Instagram Comment Scraper: Export Comments Safely and Legally

An Instagram comment scraper collects the comments under a post into a spreadsheet. For your own posts, the safe route is Instagram’s official API, which returns comments (text, username, date, likes, replies) for a professional account you manage. For other accounts’ posts, scraping tools exist, but they run without Meta’s permission and must comply with privacy law such as GDPR.

This guide explains the options, how to export comments from your own posts step by step, the legal limits, and how to turn the export into useful insights.

What is an Instagram comment scraper?

A comment scraper, or comment exporter, is a tool or script that reads the comments on one or several Instagram posts and saves them in a structured file (CSV, Excel, Google Sheets). A typical export contains:

• the comment text and its unique ID;

• the commenter’s username;

• the date and time;

• the number of likes on the comment;

• replies, linked to their parent comment.

There are two very different families of tools. Some read comments through Meta’s official API, with your permission, on accounts you own. Others imitate a browser to copy what is displayed on any public post. The difference matters for your account, for the law and for data quality.

Why export Instagram comments?

• Find recurring questions and turn them into FAQ entries, posts or saved replies.

• Measure sentiment after a launch, a price change or a crisis.

• Pick a giveaway winner fairly among everyone who commented. Our giveaway automation playbook covers the rules.

• Collect product feedback: feature requests, complaints, sizes or colours people ask for.

• Audit moderation: how much spam or abuse lands under your posts and ads.

Ways to collect Instagram comments compared

How to export comments from your own Instagram posts with the official API

If the posts belong to a business or creator account you manage, the Instagram Graph API gives you the comments directly. According to Meta’s developer documentation for the comments endpoint:

1. Use a professional account. Switch the Instagram account to business or creator and connect it as required by your API setup.

2. Create a Meta app in Meta for Developers and request the permissions to read and manage comments (instagram_basic and instagram_manage_comments).

3. Get the list of your media (posts, Reels, carousels) and their IDs.

4. Call the comments endpoint for each media. It returns top-level comments, at most 50 per request, with a pagination cursor to fetch the rest.

5. Request the replies field if you need answers to comments; they are not included by default.

6. Write the results to a CSV with the fields you need: ID, text, username, timestamp, like count, parent ID.

Know the limits before you start. The documentation states that comments on live videos are not supported, that comments cannot be filtered by date, and that comments on ads must be read through the Marketing API instead. Deleted and hidden comments will not match what you remember seeing, so do not expect the export to equal the public counter.

If you do not want to write code, a social media tool connected through the official API reads the same data for you and keeps it up to date.

Is it legal to scrape Instagram comments?

It depends on whose posts, how, and what you do with the data. Three layers apply (this is general information, not legal advice):

• Instagram’s rules. The Instagram Terms of Use prohibit accessing or collecting information in an automated way without Meta’s express permission, whether or not you are logged in. Scraping with your own account can get it restricted.

• Court decisions. In January 2024, a US federal court ruled in Meta v. Bright Data that Meta’s terms at the time did not bar logged-out scraping of public data. The current terms now explicitly cover logged-out collection, and a US ruling does not settle European rules.

• Privacy law. In the EU, a username next to a comment is personal data, so GDPR applies even to public posts: you need a legal basis, must inform people, limit what you keep and delete it on time. The French regulator CNIL fined KASPR €240,000 in December 2024 for collecting LinkedIn users’ contact details through a browser extension.

In practice: exporting comments from your own professional account through the API is the clean option. Analysing competitors is safer through manual reading and aggregated observations than through bulk collection of personal data. Academic researchers can apply to Meta’s research tools rather than scraping.

How to analyse Instagram comments once exported

For method and tools, read our guide to comment sentiment analysis. If your goal is continuous tracking rather than a one-off export, see how to monitor social media comments.

Common mistakes with Instagram comment scrapers

• Running a scraper logged in with your brand account. Automated activity can get the account restricted, and your brand account is the last one you want to lose.

• Using exported usernames to send unsolicited DMs. That is spam on Instagram and a GDPR problem in Europe.

• Keeping personal data indefinitely. Keep only what you need for the analysis, then delete or anonymise usernames.

• Forgetting replies and ad comments. Replies need a separate request, and ad comments come from a different API. Many “complete” exports miss both.

• Reading exports once and moving on. Comments are most useful when someone answers the questions and hides the spam while it matters.

Where Blabla fits

Most teams export comments to understand them. Blabla does that continuously instead, without scraping. It connects to your Instagram account through Meta’s official API and brings every comment and DM, including comments on ads, into one unified inbox with Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. Comments are classified by sentiment (positive, neutral, negative) and summarised in monthly reports, AI replies answer recurring questions from your FAQ, and spam is hidden automatically. Blabla only reads accounts you connect; it does not collect comments from other people’s accounts. If you need a one-off export of a single post, the API or a spreadsheet is enough. To keep comments tidy at the source, see our guide to filtering Instagram comments.

Conclusion

An Instagram comment scraper is only as good as its source. For your own posts, use the official API or a tool built on it: complete, authorised and up to date. For other accounts, remember that automated collection breaks Instagram’s terms without Meta’s permission and that GDPR applies to usernames. Then spend the saved time on what matters: answering the questions your comments reveal.