Catching time-limited promotions
Poll competitor accounts a few times a day to capture discount codes and drops that only ever appear in stories and vanish in 24 hours.
Instagram API / Stories
Instagram Story Scraper — Active Stories and Media URLs Before They Expire
Read the stories that are live right now on a public account, with media URLs and expiry timestamps. This reads stories; it does not post them — no endpoint here publishes anything.
1 credit per request · request metadata included · errors are never charged
GET /v1/instagram/stories1 creditcurl "https://api.socialscrape.dev/v1/instagram/stories?handle=iamsydneythomas" \
-H "x-api-key: $INSCRAPE_KEY"Parameters
handlestringrequiredInstagram username, without the @
What you get
What the Instagram Story Scraper returns.
- Media URL and type for each active story frame
- taken_at and expires_at timestamps
- Link, mention and hashtag stickers with their targets
- Frame ordering as shown in the tray
Use cases
Instagram Story Scraper use cases.
Verifying influencer deliverables
A story placement is the hardest deliverable to prove after the fact. Capture it while it is live, with a timestamp, instead of trusting a screenshot.
Link sticker tracking
Extract link stickers to see which destinations a creator is actually sending traffic to across a campaign period.
FAQ
Instagram Story Scraper FAQ.
Can I post a story with this?
No. Reading and publishing are different products. Story publishing is Meta's Content Publishing API on an account you own; this returns what is already live on a public account.
How fresh are stories?
Stories are handled as short-lived data. A stale story is a useless story, so the endpoint is designed for current public stories.
Can I get expired stories?
No. Once a story expires it is no longer public. Highlights are the durable version — use the Highlights API for those.
Does viewing through the API show up as a view?
No. We read public data without an account, so nothing is attributed to a viewer.
Related endpoints
APIs commonly paired with stories.
Instagram Highlights API
List the highlight trays on a public Instagram profile: tray id, title, cover image and item count. The frames inside a tray come from the Highlight Items API.
Instagram Highlight Items API
Read every story frame inside a single Instagram highlight tray by its id. Permanent story content with original timestamps, one credit.
Instagram Profile Scraper
Get follower counts, bio, verification status and external links for any public Instagram profile. One REST call, no login, no Meta app review.
Back to the full Instagram API overview, or read the stories endpoint documentation.