Instagram Reel Recipe Extractor

What does Instagram Reel Recipe Extractor do?

Instagram Reel Recipe Extractor turns public Instagram Reels cooking videos into structured recipes: ingredients with quantities and units, ordered steps with timestamps, servings, prep and cook time, equipment, and dietary tags.

Paste video links and press Start. The Actor watches each video with AI, reads the text shown on screen, listens to the narration, and reads the caption, then merges all three into one recipe. That matters because most short cooking videos put the quantities on screen or in the caption, and many have no speech at all, just music. Transcript tools return nothing for those; this Actor still returns the full recipe.

Use it as a Instagram Reels recipe API: call it from your app, export JSON or CSV, or schedule it on Apify.

Why extract recipes from Instagram Reels?

Short videos are where people find recipes now, but the recipe itself is locked inside the video. Typical uses:

• 📲 Recipe-saving apps: import a recipe when a user shares an Instagram Reel link
• 🛒 Grocery and meal-planning apps: turn saved videos into shopping lists with quantities
• 🥗 Nutrition apps: feed parsed ingredients into calorie and macro calculators
• 📚 Recipe databases: build a searchable catalog of creator recipes
• 🍳 Food brands: see how creators use your product and in which dishes
• 📈 Food trend research: track which dishes, cuisines, and ingredients are trending
• 🌍 Localization: translate recipes into another language with translateTo
• ♿ Accessibility: give viewers a readable recipe instead of a fast-cut video
• 🧑‍🍳 Creators and agencies: turn a back catalog of videos into blog posts or cookbooks
• 🤖 AI agents: give an assistant a clean recipe object instead of a video URL

What recipe data can you extract?

Field	Example
Recipe title	One Pot 5 Ingredient Sausage Pasta
Ingredients	2 cups heavy cream, with the original text and where it came from (on screen, spoken, caption)
Steps	"Pour in the heavy cream and water." at 30 seconds
Servings, prep, cook, and total time	4 servings, 25 minutes
Cuisine and meal type	Mexican, dinner
Equipment	Dutch oven, blender
Dietary tags	vegan, gluten_free, high_protein (only when obvious)
Tips	"Let the steak rest before slicing"
Video details	platform, author handle, caption, thumbnail, duration, language
Confidence	0.9

Videos that aren't recipes return isRecipe: false, so you can filter them out.

How to extract a recipe from an Instagram Reel

1. Open the Actor and click Try for free.
2. Paste one or more Instagram Reel links into Video URLs.
3. Optional: set Translate recipe text to (for example en or de) to get the recipe in another language.
4. Click Start. Each video takes about 20–60 seconds.
5. Open the Overview tab for one row per recipe, or the Ingredients tab for one row per ingredient. Download as JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML, or read it through the API.

How much does it cost to extract recipes from Instagram Reels?

You pay a small fee per video plus a fee per second of video, because longer videos take more AI processing. There's no separate charge for platform usage. Exact prices are on the Pricing tab and drop on higher Apify plans.

On the free plan that works out to roughly:

Video length	Price
30 seconds	about $0.019
1 minute	about $0.028
3 minutes	about $0.064

• Failed downloads (deleted or private videos) are not charged.
• Videos that turn out not to be recipes are charged, because the video was still analyzed.
• Apify's free plan includes monthly credit, which covers well over a hundred videos.

Input

Click the Input tab for all options. A minimal input:

{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbZPyMTPHXu/",
    "https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dbf9BSox3NC/"
  ],
  "maxItems": 5,
  "translateTo": null
}

Field	What it does
videoUrls	Instagram Reel links. Other links are skipped with a warning.
maxItems	Maximum number of videos per run.
translateTo	Two-letter language code to translate the recipe. Leave empty to keep the creator's language.
proxyConfiguration	Apify Proxy is on by default, because Instagram blocks many datacenter IPs. It's included in the price.

Output example

One dataset row per video:

{
  "videoUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbZPyMTPHXu/",
  "authorHandle": "@beth.h20",
  "imageUrl": "https://…",
  "durationSeconds": 61,
  "language": "en",
  "isRecipe": true,
  "recipe": {
    "title": "One Pot 5 Ingredient Sausage Pasta",
    "servings": null,
    "totalTimeMinutes": null,
    "ingredients": [
      {
        "name": "heavy cream",
        "quantity": 2,
        "unit": "cups",
        "originalText": "2 cups heavy cream",
        "notes": null,
        "source": "on_screen"
      }
    ],
    "steps": [
      { "order": 1, "text": "Slice the Andouille sausage.", "startSec": 9 },
      { "order": 4, "text": "Pour in the heavy cream and water.", "startSec": 30 }
    ],
    "dietaryTags": [],
    "confidence": 0.9
  },
  "error": null
}

Fields the video doesn't show are null rather than guessed. A step's startSec is null when the moment can't be pinned down.

Tips for better results

• Check the caption: many creators list exact quantities there, and the Actor uses it.
• Use confidence to route low-confidence recipes for a quick human check.
• Batch links in one run rather than starting one run per video.

Other rainminer Actors for short-form video

• TikTok Recipe Extractor: the same recipe extraction for TikTok videos
• Instagram Reel Places Extractor: restaurants, cafés, and spots shown in travel and food Reels
• Instagram Reel Text Extractor: on-screen text from Reels with timestamps
• Google Maps Menu Scraper: restaurant menus and prices from Google Maps photos

FAQ

Does it work on videos without speech?

Yes. Music-only videos with quantities on screen are the main reason this Actor exists. It reads the on-screen text frame by frame.

Can it handle recipes in other languages?

Yes. By default the recipe stays in the creator's language. Set translateTo to translate it.

Do I need an Instagram account?

No. The Actor only reads public videos and never logs in.

Is it legal to extract recipes from Instagram?

The Actor only processes publicly available videos and doesn't collect private user data. Recipes are the creator's content, so respect their rights and Instagram's terms when you republish anything. If you're unsure about your use case, consult a lawyer.

Something looks wrong?

Open an issue on the Issues tab with the video link. Feedback goes straight into the next version, and custom versions are possible on request.