The migration is one URL.
With the actor you start a run, wait for it, then read a dataset. With grabd the profile comes back in the response body of the call you already made. The field names are identical, so whatever you do next stays untouched.
$ # 1. start a run $ curl -X POST api.apify.com/v2/acts/$ACTOR/runs $ # 2. poll until it finishes $ curl api.apify.com/v2/actor-runs/$RUN $ # 3. read the dataset $ curl api.apify.com/v2/datasets/$SET/items → items[0].username
$ curl -H "apikey: $GRABD_KEY" \ grabd.co/profile/leomessi → username
What the actor actually costs.
Apify’s Instagram Profile Scraper is pay-per-event, and the per-result price sits on top of a platform plan. Figures below are Apify’s own published rates, checked 27 July 2026.
The detail that catches teams out is the last column. Prepaid credit does not roll over, so a month under your estimate is money gone, and a month over it means topping up at the higher rate. grabd charges for usage only, with no platform plan underneath it. Tell us your volume and we will quote against the numbers above.
Side by side.
When Apify is the better tool.
grabd does one thing. If your problem is bigger than that, the platform is worth its overhead, and pretending otherwise would waste your afternoon.
- You scrape more than Instagram. Apify has thousands of actors behind one account and one bill. grabd returns Instagram profile data and nothing else.
- You need results to persist. Apify datasets keep your results and re-export them as CSV, Excel, or XML later. grabd is a pure proxy and stores nothing.
- You want scheduling and orchestration. Cron runs, webhooks, retries, and proxy rotation are built into the platform. grabd expects your own code to call it.
- You need more than the profile view. The actor family covers hashtags, comments, and search. grabd covers a profile plus its 12 latest posts and reels.
Switching questions.
Is grabd a drop-in replacement for Apify’s instagram-profile-scraper?
Yes, for profile lookups. grabd returns the same field names as the instagram-profile-scraper actor, so migrating means pointing at a different URL and reading the response body directly instead of items[0]. Your existing parsing code keeps working.
How much does Apify’s Instagram Profile Scraper cost?
As of 27 July 2026, the actor is pay-per-event: $2.60 per 1,000 results on the free plan, $2.30 per 1,000 on the $29/month Starter plan, and from $1.60 per 1,000 at Scale. The per-result price sits on top of the platform subscription, and prepaid credit expires at the end of each month without rolling over.
Why is a single endpoint faster than an Apify actor?
An actor run has to cold-start a container, execute, write results to a dataset, and then be polled before you can read anything. grabd answers inside the same HTTP request, so there is no cold start and no polling loop to wait through.
Do I still need an Apify subscription to use grabd?
No. grabd is a standalone API with its own key. There is no platform plan to hold, no compute units to budget, and no monthly credit that expires unused.
What does grabd return for a profile?
The public profile a signed-out visitor sees on instagram.com: username, full name, biography, follower and post counts, verification and business fields, plus the 12 most recent public posts and reels with captions, likes, views, timestamps, and signed CDN media URLs.
When is Apify still the better choice?
When you need more than Instagram profiles. Apify is a general scraping platform with thousands of actors, a scheduler, proxy management, and stored datasets. If you are scraping several sites, or you want results to persist and be re-exported later, that platform is doing real work for you. grabd only does Instagram profile data.