If you have ever tried to move an Instagram follower list into a spreadsheet, you know how awkward the workflow can be.
A lot of existing tools require a browser extension, an Instagram login, session cookies, or a complicated automation setup.
I wanted something simpler.
So I built IG Follower Exporter, a browser-based tool for downloading publicly available Instagram follower records as CSV.
👉 https://igfollowerexporter.com
What it does
The workflow is intentionally simple:
- Enter a public Instagram username
- Check the account
- Start the follower retrieval
- Download the available follower records as CSV
No Instagram login is required.
No password is required.
There is nothing to install.
The tool is designed for use cases such as:
- competitor audience research
- influencer research
- creator discovery
- social media analysis
- spreadsheet-based audience research
Why I built it
I kept seeing the same friction with Instagram research tools.
Some require installing a Chrome extension. Others require connecting an Instagram account or supplying session information.
For a simple task like turning public follower information into a spreadsheet, that felt unnecessarily complicated.
My goal was to make the workflow feel more like a normal web utility:
username → results → CSV
The technical stack
The application is built with:
- Next.js
- React
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
- Supabase
- Vercel
- Cloudflare Turnstile
- SocialCrawl for Instagram data access
The most interesting engineering problem was actually not generating the CSV.
It was building a durable export process.
Large follower lists require pagination and multiple upstream requests, so a single long-running HTTP request is not reliable enough.
The current architecture uses resumable export jobs with persisted checkpoints. If an export takes multiple batches, the job can continue without starting from the beginning.
I also added:
- row-based usage accounting
- duplicate protection
- resumable pagination
- server-side API credentials
- Turnstile abuse protection
- CSV generation
- payment entitlements
Free to try
New users can currently retrieve up to 100 follower rows for free.
The goal of the free tier is simply to let someone verify that the tool works for their use case before paying.
If you work with Instagram audience data, I would be interested in hearing what fields or workflows would make this more useful.
Try it here:
Top comments (1)
good