The Best Instagram Scrapers of 2026

Is it Legal To Scrape Instagram?

Like any other social media platform, Instagram isn’t fond of web scrapers. The platform has already filed numerous lawsuits against companies that provide or use web scraping services just to prove the point.

There’s no regulation prohibiting scraping as an action. But you have to be aware of a few things; otherwise, a lawsuit might come banging at your door. The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that you can scrape data as long as it isn’t behind a login (it’s publicly available), and the content you gather isn’t subject to intellectual property rights.

There also may be some other requirements for handling personal information. If you’re unsure about the legal side of scraping Instagram, it’s better to contact a lawyer since every use case is considered individually.

How Does Instagram Block Scrapers?

There are two main identifiers that give away your identity: IP address and browser fingerprint.

Instagram closely monitors incoming traffic, and your IP address is one of the first signals it evaluates. Real users browse in an irregular, unpredictable way, while bots tend to send requests in steady, repeatable patterns. When too many requests come from the same IP within a short time, Instagram treats this as automated behavior and starts limiting access.

IP quality matters just as much. Datacenter IPs are widely known and heavily abused, so Instagram often restricts or blocks them outright. As a result, even moderate request volumes can trigger rate limits or bans if they come from suspicious IPs. In practice, exceeding request limits or combining them with poor IP reputation is what gets an IP flagged and eventually blocked.

Another common cause that might get you banned is inconsistencies in your browser fingerprint. Instagram uses various tracking methods to identify your device and software characteristics, namely, browser type and request headers. For example, if your scraper sends a user agent that doesn’t match your operating system, Instagram can detect that.

The platform uses pretty aggressive anti-bot mechanisms. So, getting quality Instagram proxies or using a service that handles proxy management and anti-detection techniques when scraping is a must.

Instagram Scraper Types Explained

Many services offer tools for scraping Instagram. The one you choose depends on factors like price, difficulty using and setting up, or the size of your project. Usually, they’re divided into three categories: no-code tools, unofficial APIs, or custom-built web scrapers. Let’s delve into each:

No-code scrapers let you collect data by visually clicking on elements or using pre-made templates. While such tools work well with simple tasks, they’re generally slower and inefficient once you scale. Another way to go about scraping Instagram without going further into code is to use pre-collected Instagram datasets.
Web scraping or proxy-based (web unblockers) APIs are remote web scrapers. They let you scrape by making API calls to the provider’s infrastructure with your target website. This type of scraper handles proxy management, anti-detection techniques, and headless browsers. APIs are great performers and highly extensible, so they’re suitable for all types of projects.
Custom-built scrapers are usually built using web scraping libraries. Such tools allow you to control one or more aspects of web scraping – crawling, getting, and cleaning the data. However, this approach will work only if you’re able to manage website blocks and proxies on your own. We build a basic Instagram scraper in our guide on how to scrape Instagram.

How Instagram Scrapers Performed In Our Tests?

We reviewed the top providers on the market in our 2025 Scraper API report. One benchmark was the success rate of unblocking Instagram at two requests per second. Another was the average response time of successful requests.

For the API-based scrapers, we tested each provider using a configuration suitable for Instagram, with JavaScript rendering enabled and residential proxies where required. To calculate CPM (price per 1,000 requests), we estimated how many successful requests each service could deliver for a $500 spend under these conditions and normalized the result to a per-1,000-request cost. Note: we made 14,000 requests in total.

Provider	Success rate (2 requests/s)	Average response time of successful requests:	CPM at $500
ScrapingBee	99.65%	4.54s	$2.24
Oxylabs	98.49%	23.21s	$1.15
Zyte API	98.63%	11.64s	$2.00
Decodo	87.62%	24.14s	$1.10

We evaluated Apify separately, as it executes scrapers as batch jobs rather than request-level APIs. So we measured how long it took to return all our requested pages instead. CPM was calculated using its listed cost per 1,000 results.

Apify

Results	Runtime	Avg. success rate at 2 req/s	CPM at $500
5,956	22 m 42s	59.54%	$1.50

The Best Instagram Scrapers in 2026

1. ScrapingBee

Instagram scraper that rocked our tests.

Integration: API (real-time), proxy, SDK, MCP
Data parsing: manual or AI-generated parsing instructions
Locations: 150+
Pricing model: subscription and credits
Pricing starts at: $49/mo for 250K credits
Free trial: 7-day trial with 1000 free API credits

ScrapingBee has been in the scraping business for more than five years, focusing on steady improvements rather than rapid expansion. Compared to enterprise providers, its platform is simpler in terms of infrastructure depth and feature scale, yet its real-time API showed a strong ability to cope with Instagram’s detection mechanisms.

Even without the largest proxy pools or the most complex infrastructure, ScrapingBee clinched the best overall results, with a 99.65 percent success rate and the fastest average response time of 4.54 seconds. On Instagram where speed often comes at the expense of session stability, this balance was notable.

Pricing is one of ScrapingBee’s stronger points. It offers some of the lowest base rates, along with a free 1,000 API credit trial to see how it fits your workflow. However, costs rise when premium or stealth proxies are enabled, but the service leaves enough room to calibrate how much you spend on retries versus higher-grade traffic.

Read the ScrapingBee review for more information and performance tests.

2. Oxylabs

Affordable and performant Instagram scraper.

Use the code proxyway35 to get 35% off your first purchase.

Integration: API (real-time or async), proxy, MCP
Data parsing: manual instructions (XPath, CSS, Regex) with savable presets, AI parser generator
Locations: 150+
Pricing model: subscription; based on successful requests
Pricing starts at: $49/mo for up to 98K requests
Free trial: 7-day trial with 2K results

Oxylabs brings an enterprise-grade scraping stack built on one of the largest proxy and data collection infrastructures on the market. The overall setup is designed for difficult targets like Instagram, and there are a couple of tools to do the job.

Web Unblocker integrates as a proxy-based API and it works well for access, but it does not include parsing, so data extraction needs to be handled separately.

Web Scraper API is the more relevant option. It is a scraper with an integrated AI assistant that lets you parse data by generating XPath and CSS selectors. The API supports both real-time scraping and asynchronous batch extraction, making it suitable for larger or recurring Instagram tasks.

In our Instagram tests, Oxylabs achieved a 98.49 percent success rate at two requests per second, showing strong unblocking reliability. Successful requests averaged 23.21 seconds, so we’d recommend parallelizing your requests at scale.

Higher-tier plans also include a dedicated account manager, so you won’t be lost in the woods.

Read the Oxylabs review for more information and performance tests.

3. Zyte

Fast Instagram scraper at a lower price.

Integration: API, proxy
Data parsing: not available
Locations: 150+ locations with country-level targeting
Pricing model: pay as you go, subscription
Starting price: $1.01 per 1K responses
Free trial: $5 platform credits for 30 days

Zyte is one of the sharks in the scraping affairs, offering a general-purpose API that is fully capable of handling Instagram. The platform bundles scraping with built-in proxy management, including automatic IP rotation, retries, and ban detection.

Zyte’s API supports browser automation and scripting through its cloud IDE, allowing you to run browser actions such as scrolling or interacting with page elements. While Zyte handles most interaction and rendering quirks automatically, the IDE is especially useful for navigating complex, multi-step Instagram scraping scenarios.

In our Instagram tests, Zyte delivered a 98.63 percent success rate at 2 requests per second, putting it close to the top performers in terms of unblocking reliability. The average response time of successful requests was 11.64 seconds, making it noticeably faster than heavier enterprise stacks.

Pricing follows Zyte’s usage-based model, where costs depend on factors such as website difficulty, rendering, and selected features. This makes it a cost-efficient choice, but expenses can increase quickly once JavaScript rendering or more advanced options are enabled.

Read the Zyte review for more information and performance tests.

4. Apify

Multiple no-code Instagram scrapers with a point-and-click interface.

Integration: API (real-time), no-code
Data parsing: built-in data parsing
Locations: unknown
Free trial: a free plan with $5 platform credits
Pricing model: monthly plans starting from $49 with $49 platform credits and 30 shared datacenter proxies.
Starting price: $1.50 per 1K results

Apify stands apart from the other Instagram scraping tools in this list. Instead of offering a low-level scraping API or unblocker, it provides ready-made Instagram scrapers, called Actors. These are no-code or low-code templates designed to extract specific Instagram data, such as profiles, posts, hashtags, or comments, with built-in navigation and data parsing.

As a result, you have limited control over request rates, but you also do not need to worry about parsing or maintaining scraping logic yourself. Outputs are returned in structured formats like JSON, CSV, or Excel, and you can trigger runs via the API or integrate with cloud tools like Github and Slack. You can use webhooks to retrieve the results once a job finishes.

Because of the afore-mentioned setup, Apify does not fit neatly into request-per-second benchmarks. In our tests, the Instagram Actor processed 5,956 results in 22 minutes and 42 seconds, which works out to roughly 4.37 requests per second. Performance varies between Actors, and concurrency is adjusted automatically rather than being fully controlled by the user.

Pricing is plan-based and credit-driven. While Apify offers a free tier for smaller tasks, Instagram scraping can become expensive at scale. Datacenter proxies are included, and depending on the Actor you use, residential IPs may be enabled as an optional extra for tougher workloads.

5. Decodo (formerly Smartproxy)

Great value for money.

Try 100 MB for free.

Integration: API (real-time or async), proxy
Data parsing: in-built parser
Locations: 150+
Pricing model: subscription; based on successful requests
Pricing starts at: $20/month for up to 23K requests ($0.88/1K req)
Free trial: 7-day free trial with 1K results & 14-day money-back guarantee

Decodo has long focused on social media scraping as part of its broader, general-purpose scraping stack. Its Social Media API offers limited built-in parsing for Instagram, allowing structured data extraction without manual HTML processing.

You can integrate the Social Media API through a standard API interface or via a proxy-like setup. It supports both real-time requests and asynchronous execution, giving you flexibility in how you run your workflows.

In our Instagram tests, Decodo delivered competent results, reaching an 87.62 percent success rate at 2 requests per second. The average response time of successful requests was 24.14 seconds, which places it among the slower providers in this comparison.

On the plus side, Decodo offers a solid developer and customer experience, with an API playground, Github code examples, and a Postman collection that make integration and testing easier.

Read the Decodo review for more information and performance tests.

Strong Options We Haven’t Tested Recently

6. Bright Data

Feature-rich Instagram Scrapers.

Add up to $500 to your account and get double the amount.

Integration: API (real-time), proxy
Data parsing: JSON/CSV
Locations: global with country and city level targeting
Free trial: 7-day trial for companies
Pricing model: based on successful requests
Starting price:
– Instagram Scraper API: $1.5 for 1,000 records
– Web Unblocker: $1.5 for 1,000 results
– Instagram datasets: $600 for 100K records ($2.5/1K)

Bright Data offers one of the more extensive scraping ecosystems on the market, with multiple products designed specifically for Instagram. Among these are its pre-scraped Instagram datasets, dedicated Instagram Scraper APIs, and Web Unlocker.

Web Unlocker is a general-purpose web scraper that integrates as a proxy server or a real-time API. The tool automatically renders JavaScript. However, it doesn’t have an in-built parser.

If that’s a sticking point, you can go with Bright Data’s Web Scraper API with different endpoints – comments, posts, profiles and reels – for Instagram. These tools cover similar unblocking use cases as Web Unlocker, but they expose Instagram-specific endpoints and return structured data instead of raw pages via an API.

Alternatively, you can choose a pre-collected dataset for Instagram if you don’t want to maintain your own scraper. You can get data points like followers, profiles, posts, and more. The provider offers an entire dataset, or you can customize a subset with different filters.

Bright Data boasts a feature-rich service, but the breadth of its tooling comes at a higher price point that may not suit every budget.

Read the Bright Data review for more information and performance tests.