Instagram reels from one market

You will search Instagram reels for one market and get back reels made by creators based there, with each creator's country and follower count on the row. The example finds pillow and bedding sellers in Saudi Arabia from an Arabic keyword.

How do you search Instagram reels by country?

Instagram ranks reel search by relevance and ignores where the search comes from, so a bare keyword returns creators from anywhere. On 27/10/2026 a plain mattress search returned no creators based in the UAE. Adding the market's name to the query changes that: mattress uae returned 25 of 30 reels by UAE creators.

GET /v1/instagram/search/reels does that for you. Send region and the market's own word is added to your query, and data.region.query_sent shows exactly what ran. A query that already names the market is sent as it is.

Each word was picked by measuring which creators came back. For Saudi Arabia the capital, الرياض, found more Saudi creators than السعودية or saudi on every topic tested, and it is added to English and Arabic queries alike. A Hangul query with region=KR is sent unchanged, because Instagram already localises it.

Step 1: a localised search

curl "https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/instagram/search/reels?query=mattress&region=AE" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

On 28/10/2026 this returned 30 reels for 1 credit, with:

"region": {
  "requested": "AE",
  "method": "localised_query",
  "query_sent": "mattress uae"
}

region favours the market's creators but does not promise that every row is one of them. Step 2 checks.

Step 2: keep only creators based there

country looks up each creator's profile, reads the country they give, and keeps only the reels by creators in that market. It also sets region for you when you leave it out.

// instagram-reels-by-market.ts
// Arabic pillow reels by creators based in Saudi Arabia.
// Run with: SOCIALCRAWL_KEY=sc_... npx tsx instagram-reels-by-market.ts

const KEY = process.env.SOCIALCRAWL_KEY;
if (!KEY) throw new Error("Set SOCIALCRAWL_KEY");

const BASE = "https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1";

const url = new URL(`${BASE}/instagram/search/reels`);
url.searchParams.set("query", "مخدات"); // pillows
url.searchParams.set("country", "SA");

const res = await fetch(url, { headers: { "x-api-key": KEY } });
const json = (await res.json()) as {
  success: boolean;
  credits_used: number;
  data: {
    region: { query_sent: string };
    country: { kept: number; dropped_other: number; dropped_unknown: number };
    items: Array<{
      post: {
        url: string;
        author: { username: string };
        engagement: { views: number | null };
        ext: { author_country?: string; author_followers?: number };
      };
    }>;
  };
  error?: { message: string };
};
if (!json.success) throw new Error(json.error?.message ?? "search failed");

const { region, country, items } = json.data;
console.log(`searched: ${region.query_sent}`);
console.log(
  `kept ${country.kept}, other country ${country.dropped_other}, no country ${country.dropped_unknown}`,
);
for (const { post } of items) {
  console.log(
    `@${post.author.username} (${post.ext.author_country}, ${post.ext.author_followers} followers) ${post.engagement.views ?? "?"} views ${post.url}`,
  );
}
console.log(`credits used: ${json.credits_used}`);

What you get back

searched: مخدات الرياض
kept 9, other country 0, no country 3
@n3asstore (SA, 2414 followers) 2334 views https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHr4KqXozsM/
@asmaturki_home (SA, 63071 followers) 58987 views https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1hOpoyI6d2/
@ansaaj.ksa (SA, 108220 followers) 3153 views https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7J0XnmimwR/
(6 more rows)
credits used: 25

That run, on 28/10/2026, checked 12 creators. Nine are based in Saudi Arabia, and three give no country on their profile, so they were left out. A creator checked in the last 15 minutes is free, and a creator that cannot be found is refunded.

What to change

• The market: any code in the table. country=AE with query=mattress kept 22 of 30 reels on 28/10/2026.
• Only the search, no check: drop country and send region. Every page is then 1 credit.
• More reels: max_pages (1 to 5) walks further pages, each at the same price, and a creator seen on an earlier page is not charged again.
• Contact fields without the filter: include=creator adds the creator's country, followers and any public email or phone to every reel and drops nothing.
• On a schedule, across platforms: a Discover run takes instagram.region=AE or instagram.region=SA, which adds the same word to every Instagram reel search in the run. The hashtag searches in the run are not changed.

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