Best Web Scrapers
In a hurry?
The best Instagram scraper in 2023, as found in our independent testing is Phantombuster.
Need some leads to target a specific audience for your business?
Are you looking to get insight into the latest socio-economic trends and get data from social media platforms like Instagram?
Well, then you will have to do the scraping. You can get very useful info related to price intelligence, price monitoring, and market research, among many others.
In this guide, we will show you how you can scrape data from Instagram.
Various Instagram scrapers are available on the market in 2023, but not all of them will work to a high standard.
Best Instagram Scrapers 2023
- Phantombuster – 🏆 Winner!
- Bright Data
- ScraperAPI
- Apify’s Instagram Scraper
- ScrapingBee
- Octoparse
- ScrapeStorm
- WebScraper Chrome Extension
- InstaScrape
- Jarvee Scraper
- ZenRows
1. Best Instagram Scraper by Phantombuster
Phantombuster‘s bots are designed to extract data and perform an action on the platform for you.
So, if you are looking to access data from Instagram, this is the right scraper for you, and the best part is that you can go for data scraping for other social media platforms.
What’s more here is that you can use their free trial as well. You can use this phantom for free forever, but this trial is only available for 10 minutes.
These smallest packages will cost you $30 a month, and you can use five phantoms for an hour per day.
Phantombuster is an awesome service, and it comes at a pretty reasonable price as well.
So, if you are truly looking for value for money, this is the best scraper you will find.
If you think that is quite a load of work and don’t have a thing for coding, then don’t worry; there are ready-to-use Instagram scrapers available for you to use.
However, remember that you need to go for the best tool for this purpose and configure it for the correct use.
If you don’t do it right, then the platform’s anti-bot system will detect and block you right away. To assist you with this, we are listing down some of the best Instagram scrapers available on the internet.
2. Bright Data
This Instagram scraper by Bright Data will cost you $500 for 151K page loads, and you can also try the service out with a free trial.
The date that will be provided to you after scraping will be available in MS Excel. The supported platform for this data collector for Instagram is a web platform.
If you are interested in scraping public data from the Instagram platform, this Instagram scraper is one of the best options for you to consider.
Bright Data is the leading name in the world of proxy. This tool has a good number of Instagram collectors, including profiles, posts, and hashtags.
This tool has predefined data sets for the users. You will only have to register for this service and add funds.
From there, you can start using the service and forget about the worry of getting banned.
But there is a catch!
This service is ideally suitable for firms and organizations.
For individuals, it’s a pretty big deal to pay $500 a month.
However, if you are a firm, this is the Instagram scraper tool you need to use for high-quality results.
3. ScraperAPI
ScraperAPI is a really powerful Instagram scraper tool that can help you scrape everything you need from Instagram, and what’s really interesting is that they offer their clients a free plan, with limitations.
If you’re just starting out in the world of Instagram scraping, and you want to get to know a tool before you sign up for anything more long-term, this is going to be a great option.
Their free plan offers 1000 requests a month, and it is not going to charge for an unsuccessful request.
You can also try requests over and over again until they are completed, and it times out every 60 seconds.
4. Apify’s Instagram Scraper
You can try their free trial before subscribing to the paid plan, starting from $49 per month.
The paid plan is for 100 actors to compute units, while the free trial is for 10 actors to add units.
The scraped data that you will receive will be in JSON only. The service is entirely cloud-based, and is accessed through an API.
It’s a platform that will host various web automation tools called actors, and the Instagram scraping tool is one of these actors.
This Instagram scraper will allow you to scrap publicly accessible data like comments, posts, profiles, hashtags, and places.
This tool also provides support for search queries, and you can even give it your list of URLs if you want.
The automation tools available at Apify are all available in API, and you can conveniently integrate them into custom programs. You can even save your scraped data in either CSV or Excel files.
5. ScrapingBee
ScrapingBee is your answer if you’re trying to make the most of a scraper that can help you get around blocks that you are more than likely going to come across.
They can help you rotate your proxies for you, and they can help you handle headless browsers as well. You can try them out for free, and they have a 4.9-star rating based on more than 30 reviews elsewhere on the Internet.
The best part is that they are compatible with the latest version of Chrome, and they are really quick, which means that you can easily scrape all of the necessary Instagram data, and it’s not going to take a long time for you to do so.
They can also assist you with rotating proxies, which means that if you are scraping a lot of data from Instagram, and you need to switch up your proxy connection from time to time, this is possible.
6. Octoparse
This tool for Instagram scraping will cost you about $75 a month, and you can also go for a 14-day free trial with some limitations.
You can extract data in various formats, including SQLServer, MySQL, JSON, Excel, and CSV. The supported platforms are desktop and cloud.
This is a service that is ideally suitable for anyone who is looking for a versatile Instagram scraper.
It’s a reliable, trusted, and tested web scraper, and it has scraping templates, and these templates will allow you to carry out scraping much faster.
It’s a visual scraping tool, and you don’t have to be a coder to work with it. You can use it either as a cloud-based tool or desktop software.
It also comes with a free trial, and you try it out before you buy and make sure that this service meets your needs or not.
7. ScrapeStorm
ScrapeStorm is a premium service when it comes to scraping data from Instagram.
And it will cost you from $79.99 a month. However, there are free trials available as well for you to check out.
You can extract data from various platforms, including CSV, TXT, JSON, Excel, Google Sheets, MySQL, and support the desktop format.
ScrapeStorm is another tool that you can use for Instagram scraping, particularly that publicly available data.
You can use this scraping service on other websites as well. It can scrape websites and can’t be detected by any anti-botting systems.
You don’t need any training in using the tool. And the scraper intelligently uses various data points using AI.
This tool is available on various operating systems, and you can also use it as a cloud-based tool.
8. WebScraper Chrome Extension
This Chrome extension is free to use, and you can conveniently use it for as long as you need. It provides you with data in CSV format, and the supported platform is Chrome extension only.
This extension has proven to be one of the best scrapers available on the internet for scraping Instagram. And it’s not just about Instagram because you can scrape any other website as well.
It is developed under the modern web; therefore, you can conveniently scrape new and old websites. This extension is a useful tool for Instagram scraping because it can render
JavaScript and it can also take care of Instagram’s infinite scrolling that one has to deal with. So, this is a free-of-cost tool when you are using it as a web extension.
But there are some limitations as well. Cloud scraping gets rid of those limitations, but you will have to pay for the cloud service.
9. InstaScrape
This Instagram scraper tool uses Python to scrape data easily and is designed and tailored for Instagram data extraction.
It easily allows you to download content to your computer, and the fact that it is lightweight means that it saves on space. It is also helpful for getting HTML embedded codes for posts.
Whether you want to extract images, videos, or text, definitely make the most of this Instagram scraper tool for your next scraper session.
10. Jarvee Scraper
Their plans start from $29.95 a month, and there is a free trial available that will last up to 5 days.
After scraping using this tool, the data you will receive is available in three formats: Excel, CSV, and JSON, and the supported platforms here are MS Windows.
If you are into Instagram automation, then you will understand what it can do for you.
Jarvee is one of the most powerful tools available on the internet for Instagram scraping, and it has survived all the platform updates that have been made under the anti-botting scheme.
Just go for the best settings and make sure that you know what you’re doing because this tool will give you full access to the controls, and if you don’t see what you are doing, you might get caught.
It’s not an Instagram-only tool and works for various other social media platforms as well. The paid web-based tool is pretty exceptional, and it will deliver results very fast.
11. ZenRows
Being able to scrape Instagram is definitely going to make a difference to your brand online, especially if the majority of your target audience is on there.
ZenRows is a really good option as an Instagram profile scraper because they can help you not just scrape Instagram, but they can help you with proxies as well, so that you can scrape Instagram with ease without having to worry about your IP address being exposed.
They say that they offer a trial for free, which is a great way to get to know a company like this beforehand, and you aren’t going to have to divulge any credit card details.
They say that with their proxies and webscraper features, it has never been easier to get the job that you need from the Instagram profiles that you are looking at.
This way, you can focus on the data, and not worry about your location being exposed. You can also benefit from the fact that they have unlimited bandwidth.
An Overview of Instagram Scraping
Instagram has stringent rules in terms and conditions on using scrapers, crawlers, and various other similar automated bots on this platform.
But people have been using crawlers and scrapers here on Instagram despite agreeing to these terms and conditions.
They are not to blame as the platform’s API doesn’t allow this activity. Instagram also has a robust anti-bot system to prevent automated access and traffic on this platform.
This anti-bot system has efficiently shut down some high-quality scraping services as well.
But with the right system in place, you will be able to scrape data from the platform according to your needs, and you won’t get blocked or won’t even get detected.
Proxies are the most important tool you need to take care of because Instagram can track IPs and detect proxies.
But using residential proxies is the best option for you if you can afford them because they are high-quality proxies from original users.
Can We Use Proxies for This Purpose?
You might think proxies are a good option for scraping data from Instagram. But not all proxies work when it comes to scraping data from Instagram.
Some may work, but they won’t get all the publicly available data, including posts, comments, places, and profiles.
Instagram has a quality anti-botting system in place. This system can also trace out proxies, no matter how good quality proxies you are using.
Therefore, you need to get an Instagram scraper to get data from the platform.
If coding is something that you can do, then you can develop a scraping program. You can design just the way you want it to be, and it will work as an automation tool and extract all the data they need from the platform.
If you don’t like developing a program, you can go for various online scraping tools and services.
These programs are designed with a simple interface, and you don’t have to learn much to use them.
Of course, some of them need a little training, but you will get to know them very well with practice. You will have to go for the paid tools for the best services, and some of them are quite expensive.
You will also have the option of making some changes to this program if something doesn’t work out. But if you think you can scrape data from Instagram using proxies to save money, that will not happen.
However, you can do that by using residential proxies, and they are pretty expensive, especially if you are going to use them for web scraping.
So, a better option to go here is choosing a residential Instagram proxy or going for an Instagram scraping tool that has this built-in.
How Instagram Scraping Works
When it comes to scraping web data from Instagram, defining the objective is the first step.
You need to be clear about exactly what you’re wanting to achieve from the data you are able to extract from Instagram.
You need to think about things like which profile you want to be able to scrape data from, what are the keywords that you are looking for, whether you’re scraping based on a specific hashtag, is scraping included on the profiles of those who have commented on a specific post, and more.
Once you have defined your objective, you can carry out the extraction.
First, you will need to install an API, because Instagram’s actual API is not going to support your data scraping.
You’ll need to find an API that doesn’t have an Instagram login requirement, because any login could result in the IP address being blocked, and your account ultimately being flagged.
Another thing that’s helpful when it comes to the Instagram scraping tools that we’ve talked about on this list is that you can configure them to scrape images, posts, or videos from a specific URL.
You can also set other parameters, including postdates, post captions, and the number of likes and comments.
Instagram scraper tools also need to set limits and parameters like less than 1000 requests because Instagram forces scrape limits, and is going to block scrolling of more than 1000 comments or posts.
Once you have done all of this, you can sit back, relax, and watch your Instagram web scraper take care of the rest for you.
Once you have successfully extracted data from Instagram, you can save this information as a local file, so that you can access it later.
Users of Instagram Scrapers
Investors
When investors are able to extract data from Instagram, they are able to gain insights into the worth of a brand, based on this information.
They can easily keep track of news about a product, getting information on public sentiment, or even guess the company’s financial information, as well as management commentaries.
Brand Owners
When a business or brand scrapes information from Instagram, it can help them make really important business decisions.
Scraped data offers information about minimum advertised price by their rivals, so that they can work out how to price their future products.
Influencers
An influencer needs to be able to gauge their worth based on the audience that they attract, and sometimes, extracting data from Instagram can be the key to finding out this essential information.
Benefits of Scrapers
Lead Generation
One of the most common strategies used by companies to create high conversion rates is lead generation.
Instagram data scrapers can streamline the process of creating more leads for your business.
It lets you access influencer’s contacts from Instagram, and it can extract data like age and occupation, as well as other important details.
The scraper is going to get this information from the accounts using the search tool or option.
You can then use this information to reach out to potential visitors, and ultimately convert them into paying customers.
Keeping up with the Competition
These days brands are all about embracing social media when it comes to marketing, and sales.
Instagram is one of these platforms which is used by businesses and brands alike to reach new clients, especially when it comes to the younger generations.
To keep up with market trends, business owners need to be up to date when it comes to their competitor’s activity.
Scraping important web information is going to let you figure out what your competitors are doing, so that you can keep up with them, and target the right people based on your product.
When you scrape data from Instagram, you can download a list of Instagram followers that you could engage with, and potentially take the heat off your competition.
Site Migration
It is only natural that when it comes to having a site online, you can expect changes from time to time.
As somebody who uses social media sites, it is probably going to be important to merge or remove content at some point.
This process is going to result in some loss of data. If you haven’t backed up your data, it can end up being corrupted as well.
Corrupt data ends up being unusable. Web scraping is considered an informal backup, so that you can make sure that you retain important Instagram information during migration.
Comment Analysis
As an influencer or a brand on Instagram, you need to be able to work out what your audience wants to see and what they don’t want to see.
Scraping comments and laying them out in an easy-to-read spreadsheet is going to let you conduct a detailed analysis, so that you can develop important market strategies for your future products.
An Instagram comments scraper is going to let you go through the comments section, and locate the top commentators in their profile, and work out things like how often they comment.
A lot of the time, businesses use a system like this to choose winners, when they are doing an online promotion.
Through analysis like this, you can also list comments and learn about your audience a bit more in their posts.
As a business, these patterns help you work out which posts to create, and which strategies are going to benefit your business model.
Developing Market Campaigns
As a brand or business, getting to understand your target audience is going to help you make knowledgeable decisions, and launch an effective business strategy.
One particular strategy is a marketing campaign that you have developed, based on the number of potential clients, or product users in a specific area.
The trouble is that collecting data that you can use to create marketing campaigns can be time-consuming, and in an industry where time is money, it could end up hindering your brand’s progress, instead of helping it.
With an Instagram scraper, you can easily collect users’ geo-location information from posts, which is going to help you execute the correct marketing campaign based on your audience.
So, Why Scrape Data from Instagram?
Instagram is a popular photo and video application and social media platform that Facebook now owns. This platform is a huge source of information.
It might not have as much information as Facebook, but it still has essential data about various platform users. Moreover, all this data has an overwhelming amount of personal touch to it.
This data includes photos, videos, and their associated comments from the circles. Businesses and social researchers need this data to assess and analyze.
This is to smoothen their workflow and better understand their target audiences. This will allow them to create better content and conduct their research.
But the official Instagram API only allows access to the data directly associated with you. In addition, there are a variety of restrictions in place based on API data and call limits.
If you are to access publicly available data and not directly tied to your account, you must work your way around the usual path set by the API.
In other words, you will be making Automated tools which are called Instagram scrapers.
These scrapers are computer programs that can automate the entire process of data extraction from the social media platform.
This program does it by sending HTTP requests to the pages of interest for downloading. After that, it will parse the data out from the page and save it in a database as per requirement.
Scraping Instagram with Selenium and Python
If you can do reverse engineering on Instagram’s platform or mobile application, then fine, but your entire focus should be on its web application because that’s the one you can replicate in terms of its requests.
The web application of this platform is heavily developed using JavaScript. This is to provide you with an almost native and highly responsive experience.
You will also have to deal with plenty of AJAX and XHR requests. Therefore, the duo of Beautifulsoup and Requests don’t make Instagram scraping an ideal option.
To execute it in a better way, you will need to render and execute JavaScrip, and for this, you can use headless browsers.
The most powerful and popular browser automation tool for a Python developer is Selenium, and you can also use those control browsers in the headless mode.
Of course, there is some data available publicly on the social media platform, and you can access that all without even logging into Instagram. This Data includes hashtags, posts, profiles, places, and comments.
This is a useful way to start your work because accessing this social media platform with an automated tool. However, you are logged in will trigger the platform’s anti-bot system.
So, you might end up getting your IP address getting banned. In addition, you might also end up blocking your account.
You might be thinking that why not create separate accounts for the scraping work. But for that, you will have to be good at engineering your bot and evade checking activated accounts logged in.
Here’s a small Instagram scraper that you can use to scrape comments under different posts to get you started.
From Selenium Import Webdriver
Class InstagramScraper:
def __init__(self, post_url):
self.post_url = post_url
self.comments = []
chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
chrome_options.add_argument(“–headless”)
self.chrome = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options)
def scrape_comments(self):
browser = self.chrome.get(self.post_url)
content = self.chrome.page_source
comments =
self.chrome.find_element_by_class_name(“XQXOT”).find_elements_by_class_name(“Mr508”)
for comment in comments:
d =
comment.find_element_by_class_name(“ZyFrc”).find_element_by_tag_name(“li”).find_elemen
t_by_class_name(“P9YgZ”).find_element_by_tag_name(“div”)
d = d.find_element_by_class_name(“C4VMK”)
poster = d.find_element_by_tag_name(“h3”).text
post = d.find_element_by_tag_name(“span”).text
self.comments.append({
“poster”: poster,
“post”: post
})
return self.comments
post_url = “https://www.instagram.com/p/CAbDmzDnSvn/”
x = InstagramScraper(post_url)
x.scrape_comments()Conclusion
Instagram is one of the toughest websites to be scraped on the internet. This platform has an anti-bot system in place, and it can detect proxies really well.
But if you are an experienced developer, you can get it scrapped pretty conveniently.
If you are not an experienced programmer, you can use different Instagram scrappers mentioned above. These tools are great when it comes to scraping data from Instagram.
These scrapers will allow you to scrape and download data from the social media platform in various formats.
There are paid as well as free scrapers for Instagram available. You can choose one based on your requirements.
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Written by Jason Wise
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