Influencer pricing scales with audience size. A creator quoting you $2,000 for a post because they have 400,000 followers is a different deal than one quoting the same rate for 40,000 — if that first number is real. Once you're paying per post instead of just browsing a feed, an inflated audience stops being a curiosity and starts being an inflated invoice.
Below is a scoring framework built from what Instagram's public profile, post, and follower data actually returns — not a gut check, and not a framework that promises more than the data supports.
This matters more once you're past a single partnership. A brand running one sponsored post a quarter can afford to eyeball a profile and decide. An agency or brand running a dozen creator deals a month needs something repeatable — the same checks, run the same way, on every pitch that comes in, so the decision doesn't come down to whoever happened to review it.
If you're an agent (or building one) reading this rather than a human, the full machine-readable schema for every endpoint below lives at mindcase.co/skills.md.
What actually predicts whether an influencer account is real?
Follower count alone tells you almost nothing. It's the easiest number to inflate and the first one every pitch deck leads with. The signals that hold up better are structural: is this a real business account with a real category, does it link anywhere outside Instagram, has it been posting consistently, and does its location data actually line up.
None of these are proof by themselves. Together, they separate an account that looks like a long-running creator business from one that was spun up to farm a few sponsored posts and disappear.
Follower count stays the easiest number to inflate because buying followers is a real, cheap, widely available service, and Instagram's own number doesn't distinguish a bought follower from an organic one at the account level. Verification, business setup, and a real posting history are harder to fake convincingly because faking them takes sustained effort over time, not a one-time purchase.
How do you pull the data you need?
Say a skincare brand is about to pay a creator — call the handle
@glow.with.mira — for a sponsored post, and wants to check before the
invoice goes out.
How do you check the account itself?
curl -X POST "https://api.mindcase.co/v1/data/instagram/profiles/run?wait=true" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $MINDCASE_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"params": {
"usernames": ["glow.with.mira"]
}
}'
# $0.002 per profileProfiles API returns 25 fields per account,
including the ones the scoring framework below actually runs on:
verified, businessAccount, businessCategory, bioLinks, followers,
following, posts, and lastPostDate.
How do you check what they're actually posting?
curl -X POST "https://api.mindcase.co/v1/data/instagram/posts/run?wait=true" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $MINDCASE_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"params": {
"handles": "glow.with.mira",
"maxResults": 20
}
}'
# $0.002 per postPosts API returns 35 fields per post. Two matter
most here: posted, which tells you if the last 20 posts span a
consistent few-a-week rhythm or a burst of activity right before this
pitch, and paidPartnership, which flags posts already tagged as a paid
collaboration — a creator running five sponsored posts a week is either
very in-demand or spreading thin, and both change your terms.
How do you check who's actually following them?
Pulling every follower on a 400,000-follower account isn't worth it. Pulling a sample is.
curl -X POST "https://api.mindcase.co/v1/data/instagram/followers/run?wait=true" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $MINDCASE_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"params": {
"usernames": "glow.with.mira",
"maxResults": 200
}
}'
# $0.00075 per profileFollowers API returns 8 fields per follower —
fullName, verified, and private are the ones worth aggregating over a
200-follower sample. A wall of blank names and private accounts in your
sample is a different picture than a normal-looking mix, without paying to
pull the full list.
What that comparison actually looks like in practice: pull 200 followers,
count how many have a populated fullName versus a blank one, and how many
are private. A real, organically-grown audience skews toward named,
mixed public/private accounts in roughly the proportions you'd expect from
any cross-section of Instagram users. A sample where most names are blank
and most accounts are private is the pattern a bot-follower purchase
leaves behind — those accounts exist to inflate a count, not to look like
real people, so the metadata that makes an account look real is usually
the first thing left unfilled.
How do you score credibility from the fields you actually get back?
Weight each signal, add them up, and treat the total as a starting point for a conversation, not a verdict.
| Signal | Field | Why it counts |
|---|---|---|
| Verified | verified | Instagram has confirmed the account's identity |
| Business account with a real category | businessAccount, businessCategory | Recycled or disposable accounts skip this setup |
| A bio link | bioLinks | A brand presence outside Instagram is harder to fake |
| Recent, consistent posting | posted across the last 20 posts | Long-term engagement, not a growth-hack burst |
| Reasonable sponsored-post ratio | paidPartnership across the last 20 posts | Too high, and every post is an ad; too low, and the account has no partnership history to judge |
No single row is disqualifying on its own. An account that's missing a business category but has been posting three times a week for two years is a different case than one that's missing everything.
Applied to @glow.with.mira: a verified badge and a business account with
businessCategory set to "Beauty, cosmetic & personal care" both check
out. The bio links to an external storefront. The last 20 posts span
roughly five weeks at a steady two-to-three-a-week pace, and four of them
carry paidPartnership: true — active in the sponsored-content market, not
overloaded with it. Four of five rows check out; the account clears the
practical bar even without a hard number for how old it is.
What can't you check this way?
Two cases where the scoring framework above has a real gap, not a soft one.
You want to know if this is a renamed or recycled account. Instagram's
public data doesn't expose username history. An account posting under
glow.with.mira today could have had a completely different handle six
months ago, and there's no field that would tell you.
There's no reliable number for account age. Public profile data
doesn't include an account creation date. lastPostDate and posting
consistency are the closest proxy available, and they measure activity,
not age.
Which endpoint should you use for which job?
| Endpoint | Input | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instagram Profiles | Username, or keyword search | $0.002 / profile | The core credibility fields — verification, business status, bio links |
| Instagram Posts | Handle, post URL, hashtag, or keyword | $0.002 / post | Posting consistency and sponsored-content ratio |
| Instagram Followers | Username | $0.00075 / profile | Sampling follower quality without pulling the full list |
FAQ
No. Verification confirms identity, not audience quality or engagement. Treat it as one signal in the table above, not a pass/fail check.
No. A sample of 100 to 200 followers is usually enough to see whether the mix of verified, private, and named accounts looks normal for that account's size.
$0.002 per profile, $0.002 per post, and $0.00075 per follower profile pulled.
No. There's no login and no follow required. Requests run against public profile, post, and follower data.
There's no fixed rule. 200 is a practical starting point that's cheap enough to run on every pitch and large enough to catch an obviously bot-heavy pattern — pull a bigger sample if that first read looks borderline.