Real talk: last month I was running a giveaway campaign for a client. The mechanic was simple — comment to enter, tag a friend for a bonus entry. 3,200 comments later, I was staring at a blank Google Sheet wondering how I was going to verify entries, remove duplicates, and pick a winner without losing my mind.
Instagram doesn't give you any export functionality. Zero. You can view comments in the app, you can reply, you can delete — but you cannot export them in any structured way. This is apparently a deliberate product decision, and it's been this way for years.
What I tried first:

Manually copy-pasting — obviously not scalable past ~50 rows
The official Instagram Graph API — requires app review, business account verification, and only returns data from your own posts anyway
Third-party "Instagram data export" services — most of these ask for your password or OAuth credentials, which is a non-starter

What actually worked:
I ended up using a browser extension called Instagram Comments Scraper that runs entirely within your browser session. No password required — it just operates within your existing logged-in session, the same way you're already viewing the comments. The data is processed locally and never sent anywhere external.
The output columns it gives you: comment ID, comment text, username, profile URL, profile pic URL, and timestamp. That's exactly what you need to do any meaningful analysis — filter by date, spot bot accounts, remove duplicates, identify authentic entries.
The rate limiting situation:
The part I didn't expect was how Instagram's rate limits work. There's no published threshold — it varies by IP and activity patterns. When the scraper hits a limit, it enters a cooldown mode automatically (the timer shows you how long), then doubles the cooldown if the limit persists. Once the cooldown clears and a request succeeds, it goes back to normal. This meant I could walk away and come back to a finished export rather than babysitting it.
End result: 3,200 comments exported to Excel in about 40 minutes of unattended processing. Filtered to valid entries (tagged a user + original commenter had 10+ followers) in another 20 minutes using basic Excel formulas.
Caveat I'd add for anyone doing this:
Be reasonable about volume and timing. Don't run 10,000-comment scrapes back-to-back on the same IP. The human-like delay system in the tool helps, but bulk scraping in one long session still carries some account risk. Space it out if you're working with large datasets.
Anyone else found better approaches to this problem? Especially curious if anyone's had success with the official API for use cases beyond your own posts.