[FIXED] How to check if an instagram account is private or public using webscraping?

Issue

I want to know if an instagram account is private or public by providing the username. It has to be in headless mode as I have to use this in backend.

I tried using beautifulsoup and loaded the target page source but couldn't find anything that specified the account status (private/public).

Solution

I tried inspecting the Network of a simple GET to my IG profile (private) and a public IG profile. It was very easy to find out this:

In the response of this call:

https://www.instagram.com/api/v1/users/web_profile_info/?username=public_account_username

The JSON body has this field:

{
    "data": {
        "user": {
            // other fields
            "is_private": false,
            // other fields
        }
    }
}

Obviously, it is set to true whether it's private.

You can use both beautifulsoup and requests, but personally I prefer requests. It it very simple performing a GET and retrieving data.

But it needs some headers. Looks like this API is only accessible from apps and website, as I've read here.

import requests

header = {"User-Agent": "Instagram 219.0.0.12.117 Android"}
username = "your_account"
response = requests.get(f"https://www.instagram.com/api/v1/users/web_profile_info/?username={username}", headers=header)
if response.status_code in [200, 201]:
    # user actually exists
    is_private = response["data"]["user"]["is_private"]

Answered By - Marco Frag Delle Monache