Instagram API Followers Count: Get It, and What's Missing

The Instagram API returns an account's followers count in the followers_count field of the IG user, along with follows_count (accounts it follows) and media_count. You can read it for any professional account that authorized your app, and for other Business or Creator accounts through business discovery. What you can't get is the follower list itself: the official API returns counts and demographics, never the people.

Below are the calls, with Python code. For the rest of the platform, see our Instagram API guide.

How do you get the Instagram followers count?#

Request followers_count as a field on the IG user. With the Instagram API with Instagram Login, call /me on graph.instagram.com with an Instagram User access token:

curl -G "https://graph.instagram.com/v26.0/me" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $IG_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  --data-urlencode "fields=user_id,username,followers_count,follows_count,media_count"

With Facebook Login, call the IG user ID on graph.facebook.com with the same fields. Meta's IG User reference defines the fields:

The permissions depend on the login. Instagram Login needs instagram_business_basic. Facebook Login needs instagram_basic and pages_read_engagement, plus ads_management or ads_read when the user's Page role came through Business Manager. Our Instagram API permissions post explains how Meta reviews each one.

How do you get Instagram followers with Python?#

Use requests and read followers_count from the JSON. This snippet fetches the count and appends a dated snapshot, which is how you build a growth chart:

import datetime
import json
import os
 
import requests
 
resp = requests.get(
    "https://graph.instagram.com/v26.0/me",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['IG_ACCESS_TOKEN']}"},
    params={"fields": "user_id,username,followers_count,follows_count"},
    timeout=30,
)
resp.raise_for_status()
body = resp.json()
profile = body["data"][0] if "data" in body else body
 
snapshot = {
    "date": datetime.date.today().isoformat(),
    "followers": profile["followers_count"],
    "following": profile["follows_count"],
}
with open("followers.jsonl", "a") as f:
    f.write(json.dumps(snapshot) + "\n")

Run it once a day. The API returns the current total only, so history exists only if you store it. Our Instagram API Python tutorial covers tokens, errors, and publishing from Python.

Can the Instagram API get a list of followers?#

No. The official Instagram API has no endpoint that lists an account's followers. Meta's IG User reference documents followers_count and no followers edge, in either version of the API. The same goes for the accounts an account follows: you get follows_count, not the accounts.

If your product needs to know who the audience is, the closest official data is aggregate:

• Follower demographics. Age, gender, city, and country, from the insights edge (next section).
• People who engage. Commenters' usernames come back on the comments edge, covered in our Instagram API comments guide.
• People who message. The Messaging API gives you the users who start a conversation, per our Instagram Messaging API post.

Services that sell follower lists collect them by scraping Instagram outside the official API. Don't build a customer-facing product on that.

How do you get follower demographics and growth?#

Follower demographics come from the account insights edge, as the follower_demographics metric, broken down by age, city, country, or gender. Meta added insights to the Instagram API with Instagram Login in March 2025. Shravya Garlapati described the benefit on the Meta for Developers blog on March 24, 2025:

"Learn more about follower trends, including top follower locations and age demographics."

Plan for a permission and a threshold. The insights edge needs instagram_business_manage_insights with Instagram Login (instagram_manage_insights with Facebook Login). And Meta returns no follower_demographics or follows_and_unfollows data for accounts with fewer than 100 followers, so a new test account looks empty.

curl -G "https://graph.instagram.com/v26.0/<IG_USER_ID>/insights" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $IG_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  --data-urlencode "metric=follower_demographics" \
  --data-urlencode "period=lifetime" \
  --data-urlencode "metric_type=total_value" \
  --data-urlencode "breakdown=country" \
  --data-urlencode "timeframe=this_month"

For growth, follows_and_unfollows (with period=day and metric_type=total_value) returns follows and unfollows over the since to until range you pass. Our Instagram insights API guide lists every metric, the timeframe values, and the deprecated audience metrics it replaced.

How do you get the followers count of another Instagram account?#

Use business discovery: query your own IG user with business_discovery.username(...) and the fields you want. Meta documents it for the Instagram API with Facebook Login, and it works only on other Business or Creator accounts:

curl -G "https://graph.facebook.com/v26.0/<YOUR_IG_USER_ID>" \
  --data-urlencode "fields=business_discovery.username(<USERNAME>){username,followers_count,media_count}" \
  --data-urlencode "access_token=$FB_USER_ACCESS_TOKEN"

Per Meta's business discovery reference:

• Permissions. instagram_basic, instagram_manage_insights, and pages_read_engagement on a Facebook User access token.
• Professional accounts only. Personal accounts can't be looked up.
• No age-gated accounts. Meta says data about age-gated accounts "will not be returned."
• Public fields only. followers_count and media_count are marked public. follows_count isn't, so don't count on it for another account.

Business discovery can also expand media to read the other account's recent posts. Our guide to getting Instagram posts with the Graph API covers the media fields.

What are the limits of the Instagram followers count?#

The count is a current total for professional accounts, and every read counts toward your rate limit.

• No history. Snapshots are yours to store.
• No personal accounts. Meta's Instagram API only returns data for Business and Creator accounts.
• Demographics need 100 followers. Smaller accounts return empty demographics.
• Rate limits. Every call counts toward the app's limit for that account, so polling thousands of accounts every few minutes will hit it. See our Instagram API rate limit guide.

How does Adeli return follower metrics?#

Adeli shares the follower count for every Instagram account your users connect, through one API key, and refreshes the tokens for you. Each of your users connects their own Instagram account through Adeli's hosted connect flow. Adeli holds the Meta developer app and carried Meta's review.

What Adeli returns:

• Instagram. The follower count for each connected account, and Instagram account insights with views, reach, total_interactions, and accounts_engaged over a rolling 28 days.
• TikTok. TikTok account analytics returns lifetime followers, following, likes, and videos, and TikTok account insights adds daily follower gains, losses, and demographics.
• Facebook. Facebook Page metrics returns the Page's followers.

The social media analytics API page shows how these fit together. If you're building analytics into a vertical SaaS product, Adeli for vertical SaaS covers the setup, and your first 2 user profiles are free on pricing.