How to Export Instagram Post Data to CSV

The quickest way to export Instagram post data to CSV is with a Chrome extension: open any public profile on instagram.com, sort the posts with FeedRama, select the ones you want, and hit Export. You get a clean CSV — likes, views, comments, shares, saves, post dates, captions, and video transcripts — that opens directly in Excel or Google Sheets. No Meta developer account, no scraper maintenance, no copy-paste marathon.

If you've ever tried to do this "properly," you know why that matters. Let's look at why the official routes fall short, then run through the export itself and a few analyses worth doing with the file.

Why Instagram makes this harder than it should be

Instagram technically offers several data routes, and each one has a catch:

Notice the pattern: the official tools answer questions about you, and the developer tools demand engineering time. The gap in the middle — "I just want this public profile's numbers in a sheet" — is exactly the job a browser extension handles well. (For the developer-platform side of that table, see How to Scrape Instagram Data Without Coding.)

There's also a time dimension nobody mentions: public metrics move. A Reel showing 80k views when you eyeballed it on Monday may read 200k by Friday. A dated CSV snapshot gives you numbers you can actually cite in a report — "as of July 2" — instead of a memory of a grid that has since changed underneath you.

The export, in four steps

1. Install FeedRama from the Chrome Web Store — it's free, works in desktop Chrome, and doesn't require an account to start exploring.
2. Open the target profile on instagram.com. It also works on Reels tabs, hashtag pages, search results, and even your saved posts, so "profile" is just the most common starting point.
3. Sort the posts. Rank them by likes, views, comments, shares, saves, or date. Sorting defines your dataset — the free plan covers the previous 25 posts or last week per sort, and Pro opens up any range.
4. Select and export. Tick the posts you want and click Export CSV. Done — the file is in your Downloads folder.

Straight talk on pricing: sorting is free and unlimited, but the CSV export itself is a Pro feature at $10/month or $5/month billed annually. If you only need numbers for three posts, type them by hand and keep your money. The export pays for itself the first time you need forty rows instead of four.

What each column is good for

• URL and creation date anchor every row — you can always click back to the post, and dates enable cadence analysis.
• Likes, comments, shares, saves together beat any single metric. A post with modest likes but heavy saves is reference content; heavy shares means it traveled.
• Views on Reels and videos let you separate reach from resonance.
• Captions give you the account's hook-writing patterns in one scannable column.
• Transcripts appear for videos you've transcribed with FeedRama's Instagram transcription — meaning your spreadsheet can contain what a creator actually said in their top Reels, not just how the posts performed.

One workflow note: you aren't limited to profiles. Because sorting also works on hashtag pages, search results, the explore feed, and your own saved posts, you can just as easily export "the top posts under this hashtag" or "everything in my saved collection" — useful when your research is organized around topics rather than accounts.

Three analyses worth running on the export

1. Engagement rate versus follower-free baselines. You can't see a competitor's reach, but (likes + comments) ÷ views on Reels gives a solid resonance proxy. Sort descending and read the top ten captions — that's the account's winning voice, distilled.

2. Cadence versus results. Pivot post count and median engagement by month. Accounts often post more as performance declines; the pivot makes that visible in seconds and tells you whether volume or quality is driving their growth.

3. Format splits. Tag rows as Reel, carousel, or single image, then compare median engagement per format. When a competitor's carousels quietly outperform their Reels, that's a positioning gap you can exploit.

Bonus: build a caption library. Filter the export to the top decile by engagement, copy the caption column into a doc, and you have a swipe file of proven hooks in the account's niche. Combined with transcripts, it's the fastest way to study how a competitor writes when they're winning.

These three take maybe fifteen minutes and answer most of what you'd want from Instagram analytics for an account you don't own. If you repeat the export monthly, you graduate from snapshots to trend lines — the workflow in How to Track Competitor Engagement in a Spreadsheet.

Limits worth knowing before you start

FeedRama reads what Instagram displays publicly, so private accounts are out — as they should be. Owner-only metrics like reach, impressions, and follower demographics never appear in public data, so no honest tool can export them. And the extension is desktop-Chrome only: no phones, no Safari, no Firefox. If you also want the media itself archived alongside the metrics, pair the export with FeedRama's Instagram downloader — data in the sheet, content on disk. Within those lines, any public account on instagram.com is a spreadsheet waiting to happen.

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