📸 Instagram Reels & Video Downloader — Posts, Stories & IGTV

The fastest Instagram Reels & Video Downloader on Apify. Extract direct download URLs, captions, hashtags, engagement metrics, and full metadata from Instagram Reels, posts, stories, and IGTV — powered by yt. No login. Residential proxy ready. Bulk URL support.

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📌 Table of Contents

• What Is This Actor?
• Why Use This Instagram Reels & Video Downloader?
• Supported Content Types
• Use Cases
• Input Parameters
• Output Fields
• Example Input & Output
• How It Works
• Proxy Configuration
• Performance & Limits
• FAQ
• Changelog
• Legal & Terms of Use

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🔍 What Is This Actor?

Instagram Reels & Video Downloader is a production-ready Apify actor that extracts direct video download URLs and complete metadata from any public Instagram content — Reels, feed posts, IGTV videos, and stories.

Powered by yt-, it handles Instagram's internal API negotiation automatically. Provide one or many Instagram URLs and receive back clean, structured records with everything you need: caption, hashtags, mentions, owner profile, engagement metrics (views, likes, comments), thumbnail, duration, and a ready-to-use direct download URL — all without logging in or running a browser.

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🚀 Why Use This Instagram Reels & Video Downloader?

Feature	This Actor	Browser Scrapers	Manual Tools	Instagram API
Download Instagram Reels & videos	✅ Bulk	⚠️ One-by-one	✅ One-by-one	❌ Restricted
No Instagram login required	✅	✅	✅	❌ OAuth needed
Hashtags & mentions extracted	✅	⚠️ Partial	❌	⚠️ Limited
Engagement metrics (views, likes)	✅	⚠️	❌	⚠️ Rate limited
Multiple format URLs returned	✅ Up to 5	❌	✅	❌
Reels + Posts + Stories + IGTV	✅ All types	⚠️	⚠️	❌ Stories restricted
Residential proxy built-in	✅	⚠️ Extra setup	❌	❌
Bulk URL processing	✅	❌	❌	❌

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🎬 Supported Content Types

This Instagram Reels & Video Downloader auto-detects the content type from the URL:

Type	URL Pattern	Supported
Reels	/reel/XXXXX	✅
Feed Posts	/p/XXXXX	✅
IGTV	/tv/XXXXX	✅
Stories	/stories/username/	✅
Profile / Highlight pages	/@username, /user/	✅ (up to 50 items)

Note: Only publicly accessible content is supported. Private accounts are not supported.

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🎯 Use Cases

📥 Content Archiving & Repurposing

• Download Instagram Reels and posts for backup before they are deleted or accounts go private
• Archive brand content, campaign videos, and influencer posts with full metadata
• Preserve viral Reels with timestamps and engagement data for trend documentation

🤖 AI & Machine Learning Datasets

• Build video datasets from Instagram Reels for short-form content AI models
• Collect captions and hashtags for NLP, sentiment analysis, or hashtag trend research
• Extract thumbnail images for visual style classification or computer vision training

📊 Social Media Analytics & Research

• Scrape engagement data (views, likes, comments) from Reels for influencer benchmarking
• Collect hashtag sets from niche content for social media strategy research
• Monitor brand or competitor Instagram video performance over time

🛠️ Developer Integrations

• Build a video pipeline that resolves Instagram Reel download URLs on demand
• Automate content moderation workflows by extracting and analyzing Instagram video metadata
• Integrate Instagram video metadata into dashboards or CMS platforms

📰 Journalism & Evidence Preservation

• Download Instagram Reels and posts as evidence for investigative reporting
• Archive public statements, event coverage, and news clips from Instagram
• Preserve content that may be removed after publication of a report

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⚙️ Input Parameters

{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.instagram.com/reel/ABC123xyz/",
    "https://www.instagram.com/p/DEF456uvw/"
  ],
  "url": "",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
urls	array or string	[]	Instagram URLs to process — Reels, posts, stories, IGTV, or profile pages (newline-separated string also accepted)
url	string	""	Single URL shortcut — automatically merged with urls
proxyConfiguration	object	Residential	Apify proxy config — residential proxy is required for Instagram

Tip: Both url (singular) and urls (plural) are accepted. You can mix Reels, posts, stories, and IGTV URLs in a single run.

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📋 Output Fields

Every record returned by this Instagram Reels & Video Downloader includes:

Field	Type	Description	Example
post_type	string	Content type auto-detected from URL	"reel", "post", "story", "igtv"
title	string	Post title (max 300 chars)	"Golden hour in the Sahara 🌅"
caption	string	Full post caption (max 2000 chars)	"Nothing compares to this view..."
video_id	string	Instagram internal video ID	"Cx1a2B3cDe4"
post_url	string	Canonical URL of the post	"https://www.instagram.com/reel/..."
owner_username	string	Creator's Instagram username	"natgeo"
owner_name	string	Creator's display name	"National Geographic"
owner_url	string	Link to creator's profile	"https://www.instagram.com/natgeo/"
duration_seconds	integer	Video length in seconds	28
duration	string	Human-readable duration	"0:28"
thumbnail	string	Video thumbnail image URL	"https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/..."
upload_date	string	Date posted (YYYYMMDD)	"20240315"
view_count	integer	Total video views	4500000
like_count	integer	Total likes	230000
comment_count	integer	Total comments	18500
hashtags	array	Hashtags extracted from caption	["#travel", "#sahara", "#desert"]
mentions	array	@mentions extracted from caption	["@partner", "@brand"]
download_url	string	Best available direct video download URL	"https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/..."
formats	array	Up to 5 available formats (id, url, ext, resolution)	[{"id":"hls-1080","res":"1080x1920"}]

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📦 Example Input & Output

Input:

{
  "url": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/ABC123xyz/",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Output:

{
  "post_type":        "reel",
  "title":            "Golden hour in the Sahara 🌅",
  "caption":          "Nothing compares to this view. #travel #sahara #desert #goldenhour @natgeo",
  "video_id":         "Cx1a2B3cDe4",
  "post_url":         "https://www.instagram.com/reel/ABC123xyz/",
  "owner_username":   "natgeo",
  "owner_name":       "National Geographic",
  "owner_url":        "https://www.instagram.com/natgeo/",
  "duration_seconds": 28,
  "duration":         "0:28",
  "thumbnail":        "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/.../thumb.jpg",
  "upload_date":      "20240315",
  "view_count":       4500000,
  "like_count":       230000,
  "comment_count":    18500,
  "hashtags":         ["#travel", "#sahara", "#desert", "#goldenhour"],
  "mentions":         ["@natgeo"],
  "download_url":     "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/.../video.mp4",
  "formats": [
    { "id": "hls-1080", "url": "https://...", "ext": "mp4", "res": "1080x1920" },
    { "id": "hls-720",  "url": "https://...", "ext": "mp4", "res": "720x1280"  }
  ]
}

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⚙️ How It Works

Step 1 — URL Type Detection

The actor inspects each URL path to identify content type automatically: /reel/ → Reel, /p/ → Post, /stories/ → Story, /tv/ → IGTV, /@ or /user/ → Profile page.

Step 2 — yt Extraction

yt- communicates directly with Instagram's internal CDN and media endpoints — no browser, no Playwright, no cookies required. A residential proxy is passed to bypass Instagram's IP-based access controls.

Step 3 — Best Format Selection

The actor scans all available format streams and selects the best combined video+audio URL for download_url. Up to 5 additional format objects are returned in the formats array for flexible quality selection.

Step 4 — Metadata & Enrichment

Caption, hashtags (#tag), and @mentions are parsed from the description field via regex. Engagement metrics (views, likes, comments), thumbnail, duration, upload date, and owner profile data are extracted from the yt info object.

Step 5 — Output

All records are pushed to the Apify dataset and saved as results.json in the Key-Value Store. Profile and highlight URLs return up to 50 items per page.

⚠️ Important: Instagram CDN URLs are signed and time-limited (typically valid for a few hours). Use them immediately, or re-run the actor to refresh them.

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🌐 Proxy Configuration

Why Is Residential Proxy Required?

Instagram aggressively blocks datacenter IP addresses. Without a residential proxy, most requests return a 401 or redirect to a login page instead of the video content. A residential proxy makes requests appear to originate from a real home internet connection — which Instagram allows.

Recommended Setup

{
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Running without proxy will trigger a warning in the actor logs and will likely result in failed extractions for most Instagram URLs.

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⚡ Performance & Limits

Mode	Count	Estimated Time
Single Reel or post	1	~10–20 seconds
Batch of Reels	10	~2–3 minutes
Profile page	1 page (up to 50 items)	~3–5 minutes

• 3 automatic retries with backoff on failed requests
• 30-second socket timeout per URL
• Per-URL isolation — one failure never stops the rest of the batch
• Profile and highlight pages return up to 50 items per URL

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❓ FAQ

Q: Does this actor download the video file to Apify's servers? A: No. The actor extracts and returns the direct signed CDN URL. The video file is never stored on Apify — you download it to your own system using download_url.

Q: How long is download_url valid? A: Instagram CDN URLs expire within a few hours. Use them immediately after the run, or re-run the actor to get a fresh URL.

Q: Can I download from private Instagram accounts? A: No. Only publicly accessible content is supported. Private accounts and login-gated content are not supported.

Q: Why is view_count or like_count null? A: Instagram does not always expose engagement metrics — especially for stories or older posts. The field will be null when the data is unavailable.

Q: Can I scrape an entire Instagram profile's videos? A: Yes — provide a profile URL (https://www.instagram.com/@username/) and the actor extracts up to 50 video items from that page.

Q: What happens if a URL fails? A: The error is logged and the actor continues processing all remaining URLs. One failed URL never stops the run.

Q: Are hashtags and mentions extracted automatically? A: Yes. The hashtags and mentions fields are parsed from the post caption using regex — no extra configuration needed.

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📜 Changelog

v1.0.0 (Current)

• ✅ yt- integration for Instagram Reels, posts, stories, and IGTV
• ✅ Auto content-type detection from URL pattern (/reel/, /p/, /tv/, /stories/)
• ✅ Best format selection with up to 5 format objects per record
• ✅ Caption, hashtag (#tag), and @mention extraction via regex
• ✅ Engagement metrics: view count, like count, comment count
• ✅ Owner profile fields: username, display name, profile URL
• ✅ Profile page support (up to 50 items per URL)
• ✅ Residential proxy support with built-in warning when proxy is off
• ✅ Results exported to Apify dataset + results.json in Key-Value Store

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⚖️ Legal & Terms of Use

This actor extracts publicly accessible Instagram video metadata and CDN stream URLs in the same way a regular user views content through a browser.

Please note:

• Use this tool only for research, archiving, journalism, education, and personal use
• Only download content that you have the right to access and store
• Redistributing copyrighted Instagram content without authorization may violate copyright law and Instagram's Terms of Service
• Do not use this tool to scrape personal data or target private individuals
• The actor developer is not responsible for how users choose to use the extracted content

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🤝 Support & Feedback

• Bug report? Open a GitHub issue or contact us via the Apify actor page
• Feature request? Post in the Apify Community forum
• Works great? Please leave a ⭐ review on the Apify Store!

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The most reliable Instagram Reels & Video Downloader — no login, no browser, bulk-ready