⬇️ Instagram Video Downloader

Returns the video files behind public Instagram links, without a login or cookies. Paste links to reels, posts or /tv/ videos and get one row per link: the MP4 with sound, every quality up to 1080p, the sound alone, the thumbnail, the length, and the post's caption, author, date and likes. A carousel gives one entry per video. On request each file is copied into the run's storage, where its link no longer depends on Instagram's.

Price: $2.00 per 1,000 posts with video on the Apify Free plan, down to $1.70 from the Gold plan up, counted per post and not per video in a carousel. A link without a video, or one that is not public, comes back with the reason and costs nothing. Storing files is optional and costs $0.0004 per megabyte stored, down to $0.00034. Export to JSON, CSV or Excel, run on a schedule, call via API, or connect to Make, Zapier or n8n.

🔎 What is the Instagram Video Downloader?

Instagram's page for a post loads everything about it in one request. This Actor makes that request the way a visitor's browser does, once per link, and reads the file links out of the answer. No browser is started: a run needs 512 MB of memory.

What Instagram hands a visitor for a video, as measured on October 6, 2026:

• One MP4 with sound. H.264 video with AAC sound, 720 pixels on the short side in all 25 files we checked. This is videoUrl.
• Up to eight renditions without sound, from 240p to 1080p, each a file of its own with its size in bytes. 21 of 24 reels in our test had a 1080p rendition. These are qualities.
• The sound alone, as audioUrl. A 1080p rendition and the sound join into one file with ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -i audio.mp4 -c copy joined.mp4 (tested with ffmpeg 7.1).
• Links that expire. Each link names its own end. For the MP4 with sound it was 32 to 36 hours ahead in our test of 24 reels; the row gives it as expiresAt.

What data does it extract?

• Files: videoUrl, audioUrl, thumbnailUrl, expiresAt, and per video qualities (label, width, height, bitrate, bytes, link)
• Video: durationSeconds, originalWidth, originalHeight, hasAudio, slide (its place in a carousel)
• Post: shortCode, postUrl, postType (reel, video, carousel or image), caption, takenAt, likes, comments, videoCount
• Author: ownerUsername, ownerFullName, isVerified
• Stored copy (with saveFiles): savedUrl, savedBytes, storedMegabytes
• Outcome: status and, when there is no video or a file was not stored, statusReason

What users of Instagram downloaders report, and what this Actor does

The issue pages and listings of the three most used Instagram video downloaders on Apify were read on October 6, 2026. The issue pages are short; the listings name the rest themselves.

Reported or stated there	Here
"Degenerate run, no taken_at, no likes"	All 30 rows with video in our tests carried the date, likes, comments, caption, author, length and thumbnail. A post Instagram does not show comes back as not_found, not as an empty row
"Rate limit on first run?"	24 links were read in 9 seconds on Apify without a refusal. A refused request is repeated through a fresh visitor up to five times; a link that still gets no answer is a failed row without a charge
Instagram's links stop working after hours or a day	expiresAt says when. With saveFiles the file is copied into the run's key-value store and savedUrl points there
One file link per video	Every rendition Instagram lists is in the row, with its size, next to the file with sound and the sound alone
A stored file is charged per file, whatever its size	Stored megabytes are charged, and storedMegabytes shows the number for each row. The reels in our test ranged from 0.6 to 96 MB

⬇️ Input

Field	Type	Default	What it does
postUrls	array		Links to reels, posts or /tv/ videos (/reel/…, /p/…, /tv/…), or bare shortcodes
saveFiles	boolean	false	Copies each video's MP4 with sound into the run's key-value store and adds its link as savedUrl

A post named twice is read once. An empty input reads nothing and costs nothing.

Example input

Three links, links only:

{
  "postUrls": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DeC12b5uha9/",
    "https://www.instagram.com/p/Dd1e6WyCCLZ/",
    "DeCPVhERA8e"
  ]
}

The same with stored files:

{
  "postUrls": ["https://www.instagram.com/reel/DeC12b5uha9/"],
  "saveFiles": true
}

Coming from another downloader?

The link fields instagram_urls, posts, reelUrls, urls and startUrls are read like postUrls, and storeFiles like saveFiles. Storing is off here unless one of the two is set to true.

⬆️ Output

A reel (links and the caption are shortened here, and six of the eight renditions are left out):

{
  "status": "ok",
  "statusReason": null,
  "input": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DeC12b5uha9/",
  "shortCode": "DeC12b5uha9",
  "postUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DeC12b5uha9/",
  "postType": "reel",
  "ownerUsername": "ted",
  "ownerFullName": "TED Talks",
  "isVerified": true,
  "caption": "Life doesn’t work in straight lines — and according to Grammy-winning musician @JacobCollier, neither does music. …",
  "takenAt": "2026-10-03T19:45:06+00:00",
  "likes": 22034,
  "comments": 177,
  "videoCount": 1,
  "videoUrl": "https://scontent-fra3-1.cdninstagram.com/…",
  "audioUrl": "https://scontent-fra3-2.cdninstagram.com/…",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://scontent-fra3-1.cdninstagram.com/…",
  "durationSeconds": 45.21,
  "expiresAt": "2026-10-08T01:36:31+00:00",
  "savedUrl": null,
  "storedMegabytes": 0,
  "videos": [
    {
      "slide": 1,
      "videoUrl": "https://scontent-fra3-1.cdninstagram.com/…",
      "audioUrl": "https://scontent-fra3-2.cdninstagram.com/…",
      "thumbnailUrl": "https://scontent-fra3-1.cdninstagram.com/…",
      "durationSeconds": 45.21,
      "originalWidth": 1080,
      "originalHeight": 1920,
      "hasAudio": true,
      "expiresAt": "2026-10-08T01:36:31+00:00",
      "qualities": [
        { "label": "1080p", "width": 1080, "height": 1920, "bitrate": 996263, "bytes": 5628887, "url": "https://scontent-fra3-1.cdninstagram.com/…" },
        { "label": "720p", "width": 720, "height": 1280, "bitrate": 721339, "bytes": 4075569, "url": "https://scontent-fra3-1.cdninstagram.com/…" }
      ],
      "savedUrl": null,
      "savedBytes": null
    }
  ],
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-06T17:08:07.585631+00:00"
}

The columns videoUrl, audioUrl, thumbnailUrl, durationSeconds, expiresAt and savedUrl are those of the post's first video, which is all a reel has. videos lists every video of the post: a carousel of nine videos gave nine entries with slide 1 to 9, and a carousel of two photos and a video one entry.

A link that leads nowhere:

{
  "status": "not_found",
  "statusReason": "Not public: it does not exist, was deleted, is private, or Instagram shows it to logged-in users only.",
  "input": "AAAAAAAAAAA",
  "shortCode": "AAAAAAAAAAA",
  "postUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/p/AAAAAAAAAAA/",
  "videoCount": 0,
  "videoUrl": null,
  "videos": []
}

The other statuses without a charge are not_video (a photo or a carousel of photos; the row still carries the post's caption, author and picture), invalid_link (no post link and no shortcode, for example a profile link) and failed (Instagram did not answer). The run also writes a SUMMARY record with the number of rows per status.

💰 What a run costs

Apify plan	Per 1,000 posts with video	Per megabyte stored (only with saveFiles)
Free	$2.00	$0.0004
Bronze	$1.90	$0.00038
Silver	$1.80	$0.00036
Gold, Platinum, Diamond	$1.70	$0.00034

Apify's standard start event ($0.00005 per GB of memory) is the only other charge; proxies are included. A megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes, and each stored file is rounded up to a full one: the 6.4 MB reel above is 7 megabytes, $0.0028 on the Free plan, on top of its row. The median reel in our test was 9.7 MB. Set the run's maximum charge and the Actor stops at it with the rows it has saved: with a limit of $0.0101 a test run delivered two reels with their files and left the third, which no longer fitted, out.

💾 Stored files

With saveFiles the MP4 with sound of every video is fetched during the run and written to the run's default key-value store, as <shortCode>.mp4, or <shortCode>_<slide>.mp4 when a post has several videos. savedUrl is the link of that record.

• How long it lasts: as long as the run's storage is kept. Apify removes a run's unnamed storages after the data retention time of your plan; the files count towards your storage like any other record.
• Size limit: a file larger than an eighth of the run's memory is not stored: 64 MB at the default 512 MB, 512 MB at 4 GB. Its row keeps Instagram's links and statusReason says so. A 96 MB reel was stored in a run started with 1 GB.
• What is stored: the MP4 with sound. Thumbnails and the renditions without sound are returned as links only.

⏱️ Measured (October 6, 2026)

Runs on Apify at the default 512 MB, connecting directly, from start to finish. Every run ended as succeeded and charged exactly the rows with a video and the megabytes it stored.

Run	Rows	Time
One reel link (the default input)	1	3.6 s
9 mixed entries: six reels, a dead link, a link to another site, one reel twice	8 (6 with video)	6.6 s
24 reel links	24	8.9 s
3 links with saveFiles: 3 files, 35 MB	3	6.7 s

A run of 8 links with saveFiles that was aborted after five seconds, with seven rows saved, and started again continued behind them: 8 rows at the end, none twice, every file complete, 77 MB stored and charged once.

🤖 For AI agents

Smallest useful call:

{"postUrls": ["https://www.instagram.com/reel/DeC12b5uha9/"]}

Each row is one link. status is ok when the post has a video; then videoUrl is an MP4 with sound that can be fetched without headers until expiresAt, durationSeconds is its length and caption, ownerUsername, takenAt and likes describe the post. For a carousel read videos. Add "saveFiles": true when the file is needed later than a day from now and read savedUrl. Any other status means no video; statusReason says why and nothing is charged. No credentials are needed.

💡 Use cases

• 🎬 Repurposing and editing: pull your own or licensed reels in the best quality Instagram keeps.
• 🗂️ Archives: store campaign videos with their caption, date and numbers before they are edited or deleted.
• 🧠 Datasets for models: video and audio files of public posts with their metadata; the sound alone for speech work.
• 🔁 Automation: hand videoUrl or savedUrl to a transcription, captioning or publishing step in Make, Zapier or n8n.

⚠️ Limits, stated plainly

• Public posts only. A private, deleted or age-restricted post is a not_found row.
• Links only as input. No profiles, stories, highlights or hashtags. The Instagram Reels Scraper lists an account's reels.
• No play counts. Instagram shows a visitor the plays on an account's reels tab, not on the single post; the Reels Scraper returns them.
• The file with sound is 720 pixels on its short side. Higher resolutions come without sound and have to be joined with audioUrl.
• Some reels are silent for visitors. Instagram mutes reels with certain licensed music for anyone who is not logged in: hasAudio is false, audioUrl is empty and the MP4 has no sound. That was 4 of 24 reels in our test.
• Instagram's links expire. The file with sound named an end 32 to 36 hours ahead in our test, the renditions without sound and the thumbnail about four days. We read the time from the link and did not wait for it.
• Photos are not downloaded. A photo post is a not_video row.
• No comments. The Instagram Comments Scraper reads them.
• Rows can be large. A reel's row is about 12 KB because of its links; the nine-video carousel was 76 KB.
• A run that reads mostly links without video stops itself: after 50 such rows plus four for every row with video.

❓ FAQ

Do I need an Instagram account or cookies? No. The Actor reads what Instagram shows a visitor who is not logged in.

Which links work? Reels (/reel/…, /reels/…), posts (/p/…), /tv/ videos, with or without the account name in the link, and bare shortcodes.

How do I get 1080p with sound? Take the first entry of qualities and audioUrl, and join them: ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -i audio.mp4 -c copy joined.mp4. The file under videoUrl already has sound, at 720 pixels.

How long do the links work? expiresAt names the end of videoUrl, about a day and a half after the run in our test. Fetch the file before that, or turn on saveFiles.

What does saveFiles cost? $0.0004 per megabyte on the Free plan, so about $0.004 for a 10 MB reel, on top of the $0.002 for its row. storedMegabytes in each row is the number that was charged.

Why is a link not charged? Because it gave no video: the post is a photo, it is not public, the entry is no post link, or Instagram did not answer. The row says which.

What does a carousel cost? One post, whatever the number of videos in it. With saveFiles each of its video files is stored and its megabytes are charged.

How do I call it from code? With the Apify API or the Python and JavaScript clients; every run returns a dataset you can fetch as JSON or CSV. It also works as a tool through Apify's MCP server.

Is it legal to download Instagram videos? The Actor reads only what Instagram shows publicly to any visitor and does not log in. The videos belong to their creators: download what you own or have the right to use, and mind that captions and account names can be personal data under GDPR, CCPA and similar rules. Instagram's terms apply to you as well. If in doubt, ask a lawyer.

🔗 You might also like

• Instagram Reels Scraper: an account's reels with plays, likes and captions
• Instagram Posts Scraper: an account's posts, newest first
• Instagram Post Details Scraper: full data of single posts by link
• Instagram Comments Scraper: comments under posts and reels
• Instagram Profile Scraper: followers, bio and links of accounts

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