Instagram Follower Collector

How to Use the Instagram Auto Follow

PhantomBuster’s Instagram Auto Follow Automation lets you follow, unfollow, block, or unblock Instagram profiles from a small custom list. This quick tutorial covers account connection, input setup, launch settings, and where to find your results.

• Required inputs: A connected Instagram session (via the browser extension or a manual cookie) and valid Instagram profile URLs. Spreadsheets must be shared with "Anyone with the link."

• Safety limits: Instagram is strict on automation. Process no more than 1 profile per hour and do not exceed 200 follow actions per day across all launches.

• Usage scope: This Phantom is intended for small, custom lists. For higher-volume actions on another profile’s followers, use the Instagram Followers Auto Follow Phantom.

• Operational costs: This Phantom uses 1 slot, and execution time is approximately 35 seconds per profile.

• Free plan limitations: CSV uploads are not supported. Results are limited to the first 10 rows in CSV exports, and JSON exports or dynamic CSV download links are unavailable.

1. Connect your Instagram account: Install the PhantomBuster browser extension and connect your Instagram session in one click. If you’re not using Chrome or Firefox, retrieve your Instagram session cookie manually and add it as the account connection.

2. Provide the Instagram profiles: Choose one input method: paste a single Instagram profile URL, provide a publicly shared Google Sheet link, or upload a publicly accessible CSV (paid plans only).

   When using spreadsheets, the Phantom reads column A by default. Enter a different column header name in your setup to target a specific column.

3. Choose the action and configure processing: Select one action: Follow, Unfollow, Unfollow only if they don’t follow you back, Block, or Unblock. Set the delay between profiles, the number of profiles per launch, and optionally enable "Exclude private profiles" to skip accounts requiring manual approval.

   The maximum is 5 profiles per launch (default is 1). For safer runs, increase the delay between profiles (default 2 seconds). If you want to follow and later unfollow the same list, duplicate the Phantom and run a separate configuration.

4. Configure result file settings (optional): Set a custom results file name or list specific comma-separated fields to keep in a secondary filtered CSV.

   Renaming the results file between launches creates a brand-new file and restarts processing from the beginning of your list.

5. Select launch frequency: Choose whether to run the Phantom manually, once at a specific time, on a recurring schedule, after another Phantom, or with advanced scheduling rules.

6. Adjust advanced settings (optional): Leave the defaults unless instructed otherwise. Fine-tune execution limits, retries, email notifications, proxies, webhooks, and file management if needed.

7. Launch and access results: Click Launch. After completion, open the Results tab to view your collected data and download it as a CSV or JSON file.

For full setup details and troubleshooting guidance, see the tutorial on the help center.

You have two options:

1. Process a single profile
Copy the Instagram profile URL and paste it into your Phantom's setup.

2. Process multiple profiles
Create a spreadsheet with Google Sheets. Copy the Instagram profile URLs and paste them into your spreadsheet - one URL per row, all in column A.

Make this spreadsheet public so PhantomBuster can access it.

Copy the spreadsheet URL and paste it into your Phantom's setup.

Checking the "Watcher mode" option means that the Phantom will reprocess your profile URL each time it launches and extract any new followers that have appeared since its last launch, adding these to your already-extracted followers.

This feature is especially useful if you are working with profiles where Instagram only displays the latest 50 followers (a platform limitation). In these cases, the Phantom retrieves all 50 visible followers at launch, and Watcher mode allows you to gradually capture new followers as they appear.

Take note: This setting will only work when using a single profile URL as input.

Tell the Phantom how many followers you'd like to extract from each profile.

Instagram allows you to extract a maximum of 5000-9000 followers every 15 minutes. However, some profiles only display 50 followers on the web version of Instagram. When this happens, the Phantom retrieves all 50 available, but no more.

This is an Instagram platform limitation, not a Phantom issue. To build a complete list over time, enable Watcher mode (see above) so the Phantom reprocesses the same profile on each launch and collects new followers as they appear.

If the Phantom does not scrape all of the followers of one profile during a launch, you can launch the Phantom again after 15 minutes. It will pick up where it left off and extract the next batch of followers (unless the profile itself is restricted to showing 50).

Note:

This Phantom will only be able to pick up from where it left off in the middle of a follower list within the first 6 hours of processing a profile. After this, when it launches it will start from the beginning of the follower list again.

Instagram imposes a limitation for some profiles where only up to 50 followers are visible on the web version. In these cases, the Phantom will retrieve all available followers at launch, but it cannot bypass Instagram’s restriction.

To capture new followers over time, enable Watcher mode in your setup.