📌 Instagram Highlights Scraper

Returns the story highlights of public Instagram accounts, without a login or cookies. Give usernames or highlight links and get one row per highlight: title, cover, creation date, and every story inside it with its picture or video file link, time, length, link stickers, mentions and location. Each row also carries Instagram's own story count, so you can see that nothing is missing.

Price: $5.00 per 1,000 highlights on the Apify Free plan, $4.75 on Bronze, $4.50 on Silver and $4.25 from the Gold plan up. A highlight is one charge, whether it holds 3 stories or 100. An account without highlights, a private account, a name that does not exist and a highlight that is not shown give no row and cost nothing. Export to JSON, CSV or Excel, run on a schedule, call via API, or connect to Make, Zapier or n8n.

🔎 What is the Instagram Highlights Scraper?

Highlights are the stories an account decided to keep on its profile. Instagram shows them to visitors who are not logged in: the profile lists the highlight circles, and each highlight opens with all its stories. This Actor makes the same requests a visitor's browser makes, one per account for the list and one per five highlights for the stories. No browser is started: a run needs 512 MB of memory.

What Instagram hands a logged-out visitor, as measured on October 6 and 7, 2026:

• The first 10 highlights of an account, in the order of the profile. Accounts with more than 10 exist (Glossier, Zara, H&M in our test); the list does not continue for a visitor. Any highlight, also one beyond the first 10, can be read by its link.
• Every story of a highlight in one answer, with Instagram's own count next to it. In our test of six accounts, 46 of 46 highlights came with exactly the number of stories Instagram counts in them (973 stories).
• Stickers as data. 273 of those 973 stories carried a link sticker, 277 a mention, 6 a location. The link is given as its real target, without Instagram's redirect.
• File links that expire. Each link names its own end; the first one of a row ended 32 to 105 hours after the run in our test. The row gives that time as mediaLinksExpireAt.

What data does it extract?

• Highlight: highlightId, highlightUrl, title, coverUrl, position on the profile, createdAt, latestStoryAt, isPinned
• Counts: mediaCount (stories in the row), reportedCount (stories Instagram counts in the highlight), videoCount, imageCount
• Across the highlight: links (targets of all link stickers), mentions (all mentioned usernames), mediaLinksExpireAt
• Each story: id, mediaType, imageUrl, videoUrl, timestamp, takenAt, durationSeconds, hasAudio, width, height, links, mentions, location
• Account: username, fullName, userId, isVerified

What users of highlights Actors report, and what this Actor does

The issue pages and listings of the highlights Actors on Apify were read on October 7, 2026.

Reported or stated there	Here
"Highlight returns less stories than there are"	reportedCount is Instagram's own number, next to mediaCount. A highlight that arrives short is asked again from a new visitor and the longer answer is kept; the run's summary names any row that stays short. 46 of 46 were complete in our test
"actor returns less Highlights"	Stated plainly: Instagram lists a logged-out visitor the first 10 highlights of an account. The status message names the accounts that have more, and highlightUrls reads any highlight by its link
"Suggestion: Add limit of highlights to scrape"	maxHighlightsPerUser
Free runs capped at 20 highlights, at most 20 usernames per run	No cap per run and none on the number of usernames
Charged per story item (from $3 per 1,000 stories on two Actors: a highlight of 16 stories costs $0.048 there)	Charged per highlight: $0.005, whatever the number of stories
Titles, covers and counts only, no stories	Every story with its file link, stickers and time
"Instagram blocks datacenter addresses", residential proxy required	Read without a proxy in our tests; 250 requests in a row from one datacenter address were all served. The Actor moves to other addresses by itself when one is refused

⬇️ Input

Field	Type	Default	What it does
usernames	array		Accounts whose highlights are read: nasa, @nasa or a profile link
highlightUrls	array		Single highlights: a link (instagram.com/stories/highlights/<id>/), a share link (instagram.com/s/…) or the bare id
maxHighlightsPerUser	integer	0	At most this many highlights per username, in the profile's order. 0 reads all that Instagram lists (10 at most)

Both lists can be used in one run. An account or a highlight named twice is read once, and a highlight link pasted among the usernames is read as a highlight. An empty input reads nothing and costs nothing.

Example input

All listed highlights of one account:

{
  "usernames": ["nasa"]
}

The first three highlights of three accounts:

{
  "usernames": ["glossier", "@sephora", "https://www.instagram.com/gymshark/"],
  "maxHighlightsPerUser": 3
}

Two highlights by link and by id:

{
  "highlightUrls": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18123023338592759/",
    "17975319242920589"
  ]
}

⬆️ Output

One row per highlight. A real row of October 7, 2026, with two of its nine stories and with the file links shortened:

{
  "username": "nasa",
  "fullName": "NASA",
  "userId": "528817151",
  "isVerified": true,
  "highlightId": "18195781759377100",
  "highlightUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18195781759377100/",
  "title": "Roman",
  "coverUrl": "https://scontent-fra5-1.cdninstagram.com/…/785745361_1537…?…&oe=6ACBD87B",
  "position": 1,
  "isPinned": false,
  "createdAt": "2026-08-30T14:33:04+00:00",
  "latestStoryAt": "2026-08-30T13:08:03+00:00",
  "mediaCount": 9,
  "reportedCount": 9,
  "videoCount": 9,
  "imageCount": 0,
  "links": ["https://go.nasa.gov/adoptapixel"],
  "mentions": ["nasakennedy"],
  "mediaLinksExpireAt": "2026-10-08T17:17:11+00:00",
  "stories": [
    {
      "id": "3975089864169193671",
      "mediaType": "video",
      "imageUrl": "https://scontent-fra3-1.cdninstagram.com/…/790023468_2121…?…&oe=6ACBCD01",
      "videoUrl": "https://scontent-fra3-1.cdninstagram.com/…/AQOO5y0fuDTYz6…?…&oe=6AC7F58E",
      "timestamp": 1788087653,
      "links": [],
      "mentions": ["nasakennedy"],
      "takenAt": "2026-08-30T11:00:53+00:00",
      "durationSeconds": 26.816,
      "hasAudio": true,
      "width": 1080,
      "height": 1920,
      "location": null
    },
    {
      "id": "3975097618556613637",
      "mediaType": "video",
      "imageUrl": "https://scontent-fra5-1.cdninstagram.com/…/791296357_8758…?…&oe=6ACBDB80",
      "videoUrl": "https://scontent-fra3-2.cdninstagram.com/…/AQON7m5G2J1XNz…?…&oe=6AC7FFF8",
      "timestamp": 1788088572,
      "links": [],
      "mentions": [],
      "takenAt": "2026-08-30T11:16:12+00:00",
      "durationSeconds": 58.966,
      "hasAudio": true,
      "width": 1080,
      "height": 1920,
      "location": null
    }
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-07T08:45:40.189351+00:00"
}

Stories are listed oldest first, as Instagram plays them. position is the highlight's place on the profile and is empty for a highlight given by link. For a video, imageUrl is its still. The run's key-value store holds a SUMMARY record: highlights and stories saved, accounts without highlights, names not found, private accounts, highlights not shown, and the accounts that have more highlights than Instagram lists.

💰 What a run costs

Plan	Per highlight	1,000 highlights
Free	$0.005	$5.00
Bronze	$0.00475	$4.75
Silver	$0.0045	$4.50
Gold, Platinum, Diamond	$0.00425	$4.25

Plus $0.00005 per run start. The 5 highlights of the first example cost $0.025 on the Free plan. Not charged: an account without highlights, a private account, a name or highlight that does not exist, an entry that is no username or highlight link. A run stops by itself at the maximum charge you set and says so in its status message; every row saved until then is complete.

⏱️ Measured (October 6 and 7, 2026)

These times are from a test server outside Apify, without a proxy. Times on Apify can differ; the counts do not depend on the server.

Run	Result	Time
nasa, all highlights	5 highlights, 89 stories	4.5 s
Six accounts, all listed highlights	46 highlights, 973 stories, 46 of 46 complete	26 s, 112 MB of memory at the peak
46 highlights by link	46 highlights, 973 stories	28 s
The same run killed after 7 s and started again	46 rows, none twice
250 story requests in a row from one datacenter address	250 served, each highlight complete	294 s

A highlight of 22 stories is 33 KB on the wire and a row of it about 30 KB in the dataset.

🤖 For AI agents

One input to copy. No credential is needed, both target fields are arrays, and the result is the run's default dataset.

{
  "usernames": ["nasa"],
  "maxHighlightsPerUser": 2
}

Each row is one highlight; the stories are in stories. links and mentions hold every link sticker target and mentioned username of the highlight, so most questions need no walk through the stories. Cost: $0.005 per row on the Free plan, nothing for accounts without highlights. File links in imageUrl and videoUrl stop working at mediaLinksExpireAt; download before that.

💡 Use cases

• 🛍️ Competitor and brand research: see which launches, collections and campaigns a brand keeps on its profile, and which shop links its stories point to
• 🤝 Influencer vetting: list the brands a creator mentions in highlights, with the stories as evidence
• 🗄️ Archiving: save the pictures and videos of your own or a client's highlights before they are edited or removed
• 🔗 Link and campaign tracking: collect link sticker targets with their tracking parameters on a schedule and compare runs by highlightId, mediaCount and latestStoryAt

⚠️ Limits, stated plainly

• The first 10 highlights per account. Instagram's highlight list does not continue for a logged-out visitor. A highlight beyond those is read when you give its link or id in highlightUrls; the link is what the browser shows when the highlight is open.
• Public accounts only. A private account gives no row. The Actor does not log in, and it does not read an account's current 24-hour stories: Instagram shows those to logged-in users only.
• File links expire. In our test between 32 and 105 hours after the run. The Actor returns links and does not store the files.
• No view counts, likes or replies. Instagram does not show them to visitors. Hashtag, music and poll stickers are not in the rows; link stickers, mentions and locations are.
• isPinned was false on all 46 highlights of our test. It is passed on as Instagram sends it.
• A reserve route with fewer fields. If Instagram closes the request that returns the stories, the Actor reads through the request of the highlight page instead. Rows then come without mentions, createdAt, isPinned and reportedCount, and the log says so. This did not happen in any test run.
• Highlights change. A highlight that held 87 stories on October 6 held 7 a day later; the account had edited it. A row shows the highlight at scrapedAt.

❓ FAQ

Do I need an Instagram account, cookies or a proxy? No. The Actor reads what Instagram shows a visitor who is not logged in, and brings its own addresses for the case that one is refused.

How do I get the highlights after the tenth? Open the highlight on Instagram and copy the link from the address bar, or use the share link from the app. Put the links into highlightUrls.

How do I know a highlight is complete? mediaCount equals reportedCount. The SUMMARY record lists every highlight where it does not.

What happens with a username that does not exist? A second visitor is asked before the name is called missing. Then it is named in the status message and the summary, without a row and without a charge. The same goes for accounts without highlights.

Can I download the pictures and videos? Yes, from imageUrl and videoUrl, until mediaLinksExpireAt. videoUrl is the MP4 with sound.

Can I run it on a schedule to see what changed? Yes. highlightId is stable, so compare mediaCount, latestStoryAt and the story id values between runs. Every run reads and charges the highlights again; the Actor keeps no memory between runs.

What happens when a run is aborted, hits its timeout or is moved to another server? It continues without saving a highlight twice: a started run reads its own dataset first. Shortly before the timeout it stops by itself and says how far it got.

I come from another highlights Actor. What is different? The input names usernames and maxHighlightsPerUser are the same, and highlightIds, links, username and maxResults are read too. The row fields username, highlightId, title, coverUrl, mediaCount, stories and the story fields id, mediaType, imageUrl, videoUrl, timestamp, links, mentions keep their names. Differences: links and mentions are always present (empty lists instead of missing fields), imageUrl is the largest picture, and the rows add reportedCount, createdAt, position, the lists across the highlight and the fields after mentions in each story.

Is it legal? The Actor reads highlights that public accounts published for everyone, the way a visitor without an account sees them, and nothing behind a login. Stories can show people and name them. If you store or process such data you need a lawful basis under the GDPR, the CCPA or the rules that apply to you; do not use it to profile private persons, and honour Instagram's terms and removal requests. Ask a lawyer when in doubt.

Something is missing or wrong. Open an issue on the Issues tab with the run id; we answer within a business day.

🔗 You might also like

• Instagram Profile Scraper: followers, biography and links of public accounts
• Instagram Posts Scraper: an account's posts with likes, comments and dates
• Instagram Reels Scraper: an account's reels with plays
• Instagram Video Downloader: the MP4 behind a reel or post link, optionally stored
• Instagram Reel Transcript Scraper: what is said in a reel, as text
• Instagram Comments Scraper: the comments under a post

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