Apify Instagram Scraper alternatives in 2026
Creators at 5¢ a row.
Apify's Instagram Scraper costs $2.70 per 1,000 results on the Free plan and $1.50 on Business. A schedule reruns it by cron, each run bills every result again, and its webhook sends a run ID, not the data.
SpecStream is the live web data engine for teams and agents. Describe the creators you want, and each one that fits comes back as a row. A saved request reruns hourly to yearly and sends only new and changed rows to your webhook.
New accounts get $10 of credit, no card.
SpecStream and Apify's Instagram Scraper side by side
| SpecStream | Apify Instagram Scraper | |
|---|---|---|
| What you send | The creators you want in plain words: the niche, the market, the language, the follower range and the facts to bring back | Instagram URLs or search queries, and one content type a run: posts, reels, comments, mentions or details. URLs and search queries cannot be combined in the same run |
| What you get back | One structured row per creator who meets every condition, with facts from the creator's profiles, site and press joined, and the business contact they published. Source URL and read time on every value | One result per scraped item: a post, reel, comment, profile, hashtag or place, with the fields Instagram shows for it |
| Price per 1,000 | $50 for 1,000 creator rows with up to 5 facts each (5¢ a row), 15¢ a row with up to 15 facts. A business email adds 5¢, a phone 15¢ | $2.70 per 1,000 results on Free, $2.30 on Starter, $1.90 on Scale and $1.50 on Business |
| Plans | None needed: $10 of credit on sign-up, no card. Pro $19, Scale $99 and Team $499 a month each turn their whole price into credit | Free $0 with $5 of usage a month, Starter $19, Scale $199 and Business $999 a month. Unused usage expires at the end of the cycle |
| Scheduled runs | A saved request reruns hourly to yearly, with a cadence, a timezone, a maximum per run and a maximum per period. Free keeps 1 list up to date, Pro 10, Scale 50 and Team 250 | Schedules start runs from cron expressions, up to 10 Actors and 10 Actor tasks per schedule. A date filter keeps a run to content newer than a date or a period |
| What a rerun returns and costs | Each row labeled new, changed, no longer a match or not readable this time, and a changed value shows its earlier value. A changed or new row costs half its rate, an unchanged row 1¢ | A new run with its own results, each billed at the per result rate |
| Webhook output | A signed webhook, monitor.found, carries the new and changed records, each value with its source URL and read time. Slack, Sheets and HubSpot get the same records with no code | A POST request to your URL when a run is created, succeeds, fails, aborts or times out. It carries the run's ID, and you fetch the results with a second API call |
| The cost cap before a run | The most the run can cost, quoted before it starts. Nothing runs until you approve it, and a run that finds nothing costs nothing | A maximum charge limit you set when you start a run |
| MCP and API | MCP server, REST API, Python and TypeScript SDKs, a CLI and A2A. An agent can buy one request with no account, by card or in USDC | The Apify API, a CLI, and a hosted MCP server over Streamable HTTP with OAuth |
Why creator teams move from the Instagram Scraper to SpecStream
Creators by what they post, in one request
Apify's own recipe for finding creators in a niche takes two runs: posts or reels from a hashtag URL, then details on each profile URL from the first run. Both runs bill every result, and sorting out the accounts that fit is your work. On SpecStream you write the creators you need, such as "Instagram creators in the US who post about skincare in English, with 10,000 to 100,000 followers". SpecStream reads the request back as parts you can edit, then returns one row per creator who meets them all. A result that fails one of your conditions is not delivered and not billed.
Scheduled runs that label every change
An Apify schedule starts the Actor from a cron expression, and the date filter keeps each run to content newer than a date or a period, such as 1 day. Each run is a new set of results, billed again at the per result rate. A saved SpecStream request reruns hourly to yearly inside a maximum per run and per period that you set. Each row comes back labeled new, changed, no longer a match or not readable this time, and a changed value shows its earlier value and the page where the new one was seen. A changed or new row costs half its rate and an unchanged row 1¢. If the balance is not there, that run is blocked and nothing is charged. Free keeps 1 list up to date, Pro 10, Scale 50 and Team 250. How it works is in the schedules docs.
A webhook that carries the records
Apify webhooks fire on run events such as ACTOR.RUN.SUCCEEDED, and the only action is a POST request to your URL with the run's ID. Your code then calls the API again for the dataset items. A SpecStream webhook subscribed to monitor.found carries the new and changed records themselves, each cell with its value, its source URL and the time it was read, signed so your server can check it came from SpecStream. Records you already have are not sent again. The payload is in the webhook docs.
What 1,000 results cost on each
Apify is cheaper per result: 1,000 results cost $2.30 on Starter, whether each is a post, a comment or a profile. A SpecStream row with up to 5 facts costs 5¢, so 1,000 creators who meet every condition cost $50, and a published business email adds 5¢ a row. The difference buys the filtering and the contact: you pay for creators who fit, not for the posts read to find them. On a rerun, an unchanged creator costs 1¢.
From your agent, too
Connect the MCP server at https://api.specstream.ai/mcp and your agent asks for creators in the same words, sees the most it can cost, and gets the rows with their sources once you approve. The same balance pays for the Search API at $5 per 1,000 searches and the Extract API at $0.80 per 1,000 pages.
Other Apify Instagram Scraper alternatives
SpecStream
The live web data engine for teams and agents. One request in plain words returns the creators who fit as structured rows, at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a delivered row, under a maximum you approve before the run. Saved requests rerun hourly to yearly and label every change. The Instagram profiles dataset page compares the bought files.
Apify Instagram Profile Scraper
Apify's profile Actor reads the usernames, profile URLs or IDs you already have, at $2.60 per 1,000 results on Free and $2.30 on Starter. It returns the profile you named. SpecStream finds the creators you have not named yet, and joins their published contact into the row.
Bright Data Instagram Scraper API
Bright Data's Scraper API reads the profiles and posts you send it, at $1.5 per 1K records pay as you go, with 5K free records a month. SpecStream starts from the creators you describe and bills only those who meet every condition.
SociaVault
A social media API sold in credit packs: the Starter Pack is $29 for 6,000 credits, and credits never expire. SpecStream starts from the creators you describe, not from a handle you already have.
ScrapeCreators
An API for social platforms at $47 pay as you go for 25,000 credits, $1.88 per 1,000 requests, with 1 credit per request for most endpoints. SpecStream bills a delivered row, so a request that finds nothing costs nothing.
Modash
A creator search over its own database of Instagram, TikTok and YouTube profiles. Essentials is $2,388 paid yearly, with 300 opened profiles and 150 creator emails a month. SpecStream has no seats and no monthly allowance. The full comparison is at Modash alternatives.
How SpecStream scores
The same numbers as the benchmarks page, from the official tasks and scorers.
| SpecStream |  Parallel |  Exa |  Tavily |  Perplexity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web researchWideSearch, GPT-5.6 Luna | 60.9 | 45.5 | 53.0 | 47.9 | 47.0 |
| Factual accuracySimpleQA Verified, GPT-5.6 Luna | 96 | 94 | 91 | 94 | 94 |
| Factual accuracySimpleQA Verified, GPT-5.6 Sol | 99 | 97 | 91 | 92 | 95 |
How to switch from Apify's Instagram Scraper
Write the creators you want in plain words, in place of the hashtag URLs and content type you set today. Or import the dataset you exported from Apify, up to 20,000 rows, and SpecStream fills in or checks each row. Sign up and you get $10 of credit, no card. At 5¢ a row, that is up to 200 creators.
Or send the request from code. This call spends nothing: the 402 reply shows how SpecStream read the request, the columns and the most it can cost.
curl -i https://api.specstream.ai/v1/agent/lists \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"request": "Instagram creators in the US who post about skincare in English, with 10,000 to 100,000 followers, their handle, follower count and published business email", "count": 25}'Approve that maximum by card through Stripe's Link agent wallet, or in USDC on Base, Arbitrum or Polygon, and you pay for the rows found. On an account, save the request, set its cadence and limits, and subscribe your webhook to monitor.found. Your agent uses the MCP server at https://api.specstream.ai/mcp from the same balance.
Frequently asked questions
Something we didn't answer? Talk to a human
How much does Apify's Instagram Scraper cost?
Can Apify's Instagram Scraper run on a schedule?
Does the Apify webhook send the scraped data?
monitor.found webhook carries the new and changed records, each value with its source URL and read time.What is the best Apify Instagram Scraper alternative?
Is there a free Instagram scraper?
Does SpecStream have an API and an MCP server?
https://api.specstream.ai/mcp, and the same request runs through the REST API, the Python and TypeScript SDKs and the workspace, from one balance.Sources
SpecStream wrote this page. Each rival figure comes from that company's own page.
- SpecStream pricingspecstream.ai/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026
- SpecStream for agentsspecstream.ai/agents.md, read Nov 12, 2026
- SpecStream schedulesspecstream.ai/docs/schedules, read Nov 12, 2026
- SpecStream webhooksspecstream.ai/docs/webhooks, read Nov 12, 2026
- Apify Instagram Scraperapify.com/apify/instagram-scraper, read Nov 12, 2026
- Apify Instagram Scraper pricingapify.com/apify/instagram-scraper/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026
- Apify pricing referenceapify.com/pricing.md, read Nov 12, 2026
- Apify schedulesdocs.apify.com/actors/running/schedules, read Nov 12, 2026
- Apify webhook integrationdocs.apify.com/platform/integrations/webhooks.md, read Nov 12, 2026
- Apify webhook eventsdocs.apify.com/platform/integrations/webhooks/events.md, read Nov 12, 2026
- Apify Actors in Storedocs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store.md, read Nov 12, 2026
- Apify MCPdocs.apify.com/mcp, read Nov 12, 2026
- Apify Instagram Profile Scraperapify.com/apify/instagram-profile-scraper, read Nov 12, 2026
- Bright Data Web Scraper API pricingbrightdata.com/pricing/web-scraper, read Nov 12, 2026
- Bright Data Instagram Scraper APIbrightdata.com/products/web-scraper/instagram, read Nov 12, 2026
- SociaVault pricingsociavault.com/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026
- ScrapeCreatorsscrapecreators.com/, read Nov 12, 2026
- Modash pricingmodash.io/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026