Instagram Hashtag Scraper

Turn any Instagram hashtag into a structured stream of posts and reels. Paste a tag like coffee, #latteart, or a full explore URL and get captions, engagement counts, play counts, video URLs, and creator handles — no login, no cookies, no account risk.

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Why Use This Scraper?

• Top posts and Reels from any public hashtag, in one run
• Real engagement data — likes, comments, and play counts per post
• Direct video and thumbnail URLs, plus the creator's handle and profile picture
• Automatic deduplication — Instagram serves overlapping pages, this actor does not bill you twice for the same post
• Many hashtags per run, processed in parallel
• Flattened rows that drop straight into CSV, Excel, or a spreadsheet
• No login, no cookies, no session tokens — nothing to get your account flagged

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Switching From Another Instagram Hashtag Scraper?

The complaint that follows people to this category is a results limit that does not hold — a run that stops early, returns a different count each time, or bills for posts it never delivered.

What you need	How this Actor answers it
Blocked mid-run with HTTP 429 and no results	It reads Instagram through a data API rather than scraping the site directly, so there is no rate-limit wall to hit — no 429, no half-empty run to pay for.
maxPostsPerHashtag should mean what it says	Six runs across six hashtags, six caps hit exactly. 100 requested and 100 delivered on #coffee, #workout, #recipe, #travel and #dance; 20 requested and 20 delivered on #espresso.
Carousel posts counted once	A carousel is one row, not one row per slide. In 520 measured rows there were 44 carousels and 44 post IDs — no container-plus-item pair, so no paying twice for one post.
No duplicate posts inside a hashtag	520 rows, 520 distinct post IDs within their hashtag. A post that appears in both Top and Reels is delivered, and charged, once.
Reels honouring the limit too	resultsType: "reels" paginates on the same counter as top. Asking for both splits the cap across the two lists, so 100 comes back as 50 top and 50 reels rather than 100 of one and none of the other.
Not paying for posts you did not receive	Billing is per delivered row, bounded by the run's charge limit. A run that returns nothing charges for no posts, and error rows are never charged.
Knowing when a hashtag simply has less	A tag with nothing to return comes back as an error row naming it and saying why, not as a silently shorter dataset. Speed for reference: 100 posts in 29 seconds, 400 across four hashtags in 52 seconds.

No login, no cookies, no browser.

Overview

The Instagram Hashtag Scraper is built for social media managers, trend researchers, brand teams, and agencies who need structured post-level data from Instagram hashtags.

The output is post-shaped rows. Each row is one Instagram post or reel, tagged with the hashtag it was found under. If you scrape three hashtags, you get one flat dataset containing all posts from all three, each row carrying its own hashtag value so you can filter or pivot by tag.

A post genuinely tagged with two of your hashtags appears once per hashtag, because the row is scoped to the tag it was discovered under. Within a single hashtag, every post is unique.

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Supported Inputs

Input types

Input type	Pattern	Example
Bare tag name	word	coffee
Hash-prefixed tag	#word	#latteart
Explore URL	instagram.com/explore/tags/<tag>/	https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/espresso/

All three forms can be mixed in the same run. Tags are case-insensitive and are normalised to lowercase. Unicode tags (#café, #日本) are supported.

Copy-pasteable input

{
  "hashtags": ["coffee", "#latteart", "https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/espresso/"],
  "resultsType": "both",
  "maxPostsPerHashtag": 100
}

Unsupported inputs

• Profile URLs, post URLs, reel URLs — this actor takes hashtags only
• Private or restricted tags — Instagram serves nothing publicly for these
• "Recent" / chronological posts — Instagram no longer serves a public recent feed for hashtags. This actor deliberately offers Top and Reels only rather than shipping a mode that returns nothing. See the FAQ.

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Use Cases

Audience	What they use it for
Social media managers	Track which posts win on a branded or campaign hashtag
Trend researchers	Measure hashtag volume, format mix, and engagement over time
Brand teams	Monitor user-generated content and find brand mentions
Influencer agencies	Discover creators already posting in a niche, ranked by real engagement
Content strategists	Study the top-performing captions, formats, and reel lengths in a topic
Market researchers	Compare engagement across competing hashtags or product categories

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How It Works

1. Normalise the input — bare names, #tags, and explore URLs all resolve to a clean tag name. Invalid input becomes an error row instead of a wasted request.
2. Look up the hashtag — confirms the tag exists and reports its total post count on Instagram. A missing tag returns a clear error row.
3. Page the ranked lists — Top posts and/or Reels are fetched page by page.
4. Deduplicate — Instagram's Top and Reels lists are live ranked sets whose pages overlap heavily. Every post is deduplicated by ID, so you are never charged twice for the same post, and paging stops as soon as the list stops producing anything new.
5. Push flat rows — each post becomes one dataset row, ready for export.

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Input Configuration

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
hashtags	array	Yes	—	Hashtags to scrape. Bare names, #tags, or explore URLs.
resultsType	string	No	top	top, reels, or both.
maxPostsPerHashtag	integer	No	unlimited	Cap on posts collected per hashtag.
postedAfter	string	No	—	Keep only posts published on or after this date. YYYY-MM-DD or an ISO timestamp.
postedBefore	string	No	—	Keep only posts published on or before this date. A bare YYYY-MM-DD includes the whole day.
onlyVideos	boolean	No	false	Skip photo posts, return videos and reels only.
includeAudio	boolean	No	false	Add the sound behind each reel: title, artist, audio id, duration, and whether Instagram marks it trending. Ten reels per request.

When resultsType is both, maxPostsPerHashtag is split evenly across the two lists, so a cap of 50 returns roughly 25 top posts and 25 reels rather than 50 top posts and nothing else.

How far back a hashtag reaches

Instagram's Top and Reels lists are ranked by recency, not paged history, so how far back a run reaches is set by how busy the hashtag is — not by how hard you page. Measured 2026-08-28 at 100 posts per hashtag:

Hashtag	Window covered by 100 posts
#travel, #dance	under 1 day
#workout	~1.5 days
#coffee	~3.5 days
#recipe	~4.8 days

Depth buys some history, but far less than it looks: #travel at 100 posts reached back 25 hours, and at 600 posts still only 31 hours — every one of those 600 came from the same two calendar days. If you need yesterday on a busy tag, raise maxPostsPerHashtag; if you need last month, no setting will get there, because Instagram does not serve it.

postedAfter and postedBefore filter what those lists return. They cannot reach past the window above. Posts excluded by the filter are never charged, and the run's status message reports how many were skipped. If the whole requested range falls outside what a tag reaches, you get an error row naming the window that was available rather than an empty dataset.

Example — top posts only, capped

{
  "hashtags": ["coffee"],
  "resultsType": "top",
  "maxPostsPerHashtag": 50
}

Example — reels only, for video trend research

{
  "hashtags": ["latteart", "espresso", "coldbrew"],
  "resultsType": "reels",
  "maxPostsPerHashtag": 100,
  "onlyVideos": true
}

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Output Overview

One dataset row per post. Every row identifies the hashtag it came from and which list it was found in (top or reels), then carries the post itself: identifiers and URL, media type, timestamp, caption, engagement counts, video metadata, and the creator's public profile fields.

Rows for hashtags that could not be scraped are returned as error rows carrying hashtag, error, and message — these are never charged.

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Output Samples

Real row, produced from hashtags: ["latteart"] with resultsType: "both" (CDN URLs shortened):

{
  "hashtag": "latteart",
  "resultsType": "top",
  "postId": "3950574492081015707",
  "shortCode": "DbTQpHLNUub",
  "postUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/p/DbTQpHLNUub/",
  "mediaType": "video",
  "productType": "clips",
  "takenAt": "2026-07-27T15:13:56Z",
  "caption": "#barista #home #coffee #latteart #kaffee",
  "likeCount": 16,
  "commentCount": 3,
  "playCount": 258,
  "videoDuration": 13.418999671936035,
  "isPaidPartnership": false,
  "ownerUsername": "baris_tant",
  "ownerFullName": "Baristant",
  "ownerId": "14523707386",
  "ownerProfilePicUrl": "https://scontent-lga3-2.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.82787-19/...",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.82787-15/...",
  "videoUrl": "https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/o1/v/t2/f2/m86/...",
  "locationName": null,
  "taggedUsernames": []
}

Error row for a tag with nothing to scrape — misspelled, brand new, or restricted. Instagram reports a post count of 0 for all three, so the row names the tag rather than guessing which:

{
  "hashtag": "thistagdoesnotexistatall",
  "error": "hashtag_empty",
  "message": "Hashtag #thistagdoesnotexistatall has no public posts on Instagram (Instagram reports 0). It may be misspelled, brand new, or restricted."
}

A tag Instagram says does have posts but which serves none back gets error: "no_posts_returned" instead, and that run is reported as failed — an empty result there is not something the run can prove is legitimate.

A tag whose posts all fall outside postedAfter / postedBefore gets error: "date_range_out_of_reach", carrying the window the ranked list actually reached:

{
  "hashtag": "travel",
  "error": "date_range_out_of_reach",
  "message": "Hashtag #travel: 234 post(s) found, all outside the requested date range. Instagram's Top and Reels lists for this tag currently reach 2026-08-27T11:59:44.000Z to 2026-08-28T13:10:18.000Z. Widen the range, or raise maxPostsPerHashtag — more depth reaches a little further back, but these lists are ranked by recency and cannot be paged into older history."
}

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Key Output Fields

Source hashtag, resultsType

Post identity postId, shortCode, postUrl, mediaType, productType, takenAt

Content With includeAudio on, reel rows also carry musicId, musicTitle, musicArtist, musicIsOriginalAudio, musicDurationMs and audioIsTrending. Photos and carousels have no sound and leave all six null.

caption, taggedUsernames, locationName, isPaidPartnership

Engagement likeCount, commentCount, playCount

Media thumbnailUrl, videoUrl, videoDuration

Creator ownerUsername, ownerFullName, ownerId, ownerProfilePicUrl

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FAQ

Can I get recent / chronological posts for a hashtag? No, and no actor can reliably. Instagram stopped serving a public chronological hashtag feed — the underlying endpoint returns an empty page for every tag. Rather than ship a "Recent" option that silently returns nothing, this actor offers Top and Reels only.

How many posts can I get per hashtag? Instagram's Top and Reels lists are ranked sets of limited depth, not full archives. Expect a few hundred posts per hashtag in practice. Setting maxPostsPerHashtag to 10,000 will not produce 10,000 rows — paging stops once the list stops returning new posts.

Why do I sometimes get fewer posts than I asked for? Either the hashtag's ranked list ran out, or onlyVideos filtered out photo posts. Both are logged.

Is the same post ever returned twice? Not within a hashtag. Instagram's pages overlap heavily and the actor deduplicates by post ID, so you are never billed twice for the same post. A post tagged with two of your hashtags does appear once under each, because each row is scoped to its tag.

Does it return comments or the list of likers? No. This actor returns post-level data including comment and like counts. For comment text see the Instagram Comments Scraper, and for the people who liked a post see the Instagram Post Likers Scraper.

Do I need an Instagram account, login, or cookies? No. Nothing is authenticated and no session is used, so there is no account to get flagged.

What happens with a private or restricted hashtag? You get an error row explaining it, and you are not charged for it.

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Support

Found a bug or need a field that is not there? Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab and it will be looked at.

Email: muhamed.didovic@gmail.com

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Additional Services

Need a custom scraper, a tailored export format, or an integration into your own pipeline? Custom builds are available — get in touch at muhamed.didovic@gmail.com.

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Explore More Scrapers

• Instagram Profile Scraper — profiles, posts and comments from any public account
• Instagram Stories & Highlights Scraper — active stories and permanent highlights
• Instagram Followers & Following Scraper — full follower and following lists
• Instagram Post Likers Scraper — who liked any public post or reel
• Instagram Comments Scraper — full comment threads with replies
• Instagram Similar Profiles & Lookalike Finder — accounts similar to any profile
• Instagram Reels Search & Viral Finder — find trending reels by keyword

Browse the full collection at apify.com/memo23.

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🤖 For AI Agents & LLM Apps

Compact reference for AI agents calling this actor via the Apify MCP server or the Apify API (actor: memo23/instagram-hashtag-scraper).

Purpose: Scrapes public Instagram hashtags into post-level rows (Top posts and/or Reels), with automatic cross-page deduplication.

Minimal input:

{ "hashtags": ["coffee"], "resultsType": "top", "maxPostsPerHashtag": 20 }

Output: one dataset row per post — hashtag, resultsType, postId, shortCode, postUrl, mediaType, productType, takenAt, caption, likeCount, commentCount, playCount, videoDuration, isPaidPartnership, ownerUsername, ownerFullName, ownerId, ownerProfilePicUrl, thumbnailUrl, videoUrl, locationName, taggedUsernames, and (with includeAudio) musicId, musicTitle, musicArtist, musicIsOriginalAudio, musicDurationMs, audioIsTrending. Failed hashtags return {hashtag, error, message} instead.

Behaviors an agent should know:

• Always set maxPostsPerHashtag. Uncapped runs page until Instagram stops returning new posts.
• Instagram's ranked lists are shallow — expect a few hundred posts per tag, not thousands, regardless of the cap.
• With resultsType: "both" the cap is split evenly between Top and Reels.
• There is no "recent" mode; Instagram's public chronological hashtag feed returns nothing, so only top, reels, and both exist.
• Billing: one post event per post row delivered. Error rows are never charged. Duplicate posts within a hashtag are deduplicated before billing.
• No login is used, so no authenticated-only fields (viewer state, private accounts) are available.

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⚠️ Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Meta Platforms, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

The scraper accesses only publicly available Instagram hashtag pages — no authenticated endpoints, paid features, or content behind the instagram.com login wall. Users are responsible for ensuring their use complies with instagram.com's Terms of Service, applicable data-protection law (GDPR, CCPA, etc.), and any contractual obligations of their own organization.

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