Apify is a popular scraping platform with multiple Instagram-related actors available in its marketplace. Teams evaluating Instagram data collection tools frequently compare Apify against dedicated Instagram scraper APIs. This article covers the most commonly reported issues with Apify's Instagram scrapers and how Syphoon's Instagram Scraper API is structured differently.
How Apify's Instagram Scraper Works
Apify operates as a marketplace platform where individual developers publish scraping tools called actors. Instagram scraping on Apify is spread across multiple separate actors: one for profiles, one for posts, one for reels, one for comments, one for hashtags, and others. Each actor is built and maintained by different developers, with different input formats, different output schemas, and different maintenance schedules.
This marketplace model means the quality, reliability, and update cadence of each actor depends on the individual developer who built it, not on Apify's platform team.
Commonly Reported Issues
Scrapers breaking without notice
Instagram updates its platform regularly. When it does, actors built against the previous structure break. Apify's own issue tracker shows recurring reports of actors returning empty results or throwing errors after Instagram updates, with users waiting for the actor developer to push a fix. Some issues go unresolved for extended periods.
Apify charges by computer usage and you pay upfront even if the scraper fails. Most importantly, there is no way for you to test it at scale. If you can test the solution at scale, there is no way to know if the Instagram scraper is reliable or not and whether your money is going down the drain for no fault of yours.
When a scraper run fails or returns empty results, the computer used to run it is still billed. Users who experience repeated failures during an Instagram update window are paying for runs that produce no data, with no guarantee of when the actor developer will push a fix. Apify's own issue tracker shows multiple open threads where users report paying for failed runs over days and weeks while waiting for actor updates. For teams running scheduled collection at volume, the cost of unreliable runs accumulates quickly.
This is a structural issue with the marketplace model. Actor developers are independent contributors, not Apify's own engineering team. When Instagram updates its platform and an actor breaks, the timeline for a fix depends entirely on one developer's availability.
Inconsistent results
Multiple users report actors intermittently returning no results for accounts that are clearly public and accessible. The inconsistency is often traced to proxy issues, where Apify's default shared proxy pool assigns IPs that Instagram has already flagged. Users who need reliable results are directed to configure their own proxy settings, which adds complexity and cost.
Multiple actors required
There is no single Apify actor that covers profiles, posts, reels, and comments in one integration. Teams that need more than one data type must set up, configure, and maintain separate actor runs for each. Each actor has its own input format, output schema, and failure mode, multiplying the surface area for things to go wrong.
Proxy management falls to the user
Apify's default proxies are shared across users and can be blocked by Instagram. Users who experience blocks are advised to provide their own proxy configuration. This shifts the infrastructure burden back to the team and introduces a dependency on sourcing and managing residential proxies independently.
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How Syphoon's Instagram Scraper API Is Different
| Factor | Apify Instagram scrapers | Syphoon Instagram Scraper API |
|---|---|---|
| Integration | Multiple separate actors per data type, each with different input and output formats | Single endpoint covers all six data types: profile, posts, post info, reels search, comments, reels list |
| Maintenance | Individual actor developers maintain their own actors on their own schedules | Syphoon maintains the API infrastructure and updates it when Instagram changes |
| Proxy management | Default shared proxies can be blocked; users advised to configure custom proxies | Proxy rotation handled on Syphoon's infrastructure side |
| Consistency | Reported issues with intermittently empty results and unpredictable failures | Single dedicated API with consistent response schema |
| Setup | Separate configuration per actor, different input formats per data type | One API key, one endpoint, one request format for all data types |
What Syphoon's Instagram API Covers
One endpoint, one API key, six data types: profile details, post lists, individual post information, reel search by keyword, comment extraction with pagination, and reel lists by profile. All return structured JSON. No actor configuration, no proxy setup, no separate integrations per data type.
1import requests
2
3# Profile details
4payload = {
5 "url": "https://www.instagram.com/username",
6 "data_type": "profile_details",
7 "key": "YOUR_SYPHOON_KEY",
8 "method": "GET"
9}
10response = requests.post("https://api.syphoon.com", json=payload)Ready to build on Instagram data?
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