Instagram账号粉丝数获取：原接口返回403错误求替代简易方案

Been there, done that—Instagram’s old ?__a=1 endpoint getting blocked with 403 errors is super frustrating when you just need a quick follower count. Here are a few straightforward, no-fuss alternatives I’ve tested recently that work without needing full API access or complex authentication:

• Mobile API Endpoint (Programmatic Access)
  Instagram’s mobile web API still allows unauthenticated requests (for now) if you spoof a mobile user agent. Here’s how to use it with curl:

  curl -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 16_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.0 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1" "https://i.instagram.com/api/v1/users/web_profile_info/?username=your_target_username"
  

  The follower count lives in the JSON response at data.user.edge_followed_by.count. For a quick Python script to parse this automatically:

  import requests
  
  target_username = "your_target_username"
  headers = {
      "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 16_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.0 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1"
  }
  
  response = requests.get(f"https://i.instagram.com/api/v1/users/web_profile_info/?username={target_username}", headers=headers)
  if response.ok:
      follower_count = response.json()["data"]["user"]["edge_followed_by"]["count"]
      print(f"{target_username} has {follower_count} followers")
  else:
      print(f"Failed to fetch data: Status code {response.status_code}")
  

  Note: Don’t hit this endpoint too quickly—Instagram will rate-limit or block your IP if you make too many requests in a short window.

• Manual Page Source Check (No Code Needed)
  If you only need to look up a follower count occasionally, skip the code entirely:

  1. Go to the target user’s Instagram profile in your desktop browser
  2. Press F12 to open Developer Tools, then use Ctrl+F (or Cmd+F on Mac) to search for edge_followed_by
  3. You’ll find a line like "edge_followed_by":{"count":123456} — the number here is the follower count.

• Heads-Up for Long-Term Use
  Important: Instagram regularly tweaks its unauthenticated endpoints to block scraping. These methods might stop working without warning. If you need a reliable solution for production or commercial use, you’ll have to use Instagram’s official Graph API, but that requires creating a developer account, getting app approval, and using access tokens — which is less "简易" as you requested.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Duna