How the tool works, what keeps your account safe, and what to do when something looks wrong.
What this tool does — and what it never does
Finds Instagram creators by niche or hashtag, reads their public profiles, grades how well each fits your offer, and writes a personalised first message.
Sends those messages from your own browser, one at a time, on your own account. There is no server sending on your behalf.
It never follows, likes, comments, or scrapes anything behind a login that isn't yours.
Discover is read-only. It never messages anyone — only the auto-DM button sends.
It cannot log into Instagram for you. You stay signed in yourself, and the app works with whatever account is active.
Add the Instagram account you send from, under Settings → Sending accounts. Set its age — that sets your warm-up rhythm.
Fill in Settings → Message. This is what the AI writes from: who you are, what you're offering, and why you're credible. A vague offer here produces vague openers and vague fit grades — it is the highest-leverage field in the product.
Sign into that same Instagram account in this browser. The app cannot switch accounts for you reliably, so whatever is signed in is what sends.
Nothing to pay to begin: the free plan works as soon as the dot is green. When you want to run volume, start a 14-day trial at https://getcreatorscout.web.app/#pricing — the key arrives by email, and you paste it into Settings → License. See Plans and limits below for what each tier includes and how to cancel.
The daily loop
In order, and the order matters:
Warm up first if prompted. A few minutes of ordinary browsing before sending is what keeps the account from looking like it only exists to send DMs.
Type a niche or a #hashtag and press Discover. Every search covers both public web results and Instagram's hashtag pages, so there is nothing to choose. Nothing is sent at this stage.
Read the results. Check the fit grade, the engagement figure, and the evidence column before you commit to messaging anyone.
Press Search & auto-DM, or select specific rows and use Auto-DM selected. Messages go out 1–3 minutes apart and you can stop at any point.
Check replies. This reads your inbox and marks who answered, so follow-ups never chase someone who already wrote back.
Run follow-ups when they come due — four days after the first message, up to twice.
Found someone who fits? Use Find similar creators on their row. It reads what that creator actually posts — captions, their own hashtags, and a few post images — and searches for others making the same kind of content. It costs one search, and matches on subject and style rather than follower count.
Keeping your Instagram account safe
This is the part worth reading twice. Instagram restricts accounts based on how fast they send cold DMs, and a restriction costs you the account, not the tool.
Sends are capped at 30 per day per account. The cap can be lowered, never raised — add accounts to grow volume instead.
A newly added account starts at 10 per day and climbs as it builds history. A profile that has never cold-DMed and suddenly sends 30 a day is a behaviour change, and that is what gets noticed.
Reading profiles counts toward Instagram's limits too, not just sending. That is why discovery has its own pacing and stops itself if Instagram starts refusing reads.
If Instagram shows you a challenge, checkpoint, or logs you out, the app halts everything and holds a 24-hour cooldown on that account. Do not force it back on until you have opened Instagram and confirmed the restriction is gone.
Links in a first message are a strong spam signal. Send the link after they reply.
Identical mass messages are also a signal. Use a spin group — options separated by | — so each creator gets a different variant.
Reading the results table
Fit grade (strong / medium / weak) is the AI's judgement against your brief, not a measure of how good the creator is. Hover it to see what evidence it used.
Engagement is measured from recent posts when it can be. An em dash means it hasn't been sampled yet — click to sample.
The evidence column shows the AI's read on the creator plus a snippet of their own bio. The bio is their words; the assessment is an inference.
Creators outside your follower range stay in the list but are never auto-DMed. Nothing is thrown away. Whether someone counts as out of range is decided by the range that was set when the search found them — so changing the range for a new search never re-labels or hides creators you collected under an earlier one. Rows collected before this was recorded still follow the current setting.
Hide low quality filters accounts our heuristic flags as likely bots — a rough signal from follower, following, and post counts, not a verdict.
Appears to be (women / men) is mostly a vision model's read of the profile picture, so treat it as a guess: it will be wrong sometimes. Creators who state pronouns in their bio use that instead. Not clear and No person in photo are shown with their own counts so you can see who a gender filter is hiding, and nothing here changes the message a creator receives.
The Region box on a search biases which creators surface — web results, hashtag pages and Instagram's own account search all get a regional form of your terms — but it never excludes anyone: a creator from elsewhere who shows up is kept. On a row, “≈ United Kingdom” means a flag or a location word in their own bio said so (approximate, never verified — Instagram does not expose location). “searched in United Kingdom” means the opposite: nothing in their bio says where they are, and that is only where you looked.
The Found via filter groups creators by the search you typed — not by the terms a run generated along the way, which is why one search stays one group even after it widens into adjacent angles. Rows from Find similar are grouped under the creator they were matched against, and clicking that chip shows only those.
Every count beside a filter describes the list you are looking at, not the whole pipeline. Filter to one search and the email and follower-range counts drop with it — if they ever disagree with the rows on screen, that is a bug worth reporting.
Plans and limits
The free plan includes 3 searches and 5 auto-DMs a month. Copy-and-send by hand stays unlimited.
Pro and Scale both start with 14 days free, everything unlocked. A card is required, and it charges when the trial ends.
Starting a trial: open https://getcreatorscout.web.app/#pricing, pick Pro or Scale, and check out. Nothing is charged for 14 days. Inside the app, any locked feature also offers Start 14-day free trial, which opens the same page.
Your licence key arrives by email the moment the trial starts. Paste it into Settings → License and auto-send unlocks straight away. Lost it? getcreatorscout.web.app/billing.html resends it to the address you subscribed with.
Cancel a trial any time before it ends and you are not charged: Settings → License → Cancel trial or manage billing, or go to getcreatorscout.web.app/billing.html. The portal signs you in with a link sent to your email — no password.
Cancelling keeps your access to the end of the period you have already paid for, and the licence key simply stops refreshing after that. Your pipeline stays in your browser either way. The refund policy is at getcreatorscout.web.app/refund.html and the terms at getcreatorscout.web.app/terms.html.
Discovery, AI fit grades, AI openers, and engagement estimates are all included at no extra cost — there is no API key to bring.
Your pipeline is never held hostage. If a trial or subscription ends, everything you have collected stays in your browser and stays exportable.
Running more than one Instagram account
The reliable setup is one Chrome profile per Instagram account, with no switching at all. Instagram's own account switcher is not dependable enough to automate.
Extra Chrome windows do not help — every window in a profile shares one Instagram session.
Install the companion in each profile; extensions do not carry across profiles unless you are signed into Google.
Turn on Share contacted creators across my devices, or the same creator will be messaged from two profiles — each profile keeps its own contact log.
Instagram sees all of your profiles as one internet connection. The 30/day per-account cap is the limit that always holds; treat the 100/day combined figure as a ceiling, not a target.
When something looks broken
Dot not green: the companion is not connected. Reload this page; if it stays grey, check the extension is enabled at chrome://extensions.
No results from a search: try a narrower niche or specific hashtags. Very broad terms return accounts too large to be worth messaging, which the follower filter then hides.
A run stopped early: read the message. Halts are deliberate — a cap reached, a reply check failing, or Instagram pushing back. The app stops rather than pushing through.
Grades missing on older rows: those creators were found before your brief was filled in. Grades are assigned during discovery.
Something silently doing nothing: run Settings → Check everything still works. It tests each mechanism against Instagram's live pages and reports what actually worked. It never sends a DM.
A bug you already reported still happening: check for the "newer version available" notice at the top and reload. The app is a page you can leave open for days, so a fix that has shipped does not reach an old tab until it reloads.
Where your data lives
Everything — your pipeline, notes, tags, brief, and contact log — is stored in this browser, not on a server.
That means clearing site data deletes it. Export a backup from Settings → Workspace before you clean up a browser or switch machines.
Workspaces keep separate pipelines per client, all in the same browser.
The only thing that ever leaves your machine about a creator is a one-way hash of their handle, and only if you turn on cross-device sharing. The full detail is at creator-scout-app.web.app/privacy.html.
The interface is available in English, 简体中文 and ไทย — Settings → Workspace → Interface language. Translations are machine-assisted rather than reviewed by a native speaker, so tell me if any wording is wrong. Messages sent to creators stay in English, because that is who receives them.
Still stuck? Email support@ideaequity.ai, or use the chat on the home page.