How to get the exact number of follow requests on an Instagram account (after reaching the 1000 limit)

Question

I am working on a piece of code to automatically accept Instagram Follow Requests for me using the private Instagram API.

The endpoint https://i.instagram.com/api/v1/news/inbox/friendships/pending/ however only returns the number of follow requests up to 1000. The reason I believe it's possible to get the exact number even above that limit is that an online service called socialtools.io is able to do it.

I looked through all of the traffic between the Android App and IG as well as the React App. But I wasn't able to find the exact number anywhere.

Other endpoints I looked through:
https://i.instagram.com/api/v1/friendships/pending/
https://i.instagram.com/api/v1/friendships/show_many/
-> only return the 200 most recent requests
https://www.instagram.com/accounts/activity/?__a=1&include_reel=true
-> only returns the first 1000 requests (web app)

This is part of the response for an account that has about 1,400 requests (I accepted them right after using my script to count) using the endpoint I mentioned at the beginning.

"counts": {
        "campaign_notification": 0,
        "comment_likes": 0,
        "comments": 0,
        "likes": 1,
        "photos_of_you": 0,
        "relationships": 0,
        "requests": 1000,
        "usertags": 0
    },

Answer 1

Sadly, there is no way to instantly get to see your requests past these limits. On your phone you're able to see a maximum amount of 1000 pending follow requests, and on the browser version just 200.

Keep in mind that on browser, the most recent 200 requests get displayed.

The way (I think) Socialtools does this is by storing the 200 recent follow requests along with the usernames. If you loop through your follow requests and append new incoming users to that count, it will eventually get past 200/1000 as you get more requests.

That's also the reason why they warn you that your account may be risk getting disabled, since it has to be running on the cloud all day to keep track of your requests.

This also means that starting below 200 follow requests is required in order to have an accurate count.

I've made something similar to get your pending follow requests past the 200/1000 limit, but instead of having a fancy UI, it will just message you your current follow requests every hour or so :)

https://github.com/sem/Instagram-Request-Scanner

Answer 2

counts": {
        "campaign_notification": 0,
        "comment_likes": 0,
        "comments": 0,
        "likes": 1,
        "photos_of_you": 0,
        "relationships": 0,
        "requests": 1000,
        "usertags": 0
    },