Instagram data for brand and competitor monitoring
Know what competitors launch, how audiences respond and which creators talk about you. Poll public accounts, hashtags and comment threads, and store what changes.
How it fits together
Watch
Poll competitor accounts for new posts and reels.
Capture
Record stories before they expire after 24 hours.
Listen
Read the public reaction under a launch post.
Discover
Find who is posting under your campaign and brand hashtags.
Stories are the blind spot
Most monitoring misses Stories because they vanish in a day. Poll the Stories API every few hours, save each new story_id, and archive the media with the Downloader API while the link is valid.
Alerting on change
Keep the last seen shortcode per account. On each run, request the first page of posts and stop at the first shortcode you already have. Anything before it is new, and you can notify your team in Slack or email.
APIs used
- Instagram Posts API: Fetch the latest Instagram posts of any public profile with captions, likes, comments and media links. Cursor pagination, 1 credit per page.
- Instagram Stories API: Fetch the active 24-hour stories of any public Instagram profile as JSON with media links and expiry times. Available on paid plans.
- Instagram Highlights API: List a profile's Instagram highlight albums and fetch the media inside any highlight as JSON. Paid plans, 3 credits per call.
- Instagram Comments API: Read the public comments of any Instagram post or reel as JSON with authors, likes and reply counts. Cursor pagination, 2 credits per page.
- Instagram Hashtag API: Get popular Instagram posts and reels for any hashtag as JSON, with pagination. No weekly hashtag cap. Paid plans, 3 credits per call.
Questions
Can I monitor private accounts?
No. Only public accounts are available.
How often can I poll an account?
As often as your credits and per-minute limit allow. Stories and highlights are available on paid plans.
Can I keep stories after they expire?
You can download and store stories while they are live. Make sure you have the right to keep and use the content.
Guides for this use case
Get your free API key
100 credits every month, no credit card. Make your first request in about two minutes.