Instagram profile scraper: screen a creator list before outreach

One prompt runs the whole thing

set up olywork — https://olywork.com/llms.txt

Using olywork, screen these 20 Instagram creators for partnership fit: [list of handles]. For each one pull the profile (followers, category, is_private, business_email) and the last 12 posts. Show me the price before each step. If a business email is public, verify it. Give me a CSV with handle, followers, private, posts_sampled, avg_engagement_pct and a keep or skip column: keep if over 10k followers, public, posting, and engagement above 1%.

works in

Why this prompt works

What ChatGPT calls, and what each call costs

Prices are the provider’s own rate, read from the catalog when this page loads, with $0.000 added by olywork.com. Success rates are olywork.com’s own served calls over the last 30 days.

#	Step	What the agent asks	Provider used	Price	Success rate
1	Pull the profileThe cheapest profile route in the catalog. Returns the numeric user id the posts step needs.	followers, category, private flag and public business email, by handle	TikHub6 providers do this step	$0.001 per found	not yet measured
2	Sample recent postsEngagement is likes plus comments over followers, averaged across the sample. Private accounts skip this step.	the last 12 posts with likes and comments, by numeric user id	TikHub5 providers do this step	$0.001 per found	not yet measured
3	Verify the business emailFires only for handles whose profile exposes an email, so the worst case in the total above rarely happens.	is the public business email deliverable, before outreach	Hunter13 providers do this step	$0.0123 per call	not yet measured

What it actually cost

Run on 2026-09-14, 20 creators in.

Creators screened

20 handles from the creator-discovery run on this site

Profiles retrieved

18 of 20 resolved; one call did not answer, one handle returned no user

Posts sampled

17 post calls answered, 14 accounts had posts to count; median engagement 5.3%

Emails verified

0: no profile exposed a public business email, so the verify step did not fire

Total metered

$0.036: 19 profile calls and 17 post calls at $0.001 each

Thirty-six successful calls at the two TikHub rates, billed per success. Fourteen of the twenty made the keep list. None of these creators exposes a business email in the profile, which is common: the email step is there for the lists where they do, and it is the only step with a real price. One profile call did not answer and was not billed; the retry policy is one line in the prompt. Handles are removed from the published CSV because they identify real people; your own run returns them.

Download the CSV of this run

Why go through olywork.com

Where it goes wrong

Private account

The profile call returns followers, bio and the private flag; the posts call returns nothing. Decide keep or skip on the profile alone.

No business email

Most creators do not expose one. The profile returns what is public; the verify step is skipped, not billed.

Handle changed or deleted

A renamed handle returns no user. The miss is free on this route; fix the handle and rerun that row.

Rate limits on bulk pulls

Spread a few hundred handles over minutes, or the profile route starts answering slowly.

Ban risk if you scrape from your own login

Do not point a logged-in personal or brand Instagram session at bulk pulls. Use a public-data route that does not need your cookies. If a provider asks for a session, use a throwaway account you can lose.

Follower count is not proof of reach

Bought followers and engagement pods still show up as healthy looking profiles. Sample recent posts and compute engagement before you put someone on an outreach list.

Manual sheet workflows do not scale

Opening profiles one by one is the common starting point and it breaks past a few dozen handles. Batch the profile and posts calls, then decide keep or skip in the CSV.

Before you start

What does a 20-creator screen cost?

The receipt above is one real run. Profiles and posts are the cheap steps; only the email verify step, when it fires, costs more.

What if the account is private?

The profile call still returns followers, category and the private flag. Posts and engagement are unavailable.

Can I screen TikTok creators the same way?

Yes. TikHub has TikTok profile and post routes at the same price; change the handles and the platform in the prompt.

How is engagement calculated?

Likes plus comments on the sampled posts, divided by followers, averaged over the sample. Above 3% is generally good; this list's median was 5.3%.

Will this get my Instagram account banned?

This workflow screens public profile and post fields through a metered catalog route. It is not a follow, unfollow, or DM bot. Do not paste your own Instagram session into a scraper.

What if engagement looks high but the audience is fake?

Treat engagement as a filter, not a guarantee. Look at comment quality and sudden follower spikes before you pay for a placement.

Each step on its own