Instagram Stories Downloader - Stories & Highlights

Download active Instagram stories (the 24-hour tray) and highlight reels from any public profile. The actor returns one record per story or highlight item with a direct, original-resolution media URL plus caption, mentions, link stickers, music, posting time and story expiry — before the story disappears. No Instagram login, no cookies, no API key from you.

Built for social media managers, journalists, archivists and AI agents that need to preserve or analyze ephemeral Instagram content on a schedule.

What it returns

One dataset row per media item, flat and MCP-friendly:

Field	Meaning
mediaUrl	Direct original-resolution URL (progressive MP4 for video, full-size JPEG for photo)
imageUrl	Highest-resolution still image
itemType	story, highlight (cover row) or highlight-item (media inside an expanded highlight)
username / highlightId / highlightTitle	Profile and highlight context
takenAt / expiresAt	ISO timestamps — stories expire ~24h after posting, highlights are permanent
caption, mentions[], linkUrls[]	Story text, tagged handles, outbound link stickers
musicTitle / musicArtist	Attached audio when present
sourceUrl / provider / scrapedAt	Canonical Instagram URL, data provider, collection time

Media URLs are Instagram CDN links and expire after a few days — download or mirror the files promptly for permanent archives.

When to use it

• Archiving your brand's or a competitor's stories before they vanish (schedule the actor hourly or daily).
• Monitoring campaigns, announcements or breaking-news stories across a watchlist of public profiles.
• Collecting highlight reels with every photo and video inside them for content audits.
• Agent workflows that need structured story data (media + metadata) as JSON instead of screenshots.

For Instagram posts, reels, profile stats or followers, start with the dedicated actors listed under Related actors. This actor reads public profiles only; private accounts and close-friends stories stay outside its public-data scope.

Workflow: from watchlist to archived stories

A typical workflow starts with a watchlist of public handles. You provide the list once, schedule the run, and then every execution exports the current story tray to your dataset: first the actor resolves each handle, then it collects every active item with direct media URLs, and finally you download the media files or feed the JSON into your archive, dashboard or AI analysis. Because stories expire about 24 hours after posting, scheduled runs preserve each day's tray before it disappears; highlights, by contrast, are permanent and one expansion pass covers them.

Input

{
  "usernames": ["bbcnews", "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/"],
  "includeStories": true,
  "includeHighlights": false,
  "expandHighlightItems": false,
  "maxHighlightsPerUser": 5,
  "maxItemsPerRun": 200
}

• usernames (required): bare handles, @handles, profile URLs or stories URLs. Up to 100 profiles per run, deduplicated.
• includeStories (default true): the active 24h story tray.
• includeHighlights (default false): highlight covers with titles.
• expandHighlightItems (default false): download every item inside each highlight (billed per highlight, bounded by maxHighlightsPerUser).
• maxItemsPerRun (default 200): hard row cap; the run stops gracefully with a PARTIAL outcome when reached.

Output example

{
  "itemId": "3867341342972145022",
  "itemType": "story",
  "username": "bbcnews",
  "highlightId": null,
  "highlightTitle": null,
  "mediaType": "video",
  "mediaUrl": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/o1/v/t16/f2/m69/example.mp4",
  "imageUrl": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51/story.jpg",
  "width": 1080,
  "height": 1920,
  "durationSeconds": 14.8,
  "takenAt": "2026-08-17T09:12:00.000Z",
  "expiresAt": "2026-08-18T09:12:00.000Z",
  "caption": "Launch coverage tonight",
  "mentions": ["nasa"],
  "linkUrls": ["https://www.bbc.com/news"],
  "musicTitle": null,
  "musicArtist": null,
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/stories/bbcnews/3867341342972145022/",
  "provider": "scrapecreators",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-17T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Terminal OUTPUT and RUN_SUMMARY records in the key-value store carry the run outcome (COMPLETE, PARTIAL, VALID_EMPTY, INVALID_INPUT, UPSTREAM_FAILED, CONFIG_ERROR), per-profile statuses, provider telemetry and billing counts.

Pricing

Pay per event plus platform usage. Event charges:

Event	Price	When
Actor start	$0.00005	Once per valid run
Profile scraped	$0.01	Per profile whose tray/highlights were read (all active story items included)
Highlight expanded	$0.005	Per highlight whose items were downloaded (only when expandHighlightItems is on)

A one-profile stories run costs $0.01005 in events; Apify bills the small compute usage separately. A 10-profile watchlist with default settings costs about $0.10 per run. Current prices are always shown on the actor's Pricing tab.

API example

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/khadinakbar~instagram-stories-downloader/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"usernames":["bbcnews"],"includeStories":true,"includeHighlights":false,"maxItemsPerRun":50}'

Then read the dataset: https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/{DATASET_ID}/items?clean=true.

Using with AI agents

This actor is MCP-ready through mcp.apify.com. Agent prompt card:

Use instagram-stories-downloader when you need current Instagram stories or highlight media for public profiles. Pass usernames (handles or profile URLs, up to 100 per run). It returns one JSON record per item with direct media URLs, captions, mentions, links, music, and expiry timestamps. For posts, reels or follower lists, pair this actor with the dedicated Instagram siblings. Cost: $0.01 per profile + $0.00005 start; $0.005 per expanded highlight.

Best results and practical guidance

• Provide public profiles: active stories come from a managed public-data provider (ScrapeCreators) with a second provider (SociaVault) as automatic fallback for profile resolution and highlights, so the highlights route keeps working even when the primary route degrades.
• Profiles with no active stories return zero rows and a VALID_EMPTY outcome — a charged profile-scraped event still applies because the lookup was performed.
• When the upstream route is down for every requested profile, the actor reports UPSTREAM_FAILED honestly; partial outcomes keep every collected row with a PARTIAL result.
• Rate-limited provider calls are retried with backoff, and a circuit breaker ends the pass early to protect your budget; item and highlight caps bound every run's spend upfront.
• Schedule runs hourly or daily for the freshest trays, and download the current media files promptly — CDN links age out after a few days even though the metadata rows persist.

Related actors

• Instagram Video Downloader — single reels/posts/IGTV videos by URL; use it when you have a specific post link rather than a profile watchlist.
• Instagram Profile Scraper — profile stats, bio and recent posts; pair it with this actor when a watchlist also needs profile context.
• Instagram Posts Scraper — permanent feed posts and carousels; stories this actor collects are the ephemeral complement.
• Facebook Video Downloader — the same direct-media-link workflow for public Facebook videos and Reels.

Builder's note

The active-stories route turned out to be the hard part: I found that most managed providers expose highlight reels only and keep the live 24h tray hidden. In my testing I probed ScrapeCreators, SociaVault and TikHub live before writing any code, and I learned that only ScrapeCreators exposes a working tray endpoint — and it needs the numeric profile ID, so the actor looks up each handle first. I also found raw control characters inside provider captions that break strict JSON parsers; the actor sanitizes them before parsing. Highlights are dual-provider, stories are single-provider by necessity, and this README reflects that asymmetry openly.

Legal

This actor retrieves publicly available Instagram content through managed public-data providers. You are responsible for complying with Instagram's Terms of Service, copyright, and local laws when storing or reusing downloaded media. It does not access private accounts, encrypted media or login-only content.