Does Instagram have an API?
Yes, through Business or Creator accounts; reading accounts you don't manage needs App Review and Business Verification. SocialToAI reads its publicly visible posts, comments and accounts without a Instagram developer account: 8 interfaces from 2 credits a call (≈ $0.004–$0.0067), and failed calls are free. Official facts checked 2026-10-17.
The short answer
Yes, through Business or Creator accounts; reading accounts you don't manage needs App Review and Business Verification.
What the official API allows
Instagram's official API works through Business or Creator accounts. Besides an account's own data, it can read basic metadata and media of other professional accounts and search hashtags; serving accounts you don't manage needs App Review and Business Verification, and hashtag search needs App Review.
Source: Instagram's own developer documentation, checked 2026-10-17. What a platform allows changes; its own pages are the authority.
Reading Instagram's public data with SocialToAI
SocialToAI is an API and MCP server for publicly visible content and account information. You need no Instagram account and no app review: one SocialToAI key, or signing in from Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Cursor and Codex. Each call costs a fixed number of credits, and a failed call costs nothing.
| Interface | What it returns | Price key | Credits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search · type=user | Find accounts by keyword: name. | instagram.search:user | 3 |
| Detail | One post by ID or link: text, author, likes, comment count, views and publish time. | instagram.detail | 2 |
| Detail · include=transcript | One post by ID or link: full text and timed segments. | instagram.detail:transcript | 2 |
| Comments | The comments under one post: text, likes and time. | instagram.comments | 2 |
| Comments · reply_of | The comments under one post: text and time. | instagram.comments:replies | 2 |
| User Profile | One account: name, bio, followers and following. | instagram.user_profile | 2 |
| User Posts | The recent posts of one account. | instagram.user_posts | 2 |
| Hashtag posts | Get a page of the newest Instagram posts under a hashtag, by its name, about 33 a page. | instagram.hashtag_posts | 2 |
curl https://api.socialtoai.com/v1/search \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $SOCIALTOAI_KEY" \ -H "Idempotency-Key: $(uuidgen)" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "platform": "instagram", "query": "nike", "type": "user" }'- No Instagram account, cookie or developer approval on your side.
- What comes back is what the platform shows publicly; commenters are anonymised.
- Every platform answers in the same response format, so the same code reads Instagram and the others.
- Prepaid credits from 2 credits a call; 100 free credits on sign-up, no card.
Sources
- Instagram: developers.facebook.com, checked 2026-10-17
- Instagram API on SocialToAI: every call and its credits, last tested 2026-10-17
- The live catalog: what is offered now and its credits, readable without a key
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