How to Scrape and Extract Instagram's Most Popular Posts with Airtop Studio

Keeping track of Instagram's trending content is essential for social media managers and marketing professionals, but manually monitoring or scraping Instagram's Explore page can be tedious, slow, and unreliable. Instagram's complex frontend, rapid content updates, and authentication requirements create additional technical hurdles for precise data extraction. Without structured and consistent outputs, gathering insights quickly enough to act upon becomes nearly impossible.

Airtop addresses these challenges by providing a reliable, scalable, and user-friendly approach to scrape Instagram's Explore page seamlessly and efficiently. Leveraging Airtop Studio, this automation securely authenticates to Instagram, supporting logins through OAuth, two-factor authentication (2FA), and even Captcha challenges, ensuring uninterrupted extraction sessions. Powered by real browser interactions, Airtop authentically navigates Instagram's dynamically-loaded content, delivering structured JSON outputs including critical post data like content type, vivid captions, hashtags, mentions, and unique shortcodes.

With Airtop Studio's secure browser profiles, you bypass scraping limitations by simulating genuine user behavior, making it significantly easier to stay compliant and accurate. The powerful blend of secure authentication, realistic interactions, and structured data output helps social researchers, analysts, and marketers quickly identify trends, measure engagement, and optimize their content strategies based on real-time insights from Instagram's most relevant content.

Who is this Automation for?

• Social Media Managers analyzing Instagram trends for content optimization

• Marketing Analysts conducting sentiment and engagement research

• Competitive Intelligence Teams benchmarking competitor presence on Instagram

• Content Strategists identifying viral content and engagement metrics

Key Benefits

• Real browser sessions for authentic scraping and accurate results

• Secure authenticated access supporting OAuth, 2FA, and Captcha solutions

• Consistent structured JSON data output for streamlined analysis

• No coding expertise required for rapid deployment

Use Cases

• Monitoring trending hashtags to inform marketing campaigns

• Extracting popular post topics to guide content creation efforts

• Analyzing competitor strategies by observing mentions and content popularity

• Identifying influencers and brand advocates through top-performing mentions

• Tracking engagement data from Instagram's most relevant Explore page trends

• Generating detailed reports of viral Instagram content for team insight briefings

Getting Started with the Extract Instagram Most Popular Posts Info Automation

Quickly begin scraping Instagram's popular trending posts using Airtop Studio and authenticated secure profiles.

How the Extract Instagram Most Popular Posts Info Automation Works

Once activated, Airtop Studio initiates a secure, real-browser instance logged into your authenticated Instagram profile. Airtop securely navigates and parses Instagram's Explore page, extracting key data points such as post type, descriptive captions, trending hashtags, tagged mentions, and unique shortcodes. The automation compiles these insights into a structured JSON output ready for immediate use in data analytics platforms, reporting tools, or social media dashboards.

What You’ll Need

• A free Airtop account

• A free Airtop Profile authenticated to Instagram (create one here)

Setting Up the Automation

1. Click on "Try Automation".

2. Under Advanced Settings, enter your Airtop Profile name authenticated to Instagram.

3. Click on "Start Session".

4. Click "Run".

5. Optional: Retrieve Python or TypeScript code by clicking "Get Code", or integrate into Make or n8n by copying and pasting provided prompts and JSON schema.

Customize the Automation

Tailor this automation to fit your specific Instagram analytics needs with Airtop Studio:

• Select specific hashtags or mentions to focus extraction on pinpoint topics or campaigns.

• Set extraction limits or intervals to ensure you are collecting data at optimal timestamps.

• Adapt JSON data schemas to prioritize unique metrics relevant to your research goals—such as post engagement or influencer mentions.

Automation Best Practices

• Schedule regular automated sessions to remain consistently updated with Instagram trends.

• Regularly update your Airtop Profile authentication to maintain seamless sessions.

• Review extracted JSON outputs to ensure data accuracy and quality over the lifetime of projects.

Try this Automation

Automating Instagram Explore page extraction with Airtop Studio provides precise insights into trending content, streamlining research and decision-making processes effortlessly.

Extract Instagram Most Popular Posts Info Automation – Airtop Studio

Need help customizing this automation? Book a Demo today!