How to Vet Instagram Influencers With Data

To vet an Instagram influencer with data, check 4 things from public information: median engagement on their last 20 or so posts, the quality of the comments on those posts, a sample of their followers, and how often they post paid partnerships. Engagement far below similar accounts, generic repeated comments, and a follower sample full of empty private accounts are the warning signs of a bought audience. This guide extends the recurring pattern in how to monitor Instagram hashtags and mentions.

Vetting before you pay is cheaper than finding out after a campaign. This guide gives each check, its red flags, and the apidojo actor that collects the data. Finding creators to vet is covered in how to find Instagram influencers in your niche. After signing, how to track competitors on Instagram and how to analyse Instagram comment sentiment use the same data to follow results.

What Should You Check Before Hiring an Influencer?

Check the account, its engagement, its comments and its audience, in that order. The table maps each check to its data and red flags.

Check	Data	Red flags
Account basics	Followers, following, post count, category	Following almost as many as followers; very few posts
Engagement	Median likes and comments over recent posts	Far below similar accounts, or suspiciously uniform
Comments	Text of comments on recent posts	Repeated emoji, generic praise, same phrases from many accounts
Follower sample	Profiles of a sample of followers	Many private, empty or random-looking accounts
Partnerships	Posts marked as paid partnerships	Sponsored posts crowding out normal content

How Do You Check Engagement?

Collect the creator’s last 20 to 30 posts and take the median engagement rate. apidojo’s Instagram Scraper returns each post’s likeCount, commentCount, isPaidPartnership and the owner’s followerCount, and flags hidden counts with isLikeAndViewCountsDisabled (Apify). The method is in how to calculate Instagram engagement rate.

How Do You Check Comment Quality?

Collect comments on a handful of recent posts and look at how many are duplicates or emoji-only. apidojo’s Instagram Comments Scraper API takes post URLs or codes at $0.0075 per post, with the first 15 comments included (Apify). In Python, with comment text in the message field as apidojo’s Comments Scraper documents it:

from collections import Counter

texts = [c.get("message", "").strip().lower() for c in comments]
counts = Counter(texts)
duplicate_share = sum(n for t, n in counts.items() if n > 1) / max(len(texts), 1)
emoji_only = sum(1 for t in texts if t and not any(ch.isalnum() for ch in t)) / max(len(texts), 1)
print(f"Duplicates: {duplicate_share:.0%}, emoji-only: {emoji_only:.0%}")

Some emoji comments are normal; a high share of identical comments across posts isn’t.

How Do You Check a Creator’s Followers?

Pull a sample of followers and look at what kind of accounts they are. apidojo’s Instagram User Scraper returns followers with username, fullName, isPrivate and isVerified, at $0.01 per profile plus $0.0005 per follower (Apify).

{
  "handles": ["creator"],
  "getFollowers": true,
  "getFollowings": false,
  "maxItems": 500
}

A sample of 500 costs about $0.26. Instagram limits verified accounts to their first 50 followers, so this check is weaker for verified creators. Follower exports are covered in how to scrape Instagram followers and following lists.

What Does Vetting One Influencer Cost?

A full check costs well under $1: about $0.02 for 30 posts, $0.04 for comments on 5 posts within the included 15 each, and about $0.26 for a 500-follower sample. Vetting a shortlist of 20 creators this way costs a few dollars.