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

Get an Instagram followers count with the API: followers_count, business discovery for other accounts, demographics, and why there's no follower list.

Canonical page: https://www.tryadeli.com/blog/instagram-api-followers
Last updated: 2026-10-26

By Mika Reyes, Co-founder, Adeli. Published 2026-10-26.

## The short answer

The Instagram API returns a followers count as the followers_count field on an IG user, next to follows_count and media_count. Read it for an account that authorized your app, or for another Business or Creator account through business discovery. Follower demographics come from the insights edge. The official API has no endpoint that lists who the followers are. Adeli shares the follower count for every connected Instagram account.

**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](https://www.tryadeli.com/blog/instagram-api-guide) 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:

```bash
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](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-platform/instagram-graph-api/reference/ig-user) defines the fields:

| Field | What it returns |
|---|---|
| `followers_count` | Total number of Instagram users following the account |
| `follows_count` | Total number of accounts the account follows |
| `media_count` | Total number of posts published on the account |

**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](https://www.tryadeli.com/blog/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:

```python
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](https://www.tryadeli.com/blog/instagram-api-python) 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](https://www.tryadeli.com/blog/instagram-api-comments) guide.
- **People who message.** The Messaging API gives you the users who start a conversation, per our [Instagram Messaging API](https://www.tryadeli.com/blog/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](https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2025/03/24/user-and-media-insights-on-instagram-api-with-instagram-login/) 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.

```bash
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](https://www.tryadeli.com/blog/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:

```bash
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](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-platform/instagram-graph-api/reference/ig-user/business_discovery):

- **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](https://www.tryadeli.com/blog/instagram-api-get-posts) 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](https://www.tryadeli.com/blog/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](https://www.tryadeli.com/docs/api/analytics/instagram-account-insights) with `views`, `reach`, `total_interactions`, and `accounts_engaged` over a rolling 28 days.
- **TikTok.** [TikTok account analytics](https://www.tryadeli.com/docs/api/analytics/tiktok-account-analytics) returns lifetime followers, following, likes, and videos, and [TikTok account insights](https://www.tryadeli.com/docs/api/analytics/tiktok-account-insights) adds daily follower gains, losses, and demographics.
- **Facebook.** [Facebook Page metrics](https://www.tryadeli.com/docs/api/analytics/facebook-page-metrics) returns the Page's followers.

The [social media analytics API](https://www.tryadeli.com/social-media-analytics-api) page shows how these fit together. If you're building analytics into a vertical SaaS product, [Adeli for vertical SaaS](https://www.tryadeli.com/use-cases/vertical-saas) covers the setup, and your first 2 user profiles are free on [pricing](https://www.tryadeli.com/pricing).

## Frequently asked questions

### Can I get a list of Instagram followers through the API?

No. Meta's IG User reference documents followers_count but no edge that lists followers, and there is no follower list in the Instagram API with Instagram Login or with Facebook Login. Aggregate follower demographics by age, gender, city, and country are available through insights.

### Can I get the followers count of any Instagram account?

Only for professional accounts. Business discovery returns followers_count for other Business or Creator accounts by username, using the Instagram API with Facebook Login. Personal and age-gated accounts return nothing.

### How often does the Instagram followers count update?

Each call returns the current total, not a history. To chart follower growth, store a snapshot of followers_count on a schedule, or read the follows_and_unfollows insights metric for follows and unfollows over a date range.

### Which permission do I need to read followers_count?

With Instagram Login, instagram_business_basic. With Facebook Login, instagram_basic and pages_read_engagement for your own account, plus instagram_manage_insights for business discovery. Follower demographics need the insights permission on either login.

## Related Adeli pages

- [Social Media Analytics API](https://www.tryadeli.com/social-media-analytics-api.md): Adeli's analytics API: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook Page, and YouTube insights endpoints, plus per-post engagement on every post an account has made.
- [Instagram API for Developers](https://www.tryadeli.com/product/instagram.md): Publish, schedule, and read analytics for Instagram through one API. Adeli owns the Instagram developer app, token refresh, and Meta review. Free to start.
- [Social Media API for Vertical SaaS Platforms](https://www.tryadeli.com/use-cases/vertical-saas.md): Give your small-business customers posting, scheduling, analytics, inbox, and Meta ads inside your vertical SaaS, through one API.
- [All posts on the Adeli blog](https://www.tryadeli.com/blog.md)

## About the author

Mika Reyes is the CEO behind Adeli and a tech and AI content creator. She was previously co-founder and CEO of Parallax, which was acquired by Phantom, and a product lead at LinkedIn. She is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree.