Stories and highlights

Both endpoints return the media items of one reel, as a single page — has_more is always false and next_cursor is null.

A user's active stories

GET /stories/{reel_id} takes the story owner's user id, not an individual story's id. It is an alias for GET /users/{id}/stories served through a different Instagram endpoint.

There is no fetch-one-story-by-its-own-id endpoint. If you are migrating from a provider that had one, fetch the owner's reel and match on the item's pk.

Path Parameters

reel_id*Reel Id

curl -X GET "https://example.com/stories/string"

{}

{}

What comes back

The standard list envelope, with story media items — see the highlight example below, which is the same shape.

A highlight's media

Highlight ids come from GET /users/{id}/highlights. The bare id and the highlight: prefixed form both work.

Path Parameters

highlight_id*Highlight Id

curl -X GET "https://example.com/highlights/string"

{}

{}

Both endpoints return the standard list envelope with media objects in the same shape as a post, plus the story-specific fields Instagram adds — expiring_at, and story_* sticker arrays where the item carries a poll, question, link or mention.

{
  "items": [
    {
      "pk": "3012345678901234567",
      "media_type": 2,
      "taken_at": 1699999999,
      "expiring_at": 1700086399,
      "image_versions2": { "candidates": [{ "url": "..." }] },
      "video_versions": [{ "width": 720, "height": 1280, "url": "..." }],
      "user": { "pk": "25025320", "username": "instagram" }
    }
  ],
  "next_cursor": null,
  "has_more": false
}

Downloading the media

There is no download endpoint, and none is needed: every item carries its file URLs in image_versions2 and video_versions. Fetch the highest-quality entry directly.

Those URLs are signed and expire within hours, so download promptly rather than storing the URL.

A /s/ link resolves through GET /oembed?url=, which returns the reel_id to pass here.

Errors

Code	When
`not_found`	The reel expired, or the id is wrong.
`private_account`	The owner is private.
`upstream_error`	Transient. Retry.

Stories and highlights

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