Instagram Stories Scraper - Live Stories and Highlights

Name up to ten public Instagram handles and get their stories and highlights back as rows: media type, the image or video link, when it was posted, the caption, the accounts and hashtags tagged on it, the address behind any link sticker, any location tag, and the sponsored flag.

Here is the thing that decides whether this is useful to you. A story is gone 24 hours after it goes up, so a run only sees what is live at the moment you press Start. If you want the older material, that is what highlights are: the trays an account pins to its profile, which do not expire. They are on by default on paid plans. On the free Apify plan a run reads the first profile's live stories only, without highlights, and a free row in the dataset says so; a paid plan gets the full run.

Input	Up to 10 public handles, @handles or profile URLs
Output	One row per story or highlight item: media type, image and video links, posting time, caption, mentions, link stickers, hashtags, location tag, sponsored flag, poster, highlight tray
Ceiling	100 stories and 100 highlight items per profile, 10 profiles per run
Account needed	No account from you
Price	$2.50 per 1,000 rows on the Free plan, a little less on paid plans. The free plan's $5 a month covers about 2,000

🔍 What Instagram Stories Scraper does

It reads what is live on each handle right now, plus the pinned highlight trays unless you untick that box, and writes one row per item. Stories and highlights come back in the same shape, and recordType tells you which you are looking at. Highlight rows also carry the tray they came from in highlightTitle.

maxStoriesPerProfile is applied to current stories and to highlights separately. With highlights ticked and the cap at 25, a profile with both can return up to 50 rows, and you pay per row. Set it low while you are working out how much a handle actually has.

mode picks stories only, highlights only, or both. To see just which highlights an account has, highlightTitlesOnly gives one row per tray. Each handle also ends with one free summary row saying what the run found there.

📋 What data you get from each Instagram story

What you get	Field
Story or highlight, and its id	recordType, storyId
Which of your handles it came from, and who posted it	sourceUsername, sourceProfileId, ownerUsername
The poster's name, verified badge and profile picture	ownerFullName, ownerIsVerified, ownerProfilePicUrl
Photo, video or carousel	mediaType
The image or cover frame, and the video file	imageUrl, videoUrl
Length and frame size	durationSeconds, dimensions
When it was posted, and when it expires	takenAt, expiresAt, expiresAtComputed
Caption and location sticker	caption, location
Accounts tagged, and hashtags	mentions, hashtags
Where the link stickers point	linkUrls
Paid-partnership flag	isSponsored
A link to the story	storyUrl
The highlight tray it is pinned in, its cover and size	highlightId, highlightTitle, highlightCoverUrl, highlightItemCount
One summary per handle	status, storiesDelivered, highlightsDelivered

▶️ How to scrape Instagram stories

1. Open Instagram Stories Scraper and click Try for free.
2. Put your handles into Public Instagram profiles, up to ten.
3. Set Maximum current stories per profile. Start at 5 while you look at the output shape.
4. Pick What to read: live stories, highlights, or both, which is the default.
5. Click Start, then download the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Start a run with no profiles and you get one labelled sample row showing the output shape. That row is not charged.

💰 How much does it cost to scrape Instagram stories?

$2.50 per 1,000 rows on the Free plan. Paid plans pay a little less: $2.48 on Starter, $2.46 on Scale and $2.44 on Business. On the free plan, the $5 Apify gives you each month covers about 2,000 rows. A run on the free plan reads only the first profile's live stories, without highlights, and ends with a free row saying it was limited. On a paid Apify plan the same input gets the full run.

One charge per row delivered, whether it is a live story or a highlight item. With highlightTitlesOnly, each tray row is billed as one result, the same as a story. Sample rows, diagnostic rows and the summary row for each handle are not billed, and a profile with nothing live is not billed for results.

With highlights ticked the cap counts twice, once for current stories and once for highlights. A five-profile run at 25 can come back with 250 rows rather than 125 if every profile has both.

📥 What you give it

{
  "profiles": ["nasa", "natgeo"],
  "maxStoriesPerProfile": 25,
  "includeHighlights": true
}

Field	Default	What it is
profiles	none	nasa, @nasa or a full profile URL. Up to 10 in one run.
maxStoriesPerProfile	25	Rows per profile, 1 to 100, counted separately for current stories and for highlights.
includeHighlights	true	The pinned trays. Untick it to get only what is live today. A profile with nothing pinned returns nothing extra. Needs a paid Apify plan.
mode	both	both, storiesOnly or highlightsOnly. Highlights only skips the live stories and does not use a cookie.
maxHighlightTrays	none	Read only the first this many trays of each profile, 1 to 100. Empty reads every tray.
highlightTitlesOnly	false	One row per tray (title, cover, item count) without the items.
maxRunSeconds	120	Wall-clock ceiling for the whole run, 20 to 180.
requestTimeoutSeconds	15	How long one request may take, 5 to 30.
maxAttempts	6	How many times a failed request is tried again before the run gives up on it. 1 to 12.
sessionCookies	none	Optional: your own session, used only for your run. You are responsible for using it within the site's terms. Current stories only with it.
proxyConfiguration	none	Optional. Servers of your own are used exactly as given.

📤 What you get back

The row for one of National Geographic's stories from August 2026, with the long links cut short:

{
  "ok": true,
  "recordType": "story",
  "storyId": "3966484401895803027",
  "sourceUsername": "natgeo",
  "sourceProfileId": "787132",
  "ownerUsername": "natgeo",
  "ownerFullName": "National Geographic",
  "ownerIsVerified": true,
  "ownerProfilePicUrl": "https://scontent-lga3-3.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.82787-19/...",
  "mediaType": "image",
  "takenAt": "2026-08-18T14:03:28.000Z",
  "expiresAt": "2026-08-19T14:03:28.000Z",
  "expiresAtComputed": true,
  "caption": null,
  "imageUrl": "https://scontent-lga3-3.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.82787-15/...",
  "videoUrl": null,
  "durationSeconds": 0,
  "dimensions": null,
  "isSponsored": false,
  "location": null,
  "linkUrls": [
    "https://www.nationalgeographic.com/health/article/bioelectronic-medicine-vagus-nerve-chronic-disease?cmpid=..."
  ],
  "mentions": [],
  "hashtags": [],
  "storyUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/stories/natgeo/3966484401895803027/"
}

A highlight row is the same shape with recordType: "highlight" and four extra fields naming the tray it was pinned into: highlightId, highlightTitle, highlightCoverUrl and highlightItemCount. With highlightTitlesOnly, a tray comes back as one highlight_title row carrying those four and the handle, with no media.

Field	How to read it
storyId	Unique per item. Use it as your dedupe key across runs.
mediaType	image, video or carousel. A video row carries both imageUrl (the cover frame) and videoUrl.
imageUrl, videoUrl	Signed links that expire within hours. Download anything you want to keep, in the same job.
takenAt	When the item was posted. null when Instagram did not supply it, never a made-up date.
expiresAt	Instagram's own expiry when it sends one. When it does not, the posting time plus 24 hours, and expiresAtComputed is true. Always null on highlights, which do not expire.
linkUrls	Where the story's link stickers go, unwrapped from Instagram's redirect link. An empty list when there are none.
mentions, hashtags	Handles tagged on the story and hashtags placed on it, without the @ or #. Empty lists when there are none.
dimensions	Frequently null. It arrives when Instagram sends it and is left empty when it does not.
location	An object with the place id, name, address and coordinates when the item carries a location sticker. null otherwise.
isSponsored	Instagram's own paid-partnership flag on the item.

🧾 Reading the output

Four kinds of row land in your dataset, and only the first kind is billed.

Row	How to spot it	Billed
A story, a highlight item, or a highlight tray	ok: true; recordType is story, highlight or highlight_title	yes
The summary for each handle	recordType: "account_status"	no
The sample row	_sample: true, and only on a run with no profiles	no
A diagnostic	ok: false and an errorCode	no

Filter on ok == true and drop the _sample row if you have one, and you have your media. Every diagnostic and summary row names the handle it belongs to in sourceUsername.

The summary row's status is live_stories_found, none_live, private or not_found. Two more can appear: not_read when the run stopped before reaching that handle, and stories_not_requested with mode set to highlights only. storiesDelivered and highlightsDelivered count what you got for it.

Code	What it means
NO_CURRENT_STORIES	Nothing was live on that profile at the moment of the run.
NOT_FOUND	No such account.
PRIVATE_OR_RESTRICTED	The account is private, or closed to a reader who is not following it.
BAD_INPUT	Nothing in profiles looked like a handle.
PARTIAL	The run delivered some rows and then stopped. What arrived is complete and correct.
FREE_PLAN_LIMIT	You are on the free Apify plan, so the run read only part of your input. profilesNotRead lists what it skipped. A paid plan gets the full run.
DEADLINE_EXCEEDED	The run hit maxRunSeconds before reaching that profile. Raise it.
RATE_LIMITED	Too many requests too close together. Space the runs out.
AUTHENTICATION_FAILED, SESSION_EXHAUSTED	If you supplied a cookie, check it is still valid.
PROXY_GROUP_IGNORED	A setting in proxyConfiguration could not be used as written.
SERVER_ERROR, NETWORK	Instagram was unreachable or answered badly. Re-run it.

No diagnostic row is billed as a result.

💡 What people use it for

• Checking daily whether a set of brands is running stories.
• Pulling a competitor's highlight trays as a snapshot of how they present themselves.
• Collecting story links and sponsored flags to see which creators are running paid placements.

🚧 What it does not do

• No expired stories. Once the 24 hours are up the item is gone, and highlights are the only way back to older material.
• No private accounts, and no accounts that only show stories to followers.
• No viewer lists, no reply counts, no poll or quiz results. Those are visible only to the account that posted.
• Highlights need a run without a cookie. Supply your own cookie and you get current stories only, unless mode is highlights only, which leaves the cookie unused.
• expiresAt is often worked out, not read. Instagram usually sends no expiry with a story, so the row gives the posting time plus 24 hours and says so in expiresAtComputed.
• dimensions is often empty, so do not build a pipeline that requires it.
• Media links expire within hours. Download the files in the same job.
• Ten profiles per run, 100 rows per profile on each of the two kinds.
• It is not an official Instagram tool. Dami's Studio is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Instagram or Meta, or by any other company named on this page.

🧭 Which Instagram scraper do you need?

If you want	Use
Live stories and pinned highlights	This one
Posts and reels from a profile	Instagram Scraper
Follower counts, bio and links	Instagram Profile Scraper
Reels from a profile's reels tab	Instagram Reel Scraper
Posts other people made about a handle	Instagram Mentions Scraper
The current story on a public Snapchat profile	Snapchat Profile Scraper

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need an Instagram account to scrape stories?

No, not from you. Leave the cookie field empty.

Why did I get nothing back?

Most likely nobody had a story live at that moment. The NO_CURRENT_STORIES row in your dataset says so, and it is not billed.

Can I get Instagram stories from yesterday?

Only if the account pinned them into a highlight. Instagram deletes the rest after 24 hours.

How often should I schedule it?

Every few hours if you want to catch everything, since stories come and go inside a day. Dedupe on storyId across runs.

Can I call it from code or connect it to an AI assistant?

Yes. The API tab has ready-made code for Python, JavaScript and the command line. For Claude, ChatGPT or another MCP client, connect https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,dami_studio/instagram-stories-scraper. Either way the run happens on your Apify account at the same price.

Is scraping Instagram stories legal?

This reads public profiles only, never private accounts or messages. Results can still contain personal data, which GDPR and similar laws cover, so have a reason for collecting it. Apify's write-up on the legality of web scraping is a good starting point, and we are not lawyers.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page. Send the handle you used and the run ID. The errorCode on the diagnostic row usually explains it on its own.