How to copy Instagram comments
On a computer
- Log in on instagram.com and open the post. The comments appear next to the picture or video.
- Load every comment. Keep clicking the button at the bottom of the comments that loads more, and open "View replies" if replies should count.
- Select from your caption down to the last comment, then copy with Ctrl+C (Windows) or Cmd+C (Mac).
- Paste here and click Find usernames. The picker skips "Verified", timestamps such as 2d or 3 u., like counts and Reply buttons, in any of the 14 languages of this site.
On a phone
The Instagram app lets you copy one comment at a time, not the whole list. Open the post's link in your phone's browser and copy from there, or do the draw on a computer. For a short post you can also type the usernames into the box, one per line.
Add your own account under "Leave out these accounts", so your caption and your replies don't count as entries.
Instagram's promotion rules
Meta publishes Instagram's own Promotion Guidelines in the Instagram Help Centre. They cover releasing Instagram from liability, stating that Instagram doesn't sponsor or endorse your promotion, tagging, and your own responsibility for running it lawfully. For Facebook, Meta's Pages policy says a promotion must not require or reward sharing, reposting or tagging other people. That is why this picker has no "must tag friends" filter: tagging should not be a condition of entry. Read the current text before every giveaway, along with the rules in your country. Our guide to Instagram giveaway rules explains more.
How the draw works
- Reading the paste. The picker goes through the pasted text line by line. It recognises timestamps, like counts, badges and buttons such as Reply in the 14 languages of this site, and treats the line above each comment as the username. You see every entry it found before anything is drawn.
- Applying your settings. Unticked rows, excluded accounts and comments without the required word are left out. With one entry per user, only the first qualifying comment from each account counts.
- Drawing. If N entries are left, each entry has a 1 in N chance of being picked first. The picker uses a Fisher-Yates shuffle with your browser's cryptographic random number generator, without the rounding bias of a simple modulo. Nobody can win twice: once someone is picked, the next place is drawn from the entries of everyone else. Reserve winners are drawn the same way, after the winners.
For the steps around the draw, such as closing time, reserves and contacting the winner, see how to pick a giveaway winner.
Why many brands run the entry on their own page
A comment gives you a username and nothing else. You can't email a username, and a comment is not consent to marketing. If you post the giveaway on Instagram but put the entry on your own page, each entry comes with an email address, the consent people choose to give you and one clean list. In Scratcher, people play a game or fill in a form, duplicate entries are stopped at the door and the winners are drawn automatically. See how it works for social media campaigns, plan the post itself with the giveaway post planner, or use the random winner picker for any other list.
