Best Instagram API for public profile data

What to require of any vendor here

• Ask what happens when a handle does not exist. The public page can answer 200 with a not-found body, so a vendor without an anchor field will hand you a profile assembled from an error page. A vendor that cannot name its anchor has not thought about it.
• Ask which counters it does NOT return. Likes, comments and view counts are absent from the logged-out profile page — they appear zero times in it. A vendor returning them for someone else's post is guessing or is logged in as somebody.
• Ask what a missing field comes back as. `null` means it could not be read; `0` is a claim about the account. A vendor that collapses the two will tell you an audience vanished.

Where the number actually lives

We read follower_count from public profile page, logged out — single anchor in the page. Handle format: Instagram username: letters, digits, dot and underscore, up to 30.

What you are handing over

Instagram asks for a login on its own API path, so the profile is read from the public page instead. That path changes without notice, and keeping up with it is the part you are handing over.

What this does not return

• No likes, comments or views on a post. The public page carries the posts but not one counter — like_count, comment_count and play_count appear zero times in it.
• No date on a post. The only one in the page is day-precision text inside localized alt text, and a guessed hour is worse than null.
• No media inside a story highlight. The tray is public; opening a highlight needs a login.
• No email, phone or anything behind a login. We read what the page shows a logged-out visitor.
• No engagement rate. It needs reach, and Instagram does not publish reach.

Our endpoints for this platform — 3

• instagram/profile — Public profile on instagram, with the exact follower count.
• instagram/highlights — Story highlight covers of a public Instagram profile — id, title and cover.
• instagram/embed — What an Instagram embed shows: the profile plus the thumbnails on its grid.

Shape, parameters and the errors each one returns are in the endpoint reference, and this platform has its own page with the recorded response.

What the alternatives cost

We do not restate competitor prices here. The vendor pages carry them — 35 of them — each price read on that vendor's own page, with the date we read it. Readings run from 2026-09-05 to 2026-10-03.

A price copied into a second place is a price that will disagree with itself the first time a vendor changes one. Verify on their page before deciding — we are an interested party.