. Full comparison.
HikerAPI
An Instagram-only, read-only REST API. It is prepaid, with no subscription, and funds do not expire. New accounts get 100 free requests source. The pricing page lists $1 per 1,000 requests on its popular plan and $0.60 at volume. Answers with codes 200, 400, 403 and 404 are billed; 50x errors are not source.
Good at: deep Instagram coverage, including stories and follower lists, at a low per-request price if Instagram is all you need.
Data365
Monthly plans: €300 for 500,000 credits on one network, €850 for 1,000,000 credits on three. A post is 1 credit, a post with comments 5, a search 7 and a profile 9. A 14-day trial is available through a contact form source.
Good at: monitoring a large fixed list of accounts every month. Full comparison.
How to choose
- Is it your own account? Use the Graph API. Nothing else has your private insights.
- Is it a one-time archive of a few public profiles? Try instaloader first. It is free.
- Do you need millions of records? Look at bulk scrapers and datasets.
- Is your volume steady and Instagram-only? A daily or prepaid Instagram API can be cheapest.
- Is usage bursty, or across several platforms, or run by an AI agent? Pay per call with credits that do not expire, and one schema across platforms.
Before you commit, run the same 20 test URLs through each candidate. Count how many come back, how many fields are filled, and what the failures cost you.
Doing it with ScrapeIO
ScrapeIO covers public Instagram profiles, posts, reels, comments and transcripts with the same field names as 32 other platforms. Start with the instagram profile API, the instagram user reels API and the instagram comments API. Most calls cost 1 credit, failed and not-found calls cost nothing, and the full list is on the Instagram API page.
Sources
Checked on 8 November 2026 from each vendor's own pages. Prices and limits change; follow the links before you decide.
- https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-platform/overview
- https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-platform/instagram-api-with-facebook-login/business-discovery
- https://instaloader.github.io/
- https://instaloader.github.io/basic-usage.html
- https://instaloader.github.io/troubleshooting.html
- https://brightdata.com/products/web-scraper/instagram
- https://ensembledata.com/instagram-api
- https://ensembledata.com/pricing
- https://hikerapi.com/
- https://hikerapi.com/pricing
- https://data365.co/pricing
100 free credits, no card. Credits never expire.
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