Instagram Search & Hashtags Scraper

Yes — a hashtag feed is public content. You export what any visitor scrolling that tag can already see, and nothing that sits behind a private wall. The finer points are in our guide to the legality of web scraping.

Yes — you sync your own account once, through our Chrome extension. Instagram serves hashtag and search results to logged-in visitors only, so it is the price of entry. We use the session, never your password. How to sync an account.

70+ data points per post or reel. Caption, hashtags, mentions, alt text, the owner's username, name and verified badge, likes, comments, views, reshares, media links and carousel items, tagged users, coauthors, music, location with coordinates, and the date it went up.

Around 280 posts a minute. A hashtag that took a community a week to fill takes you a coffee break to export, and the media links and engagement counts land in the same run rather than a second one.

Yes — both. A hashtag with or without the # symbol, a tag address, a plain keyword or a full Instagram search all work. Each one is its own task, and you can queue as many as your campaign list is long in a single run.

Yes — one setting picks the tab. Recent gives you the chronological feed, which goes deepest and pairs beautifully with a date cut-off; Top gives you the ranked posts Instagram puts first. Reels and image posts can be kept or dropped on their own.

As many as Instagram will show — or exactly the number you name. Cap a single hashtag with a max results limit and the whole run with a unique-results limit, so ten overlapping tags never bill you twice for the same post.

Yes — set a cut-off and older posts are dropped. A window like 24h, 7d or 2w, or a date in your own timezone. Pair it with the Recent tab and the scraper turns into a daily hashtag monitor that never collects yesterday twice.

Yes — the 10 latest comments on each post or reel. It is optional, and it does slow the run down, so leave it off when you are after media and engagement, and switch it on when you want the conversation underneath as well.

Just about anywhere you already work. Google Sheets, Make, n8n, Amazon S3, email, webhooks — plus our MCP server, so Claude or ChatGPT can launch a run and read the posts back. CSV, Excel and JSON downloads too. See all integrations.

URL, such as birdsofinstagram. Paste thousands at once or upload a CSV; duplicate inputs are skipped. 9 settings shape the run: see them in the playground.

55 data attributes per post, each with its description and an example: see the full list.

No. Duplicates are removed, and you only pay for unique results.

As fresh as your run: each run collects the data from the site at the moment it runs, nothing comes from a stored database.

CSV, Excel or JSON from the dashboard, through the API, or sent after every run to Google Sheets, Amazon S3, an SFTP server, a webhook or by email.

7 days on the free plan, 28 days on paid plans. Then they are deleted. Download or deliver what you want to keep.

Around 280 posts a minute for one squid. Your plan's slots run several squids at the same time.

98.54% of its runs had no incident over the last 90 days (3 incidents, 100% fixed). Every day is on this page.

Our team fixes the scraper: every scraper on lobstr.io is built and maintained by us. Over the last 90 days, the median time to fix this one was 2min. How we measure.

Yes, on paid plans: every hour, every day, every weekday or on a custom schedule, in your time zone.

Yes: set the most results per task and per run in the settings. The run stops there and so does the bill.

1 credit per result. The playground shows the price as you pick them.

Yes. The free plan gives 100 credits every month, 100 results with this scraper, with exports capped at 30 rows.

Every month a plan gives credits, which pay for results, and slots, which set how many squids run at the same time. Starter: $20 for 10,000 credits; Pro: $100 for 100,000 credits; Team: $500 for 1,000,000 credits. Upgrades start right away and are prorated; downgrades and cancellations take effect at the end of the cycle.

No. Your credits refresh every month with your plan.

You choose, per squid: pause and pick up where it stopped, or end the run. To keep going, upgrade or reset your billing cycle: your plan renews right away and your credits come back. Auto Billing Reset does it for you when your usage crosses a threshold you set.

Yes: paying yearly takes 20% off every plan.

A monthly plan: within 10 days of the charge, if no credit was used in that period. A yearly plan: within 30 days, in full if no credit was used, otherwise minus one month. Cancel from your billing page, then write to contact@lobstr.io. The details are in the terms of use.

Collecting publicly available data is generally allowed, but you choose what you collect and you are responsible for how you use it. Our terms of use (article 6) ask every user to respect the rights of the sites, not to extract substantial parts of a database, not to access confidential data and to follow personal data law such as the GDPR. This is not legal advice.

When results contain personal data, you are the data controller and lobstr.io, a French company, processes them on your behalf, under our personal data agreement. You need a lawful basis for what you collect, must inform the people concerned and honor their requests.

Results: 7 days on the free plan, 28 days on paid plans, then they are deleted; you can delete them sooner. Your account data: see the privacy notice.

Yes, through the REST API at https://api.lobstr.io/v1, with your key from the dashboard. The playground’s Code tab writes the calls for your settings, in cURL and Python. The documentation has the full reference.

Yes. Add our MCP server, https://mcp.lobstr.io/mcp, to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP client and sign in with lobstr.io. Your agent shows the cost and asks you before a run spends credits. The playground’s Agent tab gives you a prompt.

No. Credits pay for results, not for requests.

Yes. Point a webhook at your server and lobstr.io calls it when a run succeeds or fails.

Yes, per endpoint: 120 requests a minute on squids and runs, 90 on tasks, 2 a second on results. Above that the API answers 429 with a Retry-After header.