How to Scrape Instagram Profile Data with SerpApi

Instagram is one of the world’s most popular social platforms, with billions of users and a huge network of creators, brands, and businesses. Manually collecting profile data is slow, unreliable, and often blocked by Meta’s anti-bot systems.

With SerpApi’s Instagram Profile API, you get structured, real-time access to public profile information. The API manages rate limits, sessions, and scaling for you, so you can focus on your project. Whether you’re tracking influencer campaigns, monitoring brands, or building audience tools, one API call gives you consistent, JSON-formatted profile data with a single request.

This post explains how to extract Instagram profile data with SerpApi. We’ll cover the main data fields you get, how verification and business signals appear, and how to use the API in your workflow. To try it yourself, visit the Playground or read the Documentation for more details.

Instagram Profile API - SerpApi

Scrape Instagram Profile with SerpApi’s Instagram Profile API. Profile bio, followers, following, posts, and more.

SerpApiSerpApi

Instagram Profile Data Structure

The API returns a simple, flat JSON object containing the most important public profile details.

https://serpapi.com/search.json?engine=instagram_profile&profile_id=serpapicom&api_key=YOUR_API_KEY

Each response includes the following:

• Identity: username, full_name, biography, bio_links, external_url
• Metrics: followers_count, following_count, posts_count
• Visuals: profile_pic_url and profile_pic_url_hd (direct link to the high-resolution avatar)
• Status & Type: is_verified, is_business_account, is_professional_account, account_type
• Contact & Category: business_category_name, category_name
• Posts & Videos: media with information about owner, captions, comments, thumbnails and many others.

These fields update almost in real time as the profile changes. This makes them great for dashboards, automated reports, and lead enrichment tools.

Verification & Account Type Indicators

Beyond basic metrics, the API surfaces granular account flags that reveal how an account is configured, restricted, or classified by Instagram. These fields are critical for filtering, compliance checks, and conditional UI logic.

Account Access & Embedding Behavior

• is_private: true if the account restricts content to approved followers. Private profiles return a limited response (metadata only, no media URLs).
• is_embeds_disabled: true when the user has disabled third-party embeds. Prevents your app from safely rendering their posts or stories.
• joined_recently: true for accounts created within the last ~30 days. Useful for filtering out spam, bot networks, or newly impersonated profiles.

Business & Verification Signals

• is_business_account/is_professional_account: Distinguishes commercial entities (BUSINESS) from creator accounts (CREATOR). Both grant access to insights APIs where applicable.
• is_verified vs is_verified_by_meta: is_verified indicates any recognized badge. is_verified_by_meta (true) means Meta granted it directly via their official process, rather than legacy third-party or manual review.

Safety, Supervision & Regional Compliance

• is_supervision_enabled/is_supervised_user: Indicates if the account is under family supervision or part of Instagram’s teen safety framework. Important for age-gated or youth-focused applications.
• is_canada_news_restricted: A regional compliance flag. When true, the account may have restricted reach or modified functionality to comply with Canadian broadcasting/news regulations. Useful for geo-aware routing or content moderation.

{
  "is_business_account": false,
  "is_professional_account": false,
  "is_supervision_enabled": false,
  "is_supervised_user": false,
  "is_embeds_disabled": true,
  "joined_recently": false,
  "is_private": true,
  "is_verified": false,
  "is_verified_by_meta": false,
  "is_canada_news_restricted": false
}

{
  "is_business_account": false,
  "is_professional_account": true,
  "is_supervision_enabled": false,
  "is_supervised_user": false,
  "is_embeds_disabled": false,
  "joined_recently": false,
  "is_private": false,
  "is_verified": true,
  "is_verified_by_meta": false,
  "is_canada_news_restricted": false
}

Using The API

The Instagram Profile API is a standard REST endpoint. You can use it with any language or framework. Official SDKs are also available for quick integration.

cURL

curl --get https://serpapi.com/search \
 -d api_key="YOUR_API_KEY" \
 -d engine="instagram_profile" \
 -d profile_id="serpapicom"

JavaScript (fetch)

const params = new URLSearchParams({
    engine: "instagram_profile",
    profile_id: "serpapicom",
    api_key: "YOUR_API_KEY",
});

const response = await fetch(`https://serpapi.com/search.json?${params}`);
const data = await response.json();

console.log(data.profile_results);

Python SDK

import serpapi

client = serpapi.Client(api_key="YOUR_API_KEY")
results = client.search({
    "engine": "instagram_profile",
    "profile_id": "serpapicom",
})

print(results)

JavaScript SDK

import { getJson } from "serpapi";

const results = await getJson({
    engine: "instagram_profile",
    profile_id: "serpapicom",
    api_key: "YOUR_API_KEY",
});

console.log(results.profile_results);

You should get an output something like:

{
  biography: 'Scrape and parse search engine results from Google, Bing, Baidu, and more! Find us on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn!',
  bio_links: [
    {
      url: 'https://serpapi.com/',
      title: 'serpapi.com',
      redirect_url: 'https://l.instagram.com/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fserpapi.com%2F&e=AUBmux9SIq94mGtT6aSlBg67XX9BSXgjEivUeaJw7RBNQycr8ePAMBNucIna8MihGr2geg489wJ2gtHn_OEDkERS7pcnF5AL',
      link_type: 'external'
    }
  ],
  external_url: 'https://serpapi.com/',
  followers: 277,
  following: 74,
  full_name: 'SerpApi',
  id: '6903374441',
  is_business_account: true,
  is_professional_account: true,
  is_supervision_enabled: false,
  is_supervised_user: false,
  is_embeds_disabled: false,
  joined_recently: false,
  business_category_name: 'None',
  category_enum: 'SOFTWARE_COMPANY',
  category_name: 'Software Company',
  is_private: false,
  ...
}

What Can You Build With It?

By using Instagram’s profile API with SerpApi’s reliable pipeline, you can build powerful applications such as:

• Influencer & Creator Vetting: Automate authenticity checks, benchmark follower-to-follower ratios, and filter by niche category, verification status, and business type before contract negotiations.

• Competitor & Brand Monitoring: Track follower milestones, changes to bios or URLs, verification badge updates, and account type changes as they happen. This is ideal for PR and market intelligence dashboards.
  B2B Lead Generation & Outreach: Identify professional accounts in target verticals, extract public_email/public_phone_number, and route verified business contacts directly into CRM pipelines.

• Fraud Detection & Brand Safety: Spot impersonation attempts, find unusual metric changes (like sudden spikes in following counts), and check partner profiles for trust signals before starting campaigns.

• AI Agents & Dynamic Content: Provide real-time profile data to language models for personalized outreach, trend analysis, or automated content suggestions based on live social signals.

• E-commerce & Affiliate Scoring: Quickly estimate partnership ROI using profile metrics, engagement levels, and business categories for influencer marketplaces.

Try It Out!

Get started with the Instagram profile API on SerpApi by signing up for a free account (you’ll get 250 searches per month). Once inside, jump into our playground to adjust settings, watch live results, and dive into the JSON data. Everything you need - full parameter guides, response examples, rate limits, and error codes - is waiting in our comprehensive documentation.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out at contact@serpapi.com. We're excited to see what you build with the Instagram Profile API!