instagram

List similar Instagram accounts

Returns a list of Instagram accounts similar to a given user: the related accounts Instagram surfaces as suggestions. Each account includes username, display name, avatar URL, verification status, and profile URL. Pass either handle or user_id. Passing user_id is faster because no username lookup is needed. This is a suggestion list, so on a plain call the per-account metrics are null on every row: author.followers, author.following, author.posts_count and author.bio. Send include=profile and every row is joined, in the same call, to the profile lookup that carries them: exact follower and following counts plus the bio land on each row. author.posts_count lands only on a row the lookup's backup source answered, so it is null on most rows; GET /v1/instagram/profile returns the lifetime post count for any single account. Cost: 5 credits for the list plus 1 credit per row filled from a fresh lookup; rows already in cache are free, unfilled rows are refunded, and a repeat within the cache window is 0. With include=profile the list is its top 20 accounts unless you pass limit (1 to 80), so the default hydrated call is at most 25 credits (the same as limit=20&include=profile) and limit=80&include=profile, the full roster, is at most 85. Time: a plain call is 2 to 3 seconds; with include=profile allow 3 to 6 seconds more for 20 rows (the lookups run in parallel and the call waits for the slowest, never more than 12 seconds) and about four times that for all 80, which run as four waves of 24. The response carries a hydration block itemising rows, lookups, cache hits, credits and milliseconds. author.likes_count stays null: Instagram publishes no account-level like total. The list is a single fixed window: it is not paginated and returns no cursor.

get/instagram/similar

Request

Base URL: https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1
URL: https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/instagram/similar
Auth: API key in header x-api-key

Query parameters

handlestring

Instagram username without the @ symbol. (one of: handle, user_id; at least one required)

user_idstring

Instagram numeric user ID. Use this for faster responses. (one of: handle, user_id; at least one required)

include'profile'

Set to profile (one token only) to fill author.followers, author.following and author.bio on every row in this one call, plus author.posts_count where the lookup has an exact total. The hydrated list is its top 20 accounts unless you pass limit (1 to 80). Holds 1 credit per row and keeps only the rows filled from a fresh lookup; rows already in cache and rows that could not be filled are refunded, so the most a call can cost is 5 + rows (25 by default, 85 with limit=80) and the usual bill is lower. Adds 3 to 6 seconds for 20 rows (never more than 12) and about four times that for 80, and nothing when the accounts are already cached; read data.hydration for the rows, the credits held and kept, and the time.

limitinteger

Take the top N accounts of the list (1 to 80). With include=profile the list defaults to its top 20 (at most 25 credits) and limit caps both the rows and the extra credits: limit=80&include=profile buys the full roster for at most 85 credits. Without include=profile the full list is returned unless you cap it.

Headers

Cache-Controlstring

Send no-cache to bypass the response cache and force a live fetch. Billed at the normal endpoint cost; the fresh result is written back to cache for the next caller. Only the no-cache directive triggers this. See the Response Schema guide for details.

Idempotency-Keystring

Optional UUID that makes the request safely retriable. The key is reserved atomically per account before billing. A concurrent retry receives 409 IDEMPOTENCY_IN_PROGRESS with a Retry-After of 1 second while the original is young, growing to a quarter of the time it has been running (at most 30); a crashed reservation expires after 5 minutes. A replay keeps the cached payload immutable except for billing metadata: credits_used becomes 0, idempotent_replay becomes true, and credits_remaining is refreshed to the current balance. A known current balance appears in both the body and X-Credits-Remaining header; no balance row resolves to 0. On a transient lookup failure, body credits_remaining is null and X-Credits-Remaining is omitted. Completed outcomes expire after 24 hours. If the claim store is unavailable, the request fails closed before billing. GET endpoints do not combine idempotent replay with Server-Sent Events: use Accept: application/json when sending this header. The unsupported key-plus-SSE combination is rejected before billing.

Response

Successful response

successboolean required

Whether the request succeeded

platformstring required

Platform name

endpointstring required

API endpoint path

credits_usedinteger required

Number of credits consumed

credits_remaininginteger nullable required

Current account balance, or null when this response could not establish one. Free cache hits always return null because they do not establish an authoritative post-request balance. An idempotency replay also returns null when its current-balance lookup fails. It is never a fabricated zero, so a zero here means the account really is empty. The authoritative reading is the one on a billed response, which comes straight from the deduction.

request_idstring required

Unique request identifier for support

cachedboolean required

Whether the response was served from cache

idempotent_replayboolean

True only when this response is an idempotency replay

Example response

{
  "success": true,
  "platform": "instagram",
  "endpoint": "/v1/instagram/similar",
  "credits_used": 1,
  "credits_remaining": 4999,
  "request_id": "req-abc123",
  "idempotent_replay": true,
  "meta": {
    "hint": {
      "code": "search_multi",
      "message": "You searched \"matcha\" on 3 platforms one call at a time; /v1/search/multi returns each platform's own search rows in one call at the same price per platform, and a platform with no rows is not charged.",
      "method": "GET",
      "path": "/v1/search/multi?query=matcha&platforms=instagram,tiktok,youtube"
    }
  },
  "pagination": {
    "next_cursor": "sc.eyJ2IjoyLCJjIjoiMiIsInAiOiJwYWdlIn0",
    "has_more": true,
    "page_size": 30,
    "stopped_at": "known_id"
  }
}

Changes

No recorded changes to this operation across all 1 revision of this API.