Instagram Stories & Highlights Scraper

Download the live stories and highlights of public Instagram profiles: image and video URLs, when each was posted and when it expires, link stickers, mentions, hashtags, locations, music and paid partnerships.

$1.50 per 1,000 stories. No Instagram login: your account never shows up among the viewers.

What it's for

• Story archive: schedule a run every few hours and keep every story before it disappears.
• Competitor and brand monitoring: which offers, links and partners a brand pushes in its stories.
• Influencer vetting: paid partnerships, sponsors and the links a creator sends traffic to.
• Data for AI agents and dashboards: clean JSON, or straight from the API.

Input

Field	What it does
usernames	Usernames, profile URLs, story URLs or highlight URLs, one per line
stories	Live stories (default on)
highlights	Highlights (default on)
highlightsLimit	Highlights per profile, in the order the profile shows them (default 10)

A highlight URL (instagram.com/stories/highlights/1795…/) returns just that highlight.

Output

One row per story or highlight item:

{
  "type": "story",
  "id": "4011301822208738497",
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/stories/natgeo/4011301822208738497/",
  "mediaType": "Image",
  "takenAt": "2026-10-19T10:07:39.000Z",
  "expiresAt": "2026-10-20T10:07:39.000Z",
  "displayUrl": "https://scontent-lhr11-1.cdninstagram.com/v/...",
  "videoUrl": null,
  "videoDuration": null,
  "hasAudio": null,
  "width": 1125,
  "height": 2000,
  "links": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/appalachian-mountains-ancient-geology-modern-horror-stories?cmpid=...",
      "displayUrl": "nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/appalachian-mountains-ancient-geology-modern-horror-stories?...",
      "title": "Visit Link"
    }
  ],
  "mentions": [],
  "hashtags": [],
  "locations": [],
  "sharedPost": null,
  "musicInfo": null,
  "paidPartnership": false,
  "sponsors": [],
  "highlightId": null,
  "highlightTitle": null,
  "ownerId": "787132",
  "ownerUsername": "natgeo",
  "ownerFullName": "National Geographic"
}

Highlight items come with "type": "highlight", highlightId and highlightTitle, and no expiresAt. Link stickers give the destination itself, not Instagram's redirect.

Profiles that can't be read get a row with the reason, free of charge:

{ "input": "some_private_profile", "error": "Private profile" }

Price

• $1.50 per 1,000 stories (live stories and highlight items alike)
• $0.005 per profile read
• Private, missing or invalid profiles: free

Run	Cost
100 profiles, live stories only, 3 up on average	$0.95
10 profiles, 10 highlights of ~15 items each	$2.30

A run stops at the maximum cost you set for it. On Apify's free plan, a run reads up to 5 profiles and 50 stories.

FAQ

Can it get stories after they expire? No: a live story is gone from Instagram after 24 hours unless the profile saves it to a highlight. To keep them all, schedule this Actor to run a few times a day.

How long do the image and video links work? A few days. Download the files you want to keep.

Does it work with private accounts? No. Only public profiles.

Is it legal? It reads only public profiles. Faces, usernames and names are personal data under GDPR and similar laws: use them for a legitimate purpose and honor deletion requests.