📥 Instagram Story Downloader — Save Story Highlights as MP4 & JPG, No Login

Instagram Story Downloader saves the Story Highlights of any public Instagram profile — every video and photo, stored as a permanent file you can download any time — together with the highlight title, position, post date, links and mentions. It also tells you whether the profile has a 24-hour story live right now.

No Instagram account, no cookies, no browser extension. Paste usernames or highlight links and run.

• 🎞️ Every item of every highlight: videos (MP4) and photos (JPG) at the best available resolution
• 💾 Permanent files: stored copies keep working after Instagram's own links expire
• 🟢 Live-story check: has_active_story + latest_story_at for every profile
• ⭐ Whole profile or one highlight: scan a profile, or download a single highlight by its link
• 🧾 Clean, flat rows: one row per photo/video, ready for spreadsheets, BI tools and AI agents
• 🔁 Interruption-safe: a run that is moved or restarted resumes without duplicate results or charges

Why download Instagram Story Highlights?

Highlights are the stories a brand or creator chose to keep: product launches, FAQs, reviews, event recaps, behind-the-scenes series. They are a curated archive of an account's best short-form content, and they are only viewable inside Instagram's story player, with links that expire.

• Brand & competitor monitoring: keep a copy of every highlight a competitor publishes
• Influencer marketing: archive sponsored highlight content as campaign proof
• Content research: collect short-form video examples by niche
• Social listening & AI datasets: structured media + metadata for analysis and training
• Backups: save your own account's highlights as files

What data does Instagram Story Downloader extract?

🎞️ Highlight items (one row per photo or video)

Field	Description
username, user_id	Profile that posted the highlight
highlight_id, highlight_title, highlight_url	The highlight it belongs to
position	1-based position inside the highlight
item_id, shortcode	Instagram's ids for the story item
media_type	video or image
taken_at, taken_at_unix	When the story was originally posted
file	Stored copy: url, download_url (forces download), file_name, size_bytes, content_type
video_url, image_url	Instagram's direct media links (expire after a few days)
video_duration_seconds, has_audio, width, height	Media details
link_urls, mentions, hashtags, locations, music	Story stickers
accessibility_caption	Instagram's alt text, when present

👤 Profiles (one row per profile)

Field	Description
username, full_name, user_id, profile_url	Identity
has_active_story, latest_story_at	Whether a 24-hour story is live, and when it was posted
highlight_count, highlights[]	Every highlight: id, title, link, cover image
is_private, is_verified, follower_count	Account details

The dataset has three views: Highlight items, Profiles and All fields.

⚙️ How to use Instagram Story Downloader

1. Add one or more profiles: nasa, @nasa or https://www.instagram.com/nasa/
2. Optionally add highlight links to download specific highlights only
3. Keep Save files permanently on to get MP4/JPG files, or turn it off for data + Instagram links only
4. Set Max highlight items to control the size (and cost) of the run, then click Start

Input example

{
  "profiles": ["nasa", "https://www.instagram.com/nike/"],
  "highlightUrls": ["https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18195781759377100/"],
  "downloadMedia": true,
  "maxItems": 100,
  "maxHighlightsPerProfile": 0
}

Input	Description
profiles	Usernames, profile URLs or story links (a story link collects that profile's highlights)
highlightUrls	Highlight URLs, highlight:<id> or bare ids
downloadMedia	Store every file permanently (default true)
maxItems	Stop after this many photos/videos in the whole run; 0 = no limit (default 200)
maxHighlightsPerProfile	Only the first N highlights of each profile; 0 = all

📊 Sample output

{
  "type": "highlight_item",
  "username": "nasa",
  "highlight_title": "Roman",
  "highlight_url": "https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18195781759377100/",
  "position": 1,
  "item_id": "3975089864169193671",
  "media_type": "video",
  "taken_at": "2026-08-30T11:00:53.000Z",
  "video_duration_seconds": 26.8,
  "file": {
    "url": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/…/records/video-nasa_18195781759377100_3975089864169193671.mp4?signature=…",
    "download_url": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/…/records/video-nasa_…mp4?signature=…&attachment=true",
    "file_name": "video-nasa_18195781759377100_3975089864169193671.mp4",
    "size_bytes": 912066,
    "content_type": "video/mp4"
  },
  "video_url": "https://instagram.fna.fbcdn.net/…mp4?…",
  "image_url": "https://instagram.fna.fbcdn.net/…jpg?…",
  "link_urls": ["https://go.nasa.gov/…"]
}

{
  "type": "profile",
  "username": "nasa",
  "full_name": "NASA",
  "has_active_story": true,
  "latest_story_at": "2026-10-09T15:57:24.000Z",
  "highlight_count": 5,
  "highlights": [{ "highlight_id": "18195781759377100", "title": "Roman", "url": "https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18195781759377100/" }]
}

💰 Pricing

Pay per result. You are only charged for what is delivered to your dataset, never for a failed lookup, a duplicate or anything not delivered.

Event	Entry plan	Bronze	Silver	Gold+
Highlight item (one photo or video)	$1.80 / 1,000	$1.50 / 1,000	$1.30 / 1,000	$1.10 / 1,000
Profile scanned (highlight list + live-story check)	$1.50 / 1,000	$1.30 / 1,000	$1.10 / 1,000	$1.00 / 1,000

Stored files are billed by the Universal File Downloader

With Save files permanently on, files are stored by Universal File Downloader, which runs on your own Apify account and bills its own File downloaded event ($9.00 / 1,000 files on the entry plan, $6.00 Bronze, $5.00 Silver, $4.00 Gold+) plus a few seconds of platform usage. You can see each download run in your Apify Console. Turn the option off to pay only the events above.

Your Max cost per run covers both. When you set a spending limit, the Actor sizes the run so that its own charges plus the file-storage charges stay within it.

Example: NASA's 5 highlights (89 photos and videos) on the entry plan cost about $0.16 as data only, or about $0.96 with every file stored permanently.

❓ FAQ

Do I need an Instagram account or cookies? No. The Actor reads only what Instagram shows publicly, with no login.

Can it download 24-hour stories? Not in this version: Instagram only shows them to signed-in viewers. Every profile row tells you whether a story is live right now (has_active_story, latest_story_at). Downloading live 24-hour stories is on the roadmap below.

What about private accounts? Only public content is supported. A private profile returns its profile row with is_private: true and no highlight items.

How long are stored files kept? Files live in your Apify storage and follow your plan's data-retention period. Download them or copy them to your own storage for long-term archiving. Instagram's own video_url / image_url links expire after a few days.

Can I monitor accounts on a schedule? Yes. Create a task with your profiles and schedule it. Each run's profile rows show which accounts have a live story at that moment.

Why did a highlight return fewer items than I see on Instagram? Check maxItems and maxHighlightsPerProfile. Instagram can also hide items that are age-restricted or region-locked from public viewers.

🗺️ Coming soon

• 24-hour stories: download live stories (photos, videos, stickers) from public profiles
• Only-new mode: on scheduled runs, return only items not delivered before
• Story URL input: download a single live story from its link

Have a feature request? Email flowextractapi@outlook.com.

🔗 Related Actors

• Instagram Reel Comment Scraper: comments from public Reels and posts
• Universal File Downloader: store any file from a URL

Support

• 🌐 Website: flowextractapi.com
• 📧 Email: flowextractapi@outlook.com
• 💬 GitHub: FlowExtractAPI
• 💼 LinkedIn: flowextract-api
• 🐦 X (Twitter): @FlowExtractAPI
• 📱 Facebook: flowextractapi
• 🎵 TikTok: @flowextractapi

Legal & compliance

• Public data only — processes publicly available data.
• Rate limiting — respects source-service limits and terms of use.
• Data protection — no storage of personal information or unauthorized data collection.
• Commercial use — suitable for business intelligence and research.
• No affiliation with or endorsement by Instagram or Meta is implied.

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Instagram Story Downloader — by FlowExtract API. Turn any website into structured data.