# Instagram profile scraper: screen a creator list before outreach

Give your agent a list of Instagram handles and get back a CSV with today's followers, category, private flag, a 12-post engagement sample, and a keep or skip verdict, with any public business email verified before you write to it. 3 steps, each a metered call through one olywork.com key, with the price printed before the agent spends it.

## Try it

Setup line (paste into any agent): `set up olywork — https://olywork.com/llms.txt`

Then ask: "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%."

- **List the handles upfront** The agent runs one profile call and one posts call per handle. One batch beats twenty prompts.
- **Ask for the price before each step** Both TikHub routes bill per success at the rate in the table; the verify step is the one that costs, and only fires when an email exists.
- **Define your keep criteria** Follower floor, public account, recent posts, engagement floor. The agent filters; you set the rules.
- **Request a CSV** Structured output you can sort before spending time on outreach.

## The steps

| # | Step | What the agent asks | Provider used | Price | Success rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pull the profile | followers, category, private flag and public business email, by handle | TikHub (`tikhub.instagram.user.profile`, 6 providers, https://olywork.com/agents/chatgpt#social-listening) | $0.001 per found | not yet measured |
| 2 | Sample recent posts | the last 12 posts with likes and comments, by numeric user id | TikHub (`tikhub.instagram.user.posts`, 5 providers, https://olywork.com/agents/chatgpt) | $0.001 per found | not yet measured |
| 3 | Verify the business email | is the public business email deliverable, before outreach | Hunter (`hunter.people.email.verify`, 13 providers, https://olywork.com/use-cases/verify-an-email) | $0.0123 per call | not yet measured |

- Pull the profile: The cheapest profile route in the catalog. Returns the numeric user id the posts step needs.
- Sample recent posts: Engagement is likes plus comments over followers, averaged across the sample. Private accounts skip this step.
- Verify the business email: Fires only for handles whose profile exposes an email, so the worst case in the total above rarely happens.

At the rates above, 20 rows where every call hits comes to $0.28. The receipt below is what it actually cost, and why it differs.

## What it actually cost

Run on 2026-09-14.

- 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: https://olywork.com/workflows/screen-instagram-creators-before-outreach.csv

## Why go through olywork.com

- **One key, not 9 accounts** olywork.com holds the provider keys. Neither you nor the agent sees them.
- **Price before the call** The provider's own rate, $0.000 markup, from a prepaid balance.
- **No subscription, no seats** Charged per call. $1.00 free per new team, no card to start.
- **Your own keys are free** Already pay Hunter? Register it and those calls are never metered.
- **Switch by changing a word** Another provider is a different word in the prompt, not a new integration.
- **Nothing to integrate** No SDK, no OAuth dance per vendor, no seats.

## 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.

## Related

- Find creators by keyword: https://olywork.com/use-cases/find-creators-by-keyword
- Search posts by keyword: https://olywork.com/use-cases/search-posts-by-keyword
- Verify an email before you send: https://olywork.com/use-cases/verify-an-email
- Find people by role, company or location: https://olywork.com/use-cases/people-search

HTML version: https://olywork.com/workflows/screen-instagram-creators-before-outreach