Ultimate Instagram Scraper Guide: Tools & Best Practices for 2025

# Install with: pip install selenium webdriver-manager
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
import time
import json

# Function to set up browser with proper options and proxy
def setup_browser(proxy=None):
    options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
    options.add_argument('--headless')
    options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
    options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')
    options.add_argument('--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 14_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/15E148 Instagram 165.1.0.29.119')
    
    if proxy:
        options.add_argument(f'--proxy-server={proxy}')
    
    service = Service(ChromeDriverManager().install())
    browser = webdriver.Chrome(service=service, options=options)
    return browser

# Initialize the browser (with 4G mobile proxy)
browser = setup_browser(proxy="http://username:password@proxy.coronium.io:8800")

# Navigate to Instagram profile page
username = "target_username"
browser.get(f"https://www.instagram.com/{username}/")

# Wait for page to load
wait = WebDriverWait(browser, 10)
wait.until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//h2[contains(text(), '@')]")))

# Extract basic profile info
profile_data = {}
try:
    profile_data['username'] = browser.find_element(By.XPATH, "//h2[contains(text(), '@')]").text
    stats = browser.find_elements(By.XPATH, "//li/span")
    if len(stats) >= 3:
        profile_data['posts'] = stats[0].text
        profile_data['followers'] = stats[1].text
        profile_data['following'] = stats[2].text
    profile_data['bio'] = browser.find_element(By.XPATH, "//div[h2]/div").text
except Exception as e:
    print(f"Error extracting profile data: {e}")

# Scroll to load more posts
last_height = browser.execute_script("return document.body.scrollHeight")
while True:
    browser.execute_script("window.scrollTo(0, document.body.scrollHeight);")
    time.sleep(2)
    new_height = browser.execute_script("return document.body.scrollHeight")
    if new_height == last_height:
        break
    last_height = new_height

# Extract posts
posts = []
try:
    post_elements = browser.find_elements(By.XPATH, "//article//a")
    for element in post_elements[:10]:  # Get first 10 posts
        post_url = element.get_attribute('href')
        posts.append({'url': post_url})
except Exception as e:
    print(f"Error extracting posts: {e}")

# Save data
profile_data['posts'] = posts
with open(f"{username}_profile.json", "w") as f:
    json.dump(profile_data, f, indent=4)

# Close browser
browser.close()

// Install with: npm install puppeteer puppeteer-extra puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth axios
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer-extra');
const StealthPlugin = require('puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth');
const fs = require('fs').promises;

// Add stealth plugin to bypass detection
puppeteer.use(StealthPlugin());

async function scrapeInstagram(username) {
  // Set up browser with proxy
  const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
    headless: true,
    args: [
      '--no-sandbox',
      '--disable-setuid-sandbox',
      `--proxy-server=http://username:password@proxy.coronium.io:8800`,
      '--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 14_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/15E148 Instagram 165.1.0.29.119'
    ]
  });
  
  try {
    const page = await browser.newPage();
    
    // Authenticate with proxy if needed
    await page.authenticate({
      username: 'username',
      password: 'password'
    });
    
    // Navigate to Instagram profile
    await page.goto(`https://www.instagram.com/${username}/`, {
      waitUntil: 'networkidle2',
      timeout: 60000
    });
    
    // Wait for content to load
    await page.waitForSelector('article', { timeout: 30000 });
    
    // Extract profile information
    const profileData = await page.evaluate(() => {
      const data = {};
      
      // Get profile stats
      const statsElements = document.querySelectorAll('header section ul li');
      if (statsElements.length >= 3) {
        data.postsCount = statsElements[0].textContent;
        data.followersCount = statsElements[1].textContent;
        data.followingCount = statsElements[2].textContent;
      }
      
      // Get bio information
      data.bio = document.querySelector('header > section > div:nth-child(3)')?.textContent || '';
      
      // Get posts
      const posts = [];
      const postElements = document.querySelectorAll('article div:nth-child(1) div:nth-child(1) div:nth-child(1) div:nth-child(1) a');
      
      postElements.forEach((element) => {
        const href = element.getAttribute('href');
        if (href && href.includes('/p/')) {
          posts.push({
            url: `https://www.instagram.com${href}`,
            thumbnail: element.querySelector('img')?.src || null
          });
        }
      });
      
      data.posts = posts;
      return data;
    });
    
    // Save data to file
    await fs.writeFile(
      `${username}_profile_data.json`,
      JSON.stringify(profileData, null, 2)
    );
    
    console.log(`Profile data for ${username} has been saved successfully.`);
    return profileData;
    
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(`Error scraping ${username}'s profile: ${error.message}`);
    throw error;
  } finally {
    await browser.close();
  }
}

// Use the function
scrapeInstagram('target_username')
  .then(data => console.log('Scraping completed successfully'))
  .catch(err => console.error('Scraping failed:', err));

# Example of integrating 4G mobile proxies with Instaloader
import instaloader
import random
from urllib.request import getproxies, build_opener, ProxyHandler, install_opener

# Configure 4G mobile proxies for rotation
PROXY_LIST = [
    "http://username:password@proxy1.coronium.io:8800",
    "http://username:password@proxy2.coronium.io:8800",
    "http://username:password@proxy3.coronium.io:8800",
    "http://username:password@proxy4.coronium.io:8800",
    "http://username:password@proxy5.coronium.io:8800"
]

# Function to set a random proxy
def set_random_proxy():
    proxy = random.choice(PROXY_LIST)
    proxy_handler = ProxyHandler({'http': proxy, 'https': proxy})
    opener = build_opener(proxy_handler)
    install_opener(opener)
    print(f"Using proxy: {proxy}")
    return proxy

# Configure Instaloader with proxy and other options
L = instaloader.Instaloader(
    download_pictures=True,
    download_videos=True,
    download_video_thumbnails=False,
    download_geotags=False,
    download_comments=True,
    save_metadata=True,
    max_connection_attempts=3
)

try:
    # Set a random proxy before login
    current_proxy = set_random_proxy()
    
    # Login
    L.login("your_username", "your_password")
    
    # Get profile 
    profile = instaloader.Profile.from_username(L.context, "target_username")
    
    # Count for proxy rotation
    post_count = 0
    
    # Download all posts with proxy rotation
    for post in profile.get_posts():
        # Rotate proxy every 5 posts to avoid detection
        if post_count % 5 == 0:
            current_proxy = set_random_proxy()
        
        # Download post and its data
        L.download_post(post, target=f"{profile.username}_posts")
        post_count += 1
        
        # Add random delays between requests (2-5 seconds)
        time.sleep(random.uniform(2, 5))

except Exception as e:
    print(f"Error occurred: {e}")