How to Scrape Instagram: Account Data, Posts, Images (Code & No Code)

Introduction

Instagram is a free social networking service built around sharing photos and videos with your followers.

In this article, you will read about the easiest way to web scrape Instagram data with Page2API.

You will find code examples for Ruby, Python, PHP, NodeJS, cURL, and a No-Code solution that will import Instagram posts into Google Sheets.

In this article, we will learn how to:

Scrape Instagram Account Data
Scrape Instagram Posts by hashtag
Export Instagram Posts to Google Sheets

Prerequisites

To start scraping Instagram, you will need the following things:

A Page2API account
A Instagram profile you want to scrape, let's use for example NASA

How to scrape Instagram Account Data

The first thing you need is to open the profile page we are interested in.

In our case the URL will be:

  
    https://www.instagram.com/nasa/

The page will look like the following one:

From this page, we will scrape the following attributes:

Instagram Account data

Name
Followers
Following
Posts
Title
Bio
Bio URL

Latest posts

Title
Image
URL

Let's define the selectors for each attribute.

Instagram Account data selectors

  
    /* Name: */
    header h2

    /* Posts: */
    header ul li:nth-of-type(1) div span

    /* Followers: */
    header ul li:nth-of-type(2) div span

    /* Following: */
    header ul li:nth-of-type(3) div span

    /* Title: */
    header ul + div span

    /* Bio: */
    header ul + div div

    /* Bio URL: */
    header ul + div a

Latest posts selectors

  
    /* Parent: */
    article a[role=link]

    /* Title: */
    img

    /* Image: */
    img

    /* URL: */
    article a[role=link]

Before starting to scrape we must ensure that the cookies modal is closed

  
    for (const a of document.querySelectorAll('div[role=dialog] button')) {
      if (a.textContent.includes('essential cookies')) {
        a.click()
      }
    }

The payload for our scraping request will be:

  
    {
      "api_key": "YOUR_PAGE2API_KEY",
      "url": "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/",
      "parse": {
        "name": "header h2 >> text",
        "posts": "header ul li:nth-of-type(1) div span >> text",
        "followers": "header ul li:nth-of-type(2) div span >> text",
        "following": "header ul li:nth-of-type(3) div span >> text",
        "title": "header ul + div span >> text",
        "bio": "header ul + div div >> text",
        "link": "header ul + div a >> href",
        "latest_posts": [
          {
            "_parent": "article a[role=link]",
            "image": "img >> src",
            "link": "_parent >> href",
            "title": "img >> alt"
          }
        ]
      },
      "premium_proxy": "us",
      "real_browser": true,
      "scenario": [
        { "execute_js": "for (const a of document.querySelectorAll('div[role=dialog] button')) { if (a.textContent.includes('essential cookies')) { a.click() }}" },
        { "wait_for": "header h2" },
        { "execute": "parse" }
      ]
    }

Running the scraping request

      
    require 'rest_client'
    require 'json'

    api_url ="https://www.page2api.com/api/v1/scrape"
    payload = {
      api_key: 'YOUR_PAGE2API_KEY',
      url: "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/",
      parse: {
        name: "header h2 >> text",
        posts: "header ul li:nth-of-type(1) div span >> text",
        followers: "header ul li:nth-of-type(2) div span >> text",
        following: "header ul li:nth-of-type(3) div span >> text",
        title: "header ul + div span >> text",
        bio: "header ul + div div >> text",
        link: "header ul + div a >> href",
        latest_posts: [
          {
            _parent: "article a[role=link]",
            image: "img >> src",
            link: "_parent >> href",
            title: "img >> alt"
          }
        ]
      },
      premium_proxy: "us",
      real_browser: true,
      scenario: [
        { execute_js: "for (const a of document.querySelectorAll('div[role=dialog] button')) { if (a.textContent.includes('essential cookies')) { a.click() }}" },
        { wait_for: "header h2" },
        { execute: "parse" }
      ]
    }

    response = RestClient::Request.execute(
      method: :post,
      payload: payload.to_json,
      url: api_url,
      headers: { "Content-type" => "application/json" },
    ).body

    result = JSON.parse(response)

    print(result)

      
    import requests
    import json

    api_url = 'https://www.page2api.com/api/v1/scrape'
    payload = {
      "api_key": "YOUR_PAGE2API_KEY",
      "url": "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/",
      "parse": {
        "name": "header h2 >> text",
        "posts": "header ul li:nth-of-type(1) div span >> text",
        "followers": "header ul li:nth-of-type(2) div span >> text",
        "following": "header ul li:nth-of-type(3) div span >> text",
        "title": "header ul + div span >> text",
        "bio": "header ul + div div >> text",
        "link": "header ul + div a >> href",
        "latest_posts": [
          {
            "_parent": "article a[role=link]",
            "image": "img >> src",
            "link": "_parent >> href",
            "title": "img >> alt"
          }
        ]
      },
      "premium_proxy": "us",
      "real_browser": True,
      "scenario": [
        { "execute_js": "for (const a of document.querySelectorAll('div[role=dialog] button')) { if (a.textContent.includes('essential cookies')) { a.click() }}" },
        { "wait_for": "header h2" },
        { "execute": "parse" }
      ]
    }

    headers = {'Content-type': 'application/json', 'Accept': 'text/plain'}
    response = requests.post(api_url, data=json.dumps(payload), headers=headers)
    result = json.loads(response.text)

    print(result)

      
    <?php

    $api_url = 'https://www.page2api.com/api/v1/scrape';
    $payload = [
      "api_key" => 'YOUR_PAGE2API_KEY',
      "url" => "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/",
      "parse" => [
        "name" => "header h2 >> text",
        "posts" => "header ul li:nth-of-type(1) div span >> text",
        "followers" => "header ul li:nth-of-type(2) div span >> text",
        "following" => "header ul li:nth-of-type(3) div span >> text",
        "title" => "header ul + div span >> text",
        "bio" => "header ul + div div >> text",
        "link" => "header ul + div a >> href",
        "latest_posts" => [
          "0" => [
            "_parent" => "article a[role=link]",
            "image" => "img >> src",
            "link" => "_parent >> href",
            "title" => "img >> alt"
          ]
        ]
      ],
      "premium_proxy" => "us",
      "real_browser" => true,
      "scenario" => [
        "0" => [ "execute_js" => "for (const a of document.querySelectorAll('div[role=dialog] button')) { if (a.textContent.includes('essential cookies')) { a.click() }}" ],
        "1" => [ "wait_for" => "header h2" ],
        "2" => [ "execute" => "parse" ]
      ]
    ];

    $postdata = json_encode($payload);
    $ch = curl_init($api_url);
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST, true);
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postdata);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type:application/json'));
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    $result = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

    echo $result;

    ?>

      
    const axios = require('axios');
    const api_url = 'https://www.page2api.com/api/v1/scrape';
    const payload = {
      api_key: 'YOUR_PAGE2API_KEY',
      url: "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/",
      parse: {
        name: "header h2 >> text",
        posts: "header ul li:nth-of-type(1) div span >> text",
        followers: "header ul li:nth-of-type(2) div span >> text",
        following: "header ul li:nth-of-type(3) div span >> text",
        title: "header ul + div span >> text",
        bio: "header ul + div div >> text",
        link: "header ul + div a >> href",
        latest_posts: [
          {
            _parent: "article a[role=link]",
            image: "img >> src",
            link: "_parent >> href",
            title: "img >> alt"
          }
        ]
      },
      premium_proxy: "us",
      real_browser: true,
      scenario: [
        { execute_js: "for (const a of document.querySelectorAll('div[role=dialog] button')) { if (a.textContent.includes('essential cookies')) { a.click() }}" },
        { wait_for: "header h2" },
        { execute: "parse" }
      ]
    };

    axios.post(api_url, payload)
      .then((res) => {
        console.log(JSON.stringify(res.data, null, "  "));
      }).catch((err) => {
         console.error(err);
      });

      
    curl -XPOST -H "Content-type: application/json" -d '{
      "api_key": "YOUR_PAGE2API_KEY",
      "url": "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/",
      "parse": {
        "name": "header h2 >> text",
        "posts": "header ul li:nth-of-type(1) div span >> text",
        "followers": "header ul li:nth-of-type(2) div span >> text",
        "following": "header ul li:nth-of-type(3) div span >> text",
        "title": "header ul + div span >> text",
        "bio": "header ul + div div >> text",
        "link": "header ul + div a >> href",
        "latest_posts": [
          {
            "_parent": "article a[role=link]",
            "image": "img >> src",
            "link": "_parent >> href",
            "title": "img >> alt"
          }
        ]
      },
      "premium_proxy": "us",
      "real_browser": true,
      "scenario": [
        { "execute_js": "for (const a of document.querySelectorAll(\"div[role=dialog] button\")) { if (a.textContent.includes(\"essential cookies\")) { a.click() }}" },
        { "wait_for": "header h2" },
        { "execute": "parse" }
      ]
    }' 'https://www.page2api.com/api/v1/scrape' | python3.10 -mjson.tool

The result

  
    {
      "result": {
        "name": "nasa",
        "posts": "3,666",
        "followers": "84.9M",
        "following": "77",
        "title": "NASA",
        "bio": "🚀 🌎 Exploring the universe and our home planet.",
        "bio_url": "nasa.gov",
        "latest_posts": [
          {
            "image": "https://scontent-bos5-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/316365871_1180016569589333_2961860102150934780_n.jpg...",
            "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/ClNLBXytoyy/",
            "title": "The last rays of an orbital sunset @Astro_FrankRubio is pictured during a Nov. 15, 2022, spacewalk outside @ISS. ..."
          },
          {
            "image": "https://scontent-bos5-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/315952827_1353287375409485_6061058986499004221_n.jpg...",
            "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/ClJnD6hDbJQ/",
            "title": "Where do moons come from? We asked a NASA expert.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ From cataclysmic impacts to gravitational capture, NASA ..."
          },
          {
            "image": "https://scontent-bos5-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/315951420_817027662731641_7325911233050593105_n.jpg...",
            "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/ClHL-M-L1g_/",
            "title": "Good things come in threes. As our Juno spacecraft completed its 38th close flyby of Jupiter on November 29, 2021, ..."
          },
          ...
        ]
      } ...
    }

How to scrape Instagram Posts by Hashtag

First, we need to open the Instagram explore page with the desired hashtag.

In our case it will be:

  
    https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/nasa/

The page we see must look similar to the following one:

From this page, we will scrape the following attributes for each post:

Title
Image
URL

Now, let's define the selectors for each attribute.

  
    /* Parent: */
    article a[role=link]

    /* Title: */
    img

    /* Image: */
    img

    /* URL: */
    article a[role=link]

Now, let's handle the pagination.

To load more posts, we simply need to scroll to the bottom:

  
    document.querySelectorAll('article a[role=link] img').forEach(e => e.scrollIntoView({behavior: 'smooth'}))

And let's not forget to close the Login modal:

  
    document.querySelector('#scrollview + div')?.remove()

Now let's build the request that will scrape all posts that the Instagram explore page returned.

The following examples will show how to scrape 2 pages of posts from Instagram's explore page.

The payload for our scraping request will be:

  
    {
      "api_key": "YOUR_PAGE2API_KEY",
      "url": "https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/nasa/",
      "parse": {
        "posts": [
          {
            "_parent": "article a[role=link]",
            "image": "img >> src",
            "url": "_parent >> href",
            "title": "img >> alt"
          }
        ]
      },
      "premium_proxy": "us",
      "real_browser": true,
      "scenario": [
        { "wait_for": "article a[role=link]" },
        {
          "loop": [
            { "execute_js": "document.querySelector('#scrollview + div')?.remove();" },
            { "wait": 1 },
            { "execute_js": "document.querySelectorAll('article a[role=link] img').forEach(e => e.scrollIntoView({behavior: 'smooth'}))" }
          ],
          "iterations": 2
        },
        { "execute": "parse" }
      ]
    }

Code examples

      
    require 'rest_client'
    require 'json'

    api_url = "https://www.page2api.com/api/v1/scrape"
    payload = {
      api_key: "YOUR_PAGE2API_KEY",
      url: "https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/nasa/",
      parse: {
        posts: [
          {
            _parent: "article a[role=link]",
            image: "img >> src",
            url: "_parent >> href",
            title: "img >> alt"
          }
        ]
      },
      premium_proxy: "us",
      real_browser: true,
      scenario: [
        { wait_for: "article a[role=link]" },
        {
          loop: [
            { execute_js: "document.querySelector('#scrollview + div')?.remove();" },
            { execute_js: "document.querySelectorAll('article a[role=link] img').forEach(e => e.scrollIntoView({behavior: 'smooth'}))" },
            { wait: 1 }
          ],
          iterations: 2
        },
        {
          execute: "parse"
        }
      ]
    }

    response = RestClient::Request.execute(
      method: :post,
      payload: payload.to_json,
      url: api_url,
      headers: { "Content-type" => "application/json" },
    ).body

    result = JSON.parse(response)

    puts(result)

      
    import requests
    import json

    api_url = "https://www.page2api.com/api/v1/scrape"
    payload = {
      "api_key": "YOUR_PAGE2API_KEY",
      "url": "https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/nasa/",
      "parse": {
        "posts": [
          {
            "_parent": "article a[role=link]",
            "image": "img >> src",
            "url": "_parent >> href",
            "title": "img >> alt"
          }
        ]
      },
      "premium_proxy": "us",
      "real_browser": True,
      "scenario": [
        { "wait_for": "article a[role=link]" },
        {
          "loop": [
            { "execute_js": "document.querySelector('#scrollview + div')?.remove();" },
            { "execute_js": "document.querySelectorAll('article a[role=link] img').forEach(e => e.scrollIntoView({behavior: 'smooth'}))" },
            { "wait": 1 }
          ],
          "iterations": 2
        },
        { "execute": "parse" }
      ]
    }

    headers = {'Content-type': 'application/json', 'Accept': 'text/plain'}
    response = requests.post(api_url, data=json.dumps(payload), headers=headers)
    result = json.loads(response.text)

    print(result)

      
    <?php

    $api_url = "https://www.page2api.com/api/v1/scrape";
    $payload = [
      "api_key" => "YOUR_PAGE2API_KEY",
      "url" => "https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/nasa/",
      "parse" => [
        "posts" => [
          "0" => [
            "_parent" => "article a[role=link]",
            "image" => "img >> src",
            "url" => "_parent >> href",
            "title" => "img >> alt"
          ]
        ]
      ],
      "premium_proxy" => "us",
      "real_browser" => true,
      "scenario" => [
        "0" => [ "wait_for" => "article a[role=link]" ],
        "1" => [
          "loop" => [
            "0" => [ "execute_js" => "document.querySelector('#scrollview + div')?.remove();" ],
            "1" => [ "execute_js" => "document.querySelectorAll('article a[role=link] img').forEach(e => e.scrollIntoView({behavior: 'smooth'}))" ],
            "2" => [ "wait" => 1 ]
          ],
          "iterations" => 2
        ],
        "2" => [ "execute" => "parse" ]
      ]
    ];

    $postdata = json_encode($payload);
    $ch = curl_init($api_url);
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST, true);
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postdata);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type:application/json'));
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    $result = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

    echo $result;

    ?>

      
    const axios = require('axios');
    const api_url = "https://www.page2api.com/api/v1/scrape";
    const payload = {
      api_key: "YOUR_PAGE2API_KEY",
      url: "https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/nasa/",
      parse: {
        posts: [
          {
            _parent: "article a[role=link]",
            image: "img >> src",
            url: "_parent >> href",
            title: "img >> alt"
          }
        ]
      },
      premium_proxy: "us",
      real_browser: true,
      scenario: [
        { wait_for: "article a[role=link]" },
        {
          loop: [
            { execute_js: "document.querySelector('#scrollview + div')?.remove();" },
            { execute_js: "document.querySelectorAll('article a[role=link] img').forEach(e => e.scrollIntoView({behavior: 'smooth'}))" },
            { wait: 1 }
          ],
          iterations: 2
        },
        {
          execute: "parse"
        }
      ]
    };

    axios.post(api_url, payload)
      .then((res) => {
        console.log(JSON.stringify(res.data, null, "  "));
      }).catch((err) => {
         console.error(err);
      });

      
    curl -XPOST -H "Content-type: application/json" -d '{
      "api_key": "YOUR_PAGE2API_KEY",
      "url": "https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/nasa/",
      "parse": {
        "posts": [
          {
            "_parent": "article a[role=link]",
            "image": "img >> src",
            "url": "_parent >> href",
            "title": "img >> alt"
          }
        ]
      },
      "premium_proxy": "us",
      "real_browser": true,
      "scenario": [
        { "wait_for": "article a[role=link]" },
        {
          "loop": [
            { "execute_js": "document.querySelector(\"#scrollview + div\")?.remove();" },
            { "wait": 1 },
            { "execute_js": "document.querySelectorAll(\"article a[role=link] img\").forEach(e => e.scrollIntoView({behavior: \"smooth\"}))" }
          ],
          "iterations": 2
        },
        { "execute": "parse" }
      ]
    }' 'https://www.page2api.com/api/v1/scrape' | python3.10 -mjson.tool

The result

  
    {
      "result": {
        "posts": [
          {
            "image": "https://scontent-atl3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/316458796_1178373929701303_4921666824295792341_n.webp...",
            "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/ClNbXaVjDKK/",
            "title": "#mars_patrol #telescope #spacestation #spacecraft#spacefacts #spacex #spaceexploration#spaceexplorer #deepspace ..."
          },
          {
            "image": "https://scontent-atl3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/316028358_170197002356991_5274268877404243353_n.jpg...",
            "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/ClLr9-euv6_/",
            "title": "Share this with a friend you like go follow @_finitespace_ go follow @_finitespace_ credit: @astro.lust .."
          },
          {
            "image": "https://scontent-atl3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/316105918_508048054703186_715273589769818265_n.webp...",
            "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/ClMntrbpNI8/",
            "title": "An illustration of a beautiful black hole. -Uma ilustração de um belo buraco negro. . . . . @nasa . . "
          },
          {
            "image": "https://scontent-atl3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/316597716_108405495342768_8303989679343993556_n.webp...",
            "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/ClMquhaDKqf/",
            "title": "There it is! The Moon! . \"We're approaching the Moon ahead of our powered flyby maneuver during ..."
          }, ...
        ]
      }, ...
    }

How to export Instagram posts to Google Sheets

In order to be able to export our posts to a Google Spreadsheet we will need to slightly modify our request to receive the data in CSV format instead of JSON.

According to the documentation, we need to add the following parameters to our payload:

  
    "raw": {
      "key": "posts", "format": "csv"
    }

Now our payload will look like:

{ "api_key": "YOUR_PAGE2API_KEY", "raw": { "key": "posts", "format": "csv" }, "url": "https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/nasa/", "parse": { "posts": [ { "_parent": "article a[role=link]", "image": "img >> src", "url": "_parent >> href", "title": "img >> alt" } ] }, "premium_proxy": "us", "real_browser": true, "scenario": [ { "wait_for": "article a[role=link]" }, { "loop": [ { "execute_js": "document.querySelector('#scrollview + div')?.remove();" }, { "wait": 1 }, { "execute_js": "document.querySelectorAll('article a[role=link] img').forEach(e => e.scrollIntoView({behavior: 'smooth'}))" } ], "iterations": 2 }, { "execute": "parse" } ] }

Now, edit the payload above if needed, and press Encode →

Encode

The URL with encoded payload will be:

  Press 'Encode'

Note: If you are reading this article being logged in - you can copy the link above since it will already have your api_key in the encoded payload.

The final part is adding the IMPORTDATA function, and we are ready to import our Instagram posts into a Google Spreadsheet.

  Press 'Encode'

The result must look like the following one:

Final thoughts

Collecting the data from Instagram manually can be a bit overwhelming and hard to scale.
However, a Web Scraping API can easily help you overcome this challenge and perform Instagram scraping in no time.
With Page2API you can quickly get access to the data you need, and use the time you saved on more important things!

And by by the way, if you are interested in a detailed article on how to build an iPhone shortcut that will help you download Instagram videos with Page2API, here is the link:
https://www.page2api.com/blog/download-instagram-video-iphone/

How to Scrape Instagram: Account Data, Posts, Images (Code & No Code)

Introduction

Prerequisites

How to scrape Instagram Account Data

How to scrape Instagram Posts by Hashtag

How to export Instagram posts to Google Sheets

Final thoughts

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