Basic Display is gone
Meta announced the deprecation on September 4, 2024, and since December 4, 2024 every request to the Instagram Basic Display API returns an error. Apps that showed a personal account's photos, such as website feeds and journaling apps, lost that ability. Meta points developers to the Instagram Graph API instead.
What the Instagram Graph API can do
| Need | Graph API |
|---|---|
| Manage and publish to your own account | Yes, with a business or creator account linked to a Meta app |
| Your own insights, comments and mentions | Yes |
| Other accounts' data | Only basic data of other business or creator accounts, through Business Discovery |
| Personal accounts | No |
| Hashtag search | Limited to 30 unique hashtags per 7 days |
| Getting started | Meta app, app review, and a business or creator account |
Source: Meta for Developers documentation for the Instagram Basic Display API and the Instagram Graph API. Limits change; check Meta's docs before you build.
Who's left without an option
Influencer research, brand and competitor monitoring, social listening and AI agents usually need public posts and comments from accounts you don't own, often many of them. The Graph API wasn't built for that, and the 30-hashtag weekly cap rules out most monitoring.
Reading public Instagram data with Vanefeed
Vanefeed's Instagram API reads public Instagram pages for any public account. There's no Meta app, app review or account linking on your side.
| Endpoint | What you get | Price |
|---|---|---|
instagram/profile | Followers, following, post count, bio, links, verification, category | 1 credit |
instagram/posts | An account's posts and reels with likes, comments, views and media | 2 credits per 20 |
instagram/post | One post or reel by URL | 1 credit |
instagram/comments | Comments under a post | 2 credits per 20 |
instagram/search | Posts for one hashtag, with no weekly cap | 3 credits per 20 |
1,000 posts or comments cost 100 credits, about $0.10–$0.15 on our packs. Failed calls cost nothing.
Try it
# a public profile (1 credit)
curl "https://api.vanefeed.com/v1/instagram/profile?handle=nasa" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $VANEFEED_KEY"import os, requests
r = requests.get("https://api.vanefeed.com/v1/instagram/posts",
params={"handle": "nasa", "limit": 40},
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['VANEFEED_KEY']}"})
for post in r.json()["data"]:
print(post["published_at"], post["metrics"], post["text"][:60])Which should you use?
- Publishing to, or reporting on, your own business account: use the Graph API.
- Reading public profiles, posts, comments or hashtags from accounts you don't own: use Vanefeed.
Vanefeed only returns public content. Private accounts, stories and direct messages are never collected.
100 free credits
Enough for about 1,000 Instagram posts or comments. No card needed.