A free Modash alternative for finding small Instagram creators

Side by side

Why people look for a Modash alternative

The price is built for teams. Modash lists Essentials at $199 a month, or $2,388 paid yearly, with 300 opened profiles a month. If you open every one of them for a year, that's about 66 cents a profile (my arithmetic: $2,388 divided by 3,600). Performance is $499 a month, and Enterprise starts at $14,700 a year. For an agency running campaigns every week, that can be money well spent. For a coffee roaster who wants twenty local creators, it's a lot.

Small accounts aren't in the index. Modash says its 380M+ creators all have over 1,000 followers, and its AI Search covers creators with 25K+, with 10K+ "soon". The home baker with 900 followers who posts every weekend isn't in there, and for a small brand that's often the person most likely to say yes.

Finding is only half the job. Modash gets you an email address and an inbox to send from. Plenty of small creators never publish an address, though; their inbox is Instagram. One scraping company checked a sample of 44 Instagram accounts and found an email on about 30% of them. It's a tiny sample, so take it as a hint rather than a statistic.

How CollabScout finds creators without a database

Instead of searching an index someone built earlier, CollabScout looks live, in your browser, while you're logged in to Instagram.

1. You choose a category and, if you like, a country. There are 43 ready-made categories, from food and fitness to tattoo artists, local trades and everyday people who aren't creators at all. Each is a list of words you can read and change.
2. You name one to five example accounts, or pick from the examples that come with most categories.
3. CollabScout opens each example the way you would, reads the accounts Instagram suggests as similar, and checks each one against your category: bio, name, links, recent captions and hashtags. It keeps the ones that fit and shows you the words that matched.

How long it takes, typically: Instagram's suggestions appear within a minute or two of pressing Find, and about a dozen profiles are checked in roughly the first ten minutes. From then on it works through a few dozen profiles a day. That pace is deliberate; a slow, steady trickle is much gentler on the account you browse with than hundreds of profiles in an hour.

So you won't get 300 profiles in an afternoon. You will get creators no index lists, judged against your own idea of a good fit, and nothing about your search leaves your computer.

The messaging Modash leaves to you

This is where CollabScout goes further than a database. Once you've said yes to some creators:

• Write one message. Add each person's name with a click, and write a few versions of the opening so the messages don't all read the same.
• See exactly what each person will get before anything is sent.
• Do a practice run, which goes through every step and sends nothing.
• Send for real. Messages go from your own Instagram account, one every 4 to 12 minutes and up to 20 a day by default, and sending pauses on its own if Instagram pushes back.
• Check the history afterwards: each person shows whether they were messaged, when, from which account, and in which campaign.

It can also reply for you: a campaign can greet everyone who follows you or likes one of your posts.

When Modash is the better choice

Pick Modash, or keep it, if you need:

• Verified emails for outreach outside Instagram.
• Audience data: where a creator's followers live, how old they are, how many look real.
• TikTok and YouTube as well as Instagram.
• Hundreds of profiles today, filtered across a large index.

Those are real strengths, and CollabScout doesn't try to match them.

Using both

They work well together. Got a shortlist from Modash, or from anywhere else? Save it as a CSV and upload it to CollabScout. It finds the column of usernames or profile links on its own, and other columns, like a first name or a discount code, can go straight into your message. Then you send from your own account, at a pace you choose.

Questions

Is there a free version of Modash?

There's no free plan, but there is a 14-day trial with no card. Modash says it lets you open 20 profiles, see 6 creator emails and track 10 creators.

Does Modash have a follower minimum?

Yes. Modash says its database covers creators with over 1,000 followers, and its AI Search covers creators with 25K+.

Is CollabScout really free?

Yes. It runs in your browser with no server behind it, so there's nothing to bill you for: no account, no card, no trial period.

Does CollabScout find emails?

No. It works inside Instagram: it finds profiles and sends Instagram messages. If emails are what you need, a database like Modash is the right tool.

Can I move my Modash list into CollabScout?

Yes, as long as you have it as a CSV file or a list of usernames to paste. CollabScout picks up the username or profile-link column, and the other columns can be used in your message.

Sources

All read on 18 October 2026:

• Modash pricing: plans, limits, trial, inbox, index size and the 1,000-follower line.
• Modash AI Search: "creators with 25K+ followers".
• Apify: Instagram email scraper: the 44-account sample of published emails.