Top 10 Best Instagram Proxy Services for Instagram Scraping (2023)

Justin Shin

Are you looking for the best proxies to use for scraping Instagram? Then you are on the right page as I will be recommending proxies I have tested and have proven to work well for scraping Instagram.

Table Of Contents

Best Instagram Proxy Service for Instagram Scraping

10 Best Proxies for Instagram Scraping (Performance Compared)

Proxy Provider Average Success Rate Proxy Download Speed Response Time IP Pool Size Locations Concurrency Allowed Bandwidth Allowed Cost
Bright Data 99.8% 32.48 Mbps 192 ms Over 7 million IPs All countries & major cities Unlimited Starts from 1GB Starts from $40 monthly for 1GB
Nimbleway 99.2% 27.85 Mbps 218 ms Undisclosed 195 countries Unlimited Starts from 21GB Starts from $300 monthly for 21GB
Apify Proxy 99% 15.58 Mbps 276 ms Undisclosed 195 countries Unlimited Starts from 1GB Starts from $15 monthly for 1GB
Shifter 98.78% 29.39 Mbps 243 ms Over 31 million IPs All countries Unlimited Unlimited Starts from $249.99 monthly for 10 special ports
Soax 98.76% 27.04 Mbps 208 ms Over 5 million IPs Over 100 countries Unlimited Starts from 8GB Starts from $99 monthly for 8GB
Smartproxy 98.75% 30.92 Mbps 189 ms Over 40 million IPs 195 countries Unlimited Starts from 1GB Starts from $12.5 monthly for 1GB
Oxylabs 98% 29.48 Mbps 209 ms Over 102 million IPs All countries Unlimited Starts from 1GB Starts from $15 monthly for 1GB
Proxy-cheap 97.76% 17.08 Mbps 243 ms Over 7 million IPs Over 127 countries Unlimited Starts from 1GB Starts from $4.99 monthly for 1GB
ProxyEmpire 96.92% 14.07 Mbps 259 ms Over 5 million IPs Over 150 countries Unlimited Starts from 3GB Starts from $45 monthly for 3GB
NetNut 99.8% 13.51 Mbps 287 ms Over 52 million IPs All countries Unlimited Starts from 20GB tarts from $350 monthly
Zyte 95.84% 12.9 Mbps 308 ms Undisclosed Over 150 countries Unlimited Unlimited Starts from $29 monthly

If Instagram is your target website for data scraping, then you have to plan every single step of yours as you will most likely hit a brick wall sooner than you expect. Instagram has one of the most effective anti-spam systems in the market that detect proxies, bots, and even unusual behavior, within its system.

This article is about choosing the best proxies to use together with your web scraper to collect the data you want from Instagram without getting blocked. When it comes to scraping Instagram for data, you have to be picky as Instagram can detect proxies. Some will advise you only use mobile proxies but the cost attributed to that isn’t what most users can afford.

Interestingly, there are residential proxies you can to scrape Instagram without getting detected. In this article, I will recommend some of the best proxies for Instagram scraping. While the article will focus on residential proxies, a recommendation or two would be from the mobile proxy market for those that can afford them.

1. Bright Data — Overall Best Proxies for Scraping Instagram

Bright Data is arguably the best proxy provider in the market, providing proxies in all of the proxy categories. This provider has got support for both residential and mobile rotating proxies which are all good for web scraping. In this article, I will focus on their mobile proxies which have proven to perform better as far as scraping Instagram is concerned. I used this for scraping Instagram and didn’t get detected without even a suspicion.

This I can attribute to the mobile IPs since it is less suspicious accessing Instagram from mobile IPs compared to residential IPs. And when it comes to mobile IPs, they have a lot of them in their pool and rotate them for you randomly.

Currently, Bright Data has over 7 million real mobile IPs in their pool which you can use for your Instagram scraping. Their mobile proxies are rotating proxies and change IPs for you after every request which is perfect for Instagram scraping.

2. Nimbleway — Best Instagram Proxies for Enterprise Customers

Nimbleway is another provider you can purchase proxies to use for scraping Instagram. This proxy network is new in the market. A few months after launch, I was invited to test out the service and its performance, and the result was impressive. Instagram wasn’t my target during the test though. But I have had to use it for scraping data from Instagram a couple of times and it worked every single time.

With this provider, I will suggest you make use of their residential proxies if you want to scrape Instagram. Nimble IP has been developed from the ground up for scraping. It is not just your regular proxies as it learns from the mistakes of its predecessors — no downtime, high performance, and the ability to evade detection of even the smartest anti-proxy system.

This makes it the perfect proxy provider for scraping Instagram. However, being an enterprise-level provider, the barrier of being their customer is quite high. You need to do KYC and be ready to spend at least $300 for their proxies.

3. Apify Proxy — Best for Apify Automation Actor Users

Apify is a web scraping platform that has a good number of web scrapers known as actors. It does have a good number of such actors for Instagram each with the specific data it is meant to scrape. If you are a user of any of these actors, you are better off making use of the Apify Proxy. The Apify Proxy is a unique proxy offering that operates a combined pool of residential and datacenter IPs.

This proxy network smartly rotates between residential and datacenter IPs in other to improve performance, hide your footprint while scraping, and make proxy usage cheaper for you since you aren’t using only residential proxies throughout. With this service, you get a single endpoint through which you access the pool.

Apify constantly monitors the IPs in its pool to make sure they are not bad in other reduce the occurrence of dropped connections. As in the case of the other providers above, you can choose the location of the IP addresses you want your requests routed through.

4. Shifter — Best for Scraping Images and Videos from Instagram

All of the providers mentioned in this article have one shortcoming — they come with limited bandwidth. And if you need to scrape images and videos from Shifter on a large scale, your cost will quickly ramp up. Shifter is the provider for you in this case as it allows you to enjoy unlimited bandwidth at no extra cost from the initial.

And the provider has got over 31 million IP addresses in its pool sourced via P2P networks from across the globe. Because they are from devices of real Internet users, it becomes difficult for Instagram to tell you are making use of proxies to access it. The proxies you get from this provider are backconnect proxies that change IPs after 5 minutes but you can extend this time period.

Currently, Shifter does not offer high-rotating proxies that change IP randomly.  The only major issue you will have to deal with here is that you need a minimum go $250 to get started with this provider.

5. Soax — Clean Residential Proxy Pool for Scraping Instagram

One major problems residential rotating proxies have is that their pool could contain already blacklisted IPs or inactive IPs and this can ruin your project. Soax has gone further to make monitoring their pool a priority in other to remove the bad IPs.

This is highly beneficial to you as a web scraper interested in collecting data from Instagram. I have used their proxies for scraping and carrying out other forms of automation on Instagram. And the performance was stellar. I didn’t experience dropped connection nor was I assigned IPs that have already been blocked by Instagram.

Currently, Soax has got over 5 million residential IPs in its pool sourced from over 100 countries across the globe. The proxies provided are rotating proxies but the rotation is time-based. This makes it perfect for scraping data the requires you to maintain sessions. While their proxies work, you will need a minimum of $99 to get started with them.

6. Smartproxy — Fastest Residential Proxies for Instagram

Another provider you can purchase residential proxies to use for scraping data from Instagram is Smartproxy. Smartproxy is a residential proxy service with over 40 million residential IP addresses. One of the reasons I like this provider is its fast response time.

Even, when it comes to speed, Smartproxy can be ranked ahead of Bright Data. I used a custom script to test the response time of this provider against Instagram and the average response time was below 2.02 seconds which is impressive for a residential proxy network. But that is not all, none of the requests sent was identified or even suspected to be a proxy by Instagram.

This is because Smartproxy route requests of its users via the devices of real Internet users, making them indistinguishable. The proxies offered are rotating proxies but you can maintain sessions for up to 30 minutes. Its pricing is affordable and you can get IPs from all countries of the world.

7. Oxylabs — Good Bright Data Alternative

When it comes to features, there is no provider that compared to Bright Data like Oxylabs. I have personally paired the two in performance tests and the difference between them wasn’t huge. In fact, requests I sent using Oxylabs residential proxies returned a response in under 2 seconds. Oxylabs is perfect for carrying out large-scale scraping of data from Instagram.

This provider currently has over 100 million IP addresses in its pool making it the largest provider out there. Considering I got over 70 percent unique IPs when testing out this service for web scraping, it is the perfect network for scraping Instagram on a large scale.

It makes use of devices of real Internet users, making it difficult for Instagram to identify the traffic and proxy traffic. The proxies offered by Oxylabs are high-rotating proxies that change IP after every request. However, you can still maintain sessions with their session IPs for up to an hour.

8. Proxy-cheap — Cheapest Proxies for Instagram Scraping

Proxy-cheap is another provider you can purchase rotating residential proxies for scraping Instagram. To be frank with you, I wouldn’t recommend you make use of this provider if you have millions of pages to scrape. For one, it has a small pool of 7 million which not all would be available at a time. Secondly, the speed isn’t encouraging especially at the scale you operate.

But for small to medium-scale Instagram scraping, you can save up on cost and use this provider. With just $5, you can get started with Proxy-cheap, and the more bandwidth you pay for, the cheaper the price per GB gets. It might interest you to know that the performance with this is quite acceptable for small proxy users. The proxies are rotating proxies that change IPs randomly.

If you need to maintain sessions to scrape certain datapoint from Instagram, Proxy-cheap allows such for up to 30 minutes. In terms of location support, Proxy-cheap has IPs from over 127 countries around the globe.

9. ProxyEmpire — Reliable Proxies for Instagram

Another provider of choice for Instagram scraping is ProxyEmpire. This provider is a small proxy provider with just a little over 5 million IP addresses in its pool. As with the other providers, a good amount of this will be inactive at a time so, this might not be the best for scraping millions of pages.

However, if you are looking for a reliable rotating proxy network for small to medium-scale scraping of Instagram, then I will recommend this. I have used this network in the past and the performance at a small scale was reasonable. However, I will recommend against sending too many concurrent requests as that drops the performance quickly.

The proxies offered are rotating proxies With IPs from over 127 countries around the globe. There is an option for choosing the specific location of the IPs you want. This is known as geo-targeting. In terms of pricing, you get 3GB for $40 monthly.

10. NetNut – Most Reliable Residential Proxies for Scraping Instagram

NetNut is an excellent choice for scraping Instagram's data and navigating the platform's well-intentioned restrictions. However, as we all know, companies simply want to gather as much valuable data and insights as possible to help them make better strategic decisions. For that purpose, NetNut's residential proxies will do very well. They're your secret weapon for mastering and managing all data-driven activities on Instagram.

There are several reasons why you should be excited about NetNut as your go-to Instagram proxy. First, it’s a network of over 52M+ residential IPs, where over 1 million are reliable static, this gives you the option to choose the type of IP that works best for a certain job. Also, this means your connections are fast because the optimal IPs are selected depending on your location.  

Furthermore, NetNut's residential proxies guarantee secure, private, and anonymous data scraping. This is paramount for those times when you prefer to maintain a low profile – which is perfect when conducting some business operations. What's more, NetNut’s proxies let you easily automate your Instagram tasks using your favorite tools. You can manage multiple accounts and run several ads simultaneously without any hassle, boosting your Instagram presence.

NetNut offers different plans for their residential proxies – Advanced, Production, or Master – each suited for different data scraping goals you might have for your Instagram strategy. They offer a 7-day free trial which should serve as a great starting point for your Instagram data extraction. Committing to a paid plan can then come after your convenience.

11. Zyte — Ban-Proof Proxies for Instagram Scraping

Zyte, formerly known as Scrapinghub is one of the foremost web scraping companies and the developer of Scrapy. It now offers a proxy service known as the Zyte Smart Proxy Manager which is one of the best proxies to use for scraping Instagram. But why do I think so? Zyte Smart Proxy Manager offers an automatic rotating proxy system with ban detection. With this, Zyte is able to remove IPs that have already been banned by Instagram from their pool.

The service also has auto-retires for timeout requests, use headless browsers to appear real, and even allows you to choose the specific location you want to appear to visit from. While the proxy network is a rotating proxy network, it does have support for session proxies for sending multiple requests via the same IP address which is good for some kind of Instagram scraping tasks.

FAQs

Q. What Proxies Are the Best for Instagram?

In the ideal situation, mobile proxies are the best proxies for scraping Instagram. This is because of their mobile IPs which are more natural with Instagram. However, mobile proxies can be expensive.  And for this reason, residential proxies are preferred for most users. This is because residential proxies are also undetectable to Instagram and are quite cheaper. Take, for instance, Bright Data 1GB for residential proxies is $15 while their mobile proxies is $40 per GB. This makes it better to look at the cost to use residential proxies than mobile proxies since they can get the job done too.

Almost all websites on the Internet do not like being scraped. This is because while doing that does not benefit them, you are adding to their server cost and even negatively influencing performance on a large scale if dealing with a low-powered server. However, this does not make web scraping illegal. On a general note, scraping Instagram is not illegal. However, you will have to deal with the Instagram anti-spam system which is one of the most effective anti-bot systems out there. I recommend you speak to a competent legal adviser as nothing here should be seen as legal advice.

Q. Are Web Scraping APIs Better for Instagram?

If you have tried scraping Instagram with proxies and still get blocked, it is time to ditch proxies and use a web scraping API. This is especially true if you do not have experience with scraping Instagram. With a web scraping API, you do not have to worry about blocks. The API provides proxies, evades blocks, and renders Javascript for you so you have to focus on the data collected rather than on the data collection itself. ScraperAPI and ScrapingBee are some of the best web scraping APIs out there you can use for web scraping.

Conclusion

Proxies are highly important when it comes to scraping data from Instagram as it does have an anti-spam system that blocks proxies. However, with Instagram, you can’t just use any proxy you lay your hands on — the proxies have to be undetectable to the Instagram anti-spam system. The proxies provided by the providers above are some of the best proxies out there that you can use for scraping data from Instagram without getting detected and blocked.

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