Instagram Hashtag Scraper: posts, reels and engagement

What changes your results and your bill?

Pointing the scraper at a tag costs $0.016 either way you do it, and 60 items come with that fee. The two switches below are what actually decide the contents: which formats come back, and how far back the run reaches.

• keyword

  $0.016per query

  60 items included

  You know the tag. Type it without the # symbol and the scraper searches Instagram for it.

  streetphotography

• startUrls

  $0.016per URL

  60 items included

  You want exact tag pages, several at once. Each URL is its own query.

  instagram.com/explore/tags/cats/

• The one that surprises people

  getPosts · getReels

  posts onreels off

  Schema default

  Posts are on by default and reels are off, so a default run returns no reels at all.

  getReels: true

• until

  YYYY-MM-DDnewer than this

  Posts-only for accuracy

  Stops the run at a date instead of an item count. Built for campaign and trend windows.

  2026-09-01

Every item past the first 60 of a query costs $0.0004, whichever input pointed the run at the tag. maxItems is the hard spending limit: budget ÷ $0.0004 is what you can afford.

Which hashtag job are you running?

Instagram Hashtag Scraper runs 3 jobs: pull a hashtag’s recent posts, pull its reels instead, or reach back to a date for a campaign window. All three bill the same way, $0.016 a query with the first 60 items included.

{
  "keyword": "streetphotography",
  "getPosts": true,
  "getReels": false,
  "maxItems": 1000
}

{
  "id": "3245142029192513970_62815273217",
  "code": "C0JD3tntcmy",
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/C0JD3tntcmy/",
  "createdAt": "2023-11-27T07:48:34.000Z",
  "likeCount": 114,
  "commentCount": 5,
  "isPaidPartnership": false,
  "caption": "#dogs #love Na zajęciach z Pomkami…",
  "hashtags": ["dogs", "love", "pomeranian"],
  "owner": { "username": "jogi.lapki.bydgoszcz", "isVerified": false }
}

{
  "keyword": "grwm",
  "getPosts": false,
  "getReels": true,
  "maxItems": 500
}

{
  "isVideo": true,
  "isCarousel": false,
  "video": {
    "id": "235268832770811v",
    "url": "https://scontent-fra5-1.cdninstagram.com/…mp4",
    "width": 1078,
    "height": 1916,
    "duration": 28.281,
    "playCount": 3321
  }
}

{
  "startUrls": ["https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/cats/"],
  "getPosts": true,
  "getReels": false,
  "until": "2026-09-01"
}

{
  "createdAt": "2026-09-14T08:12:09.000Z",
  "likeCount": 2841,
  "commentCount": 96,
  "isPaidPartnership": true,
  "location": {
    "name": "Bydgoszcz, Poland",
    "lat": 53.1222,
    "lng": 17.9986
  }
}

What comes back for each post?

Every run returns one record per post or reel, in a single shape of around 18 fields. They group into 4 things: the post, its engagement, who published it, and where and what it was.

• 7

  The post

  Always present

  • id, code, url
  • createdAt
  • caption
  • hashtags[]
  • isPinned, isPaidPartnership

• 3

  Engagement

  Subject to creator settings

  • likeCount
  • commentCount
  • video.playCount on reels
  • isLikeAndViewCountsDisabled

• 6

  Author

  owner, plus coowners on collabs

  • owner.username, owner.id
  • owner.fullName
  • owner.profilePicUrl
  • owner.isVerified, isPrivate
  • coowners[] on collab posts

• 5

  Media and place

  Depends on the post type

  • isVideo, isCarousel
  • video{ url, duration, playCount }
  • image{ url, width, height }
  • location{ name, lat, lng }

Reshape any of these with customMapFunction, a JavaScript function that receives one object and returns one object. Reshaping is fine; dropping records is not, and doing it can get the account restricted.

What can catch you out?

Six things decide whether a run returns what you expected. Four are Instagram’s doing; two are switches this actor ships in a particular position.

• 01

  Reels are off by default

  getReels prefills to false in the input schema, so a default run returns posts only. The README’s table disagrees and says true; the schema is what the form loads. Set both switches explicitly.

• 02

  until is exact only without reels

  Posts come back in date order, so the cutoff is clean. With reels in the mix results are only roughly ordered, and items near the boundary can land on the wrong side.

• 03

  Each query includes 60 items, not each run

  Five hashtags in one run carry 300 included items between them. One hashtag carries 60, however many items you ask for.

• 04

  No # in the keyword

  The field takes the tag text alone. Hashtag URLs use the explore/tags/ form: instagram.com/explore/tags/cats/.

• 05

  Engagement counts can be hidden

  Creators can hide likes and views. Those records come back with isLikeAndViewCountsDisabled true, and the counts are not reliable on them.

• 06

  Stories are never returned, and neither is anything private

  The scraper reads public hashtag pages with no login and no cookies. Posts and reels only.

The free Apify plan caps you at 5 runs a month, 10 items apiece.

What does one hashtag cost to pull?

A run costs $0.016 per hashtag query plus $0.0004 for every item past the first 60 that query includes. Ten thousand posts from one hashtag cost $3.99.

Computed from the query fee and per-item price the Apify Store API reports. The actor’s own "5 hashtags, 2,000 posts" example reads $0.86 while stating the right breakdown beside it, 5 queries and 1,700 additional items, which is $0.76. Its other three examples check out.

Who scrapes Instagram hashtags, and why?

Instagram Hashtag Scraper is used by 6 kinds of team: social media managers, agencies, brand monitors, e-commerce researchers, influencer marketers and academic researchers. The three jobs below map onto them almost one to one.

• Social media managers

  Research a hashtag, weekly

  Track which tags are carrying reach, and pull content ideas from what is performing under them

  $0.39 per 1,000 posts

• Digital marketing agencies

  Since a date, per campaign tag

  Measure a campaign hashtag inside its own window and report reach per client without paying for history

  From $0.016 per tag

• Brand monitoring

  Research a hashtag, on brand terms

  Watch brand and competitor tags, and read captions for sentiment around a launch

  $0.76 per 5 tags, 2,000 posts

• E-commerce and product research

  Research a hashtag, on product tags

  Find trending products and read what buyers say in captions before committing stock

  $3.99 per 10,000 posts

• Influencer marketing

  Get the reels, on niche tags

  Find creators by the tags they post under, and use isPaidPartnership to see who already takes brand work

  $0.19 per 500 reels

• Academic researchers

  Since a date, across many tags

  Build dated corpora of captions and hashtags for sentiment and trend analysis

  $15.36 per 20 tags, monthly

How do you call it from code?

The actor is apidojo/instagram-hashtag-scraper. Build a run in the web form, copy the input JSON, and the REST API or either official client will take it unchanged.

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")

# Posts only, so the date cutoff is exact
run = client.actor("apidojo/instagram-hashtag-scraper").call(run_input={
    "keyword": "streetphotography",
    "getPosts": True,
    "getReels": False,
    "until": "2026-09-01",
    "maxItems": 1000,
})

for post in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    # Counts are unreliable where the creator hid them
    hidden = post["isLikeAndViewCountsDisabled"]
    print(post["createdAt"], post["owner"]["username"],
          "hidden" if hidden else post["likeCount"])

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });

// Five tags in one run: five query fees, 300 items included between them
const run = await client.actor('apidojo/instagram-hashtag-scraper').call({
  startUrls: [
    'https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/cats/',
    'https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/kittens/',
  ],
  getPosts: true,
  getReels: true,
  maxItems: 2000,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
const sponsored = items.filter((p) => p.isPaidPartnership);
console.log(sponsored.length, 'paid partnerships of', items.length);

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/apidojo~instagram-hashtag-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"keyword":"grwm","getPosts":false,"getReels":true,"maxItems":500}'

Runs write to an Apify dataset you can download or poll. Every key used above appears in the actor’s input schema. Nothing here is guesswork.

Instagram Hashtag Scraper FAQ

Where Instagram Hashtag Scraper fits