Instagram Data API

The Instagram Data API is FetchPI's read interface for Instagram: documented REST endpoints that return publicly available Instagram data as structured JSON. Instead of parsing pages or maintaining a per-platform scraper, you call an endpoint and read a normalized response with stable field names — the same schema shape every FetchPI platform uses. All 12 documented endpoints belong to capability families, each with its own reference page, parameter table and examples.

The API covers the Instagram capability families listed in the table above: 12 families and 12 endpoints, each documented with its parameters and response schema. Typical workloads include profile enrichment, post and comment collection, follower-graph analysis, keyword monitoring and trend tracking. The exact fields a family returns are documented on its capability page — the API does not promise any data type that is not in the contract.

Capability families published for Instagram today:

• profile
• user_posts
• post
• comments
• search_posts
• comment_replies
• user_followers
• user_following
• search_users
• stories
• highlights
• post_likers

Three steps from zero to the first response:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $MESHDATA_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.fetchpi.com/v1/ig/users/newdev"

Every endpoint accepts the freshness parameters the whole Data API shares: cache answers from the stored snapshot without touching the upstream, live queries fresher data and may cost extra credits, and max_age caps the acceptable data age in seconds. The response meta block reports the mode, age and serving layer that produced each answer, so downstream systems can act on freshness instead of guessing it. What the API does not promise is real-time upstream state — the meta block is the honest report of what you got.

A self-built Instagram scraper owns the happy path and everything after it: page layouts change, anti-bot measures tighten, and every parser fix lands on your roadmap. The Data API turns that maintenance into a contract — documented request and response schemas, published error codes for the not-found and rate-limited cases, and one integration shape reused across every FetchPI platform. The scope stays honest on both sides: the API serves publicly available data only, never asks for your account credentials, and is not an official Instagram product.

Three reasons that show up in the integration, not just the pitch:

• ▸One normalized schema — Instagram responses use the same field structure as every other FetchPI platform, so a multi-platform pipeline parses once.
• ▸Transparent freshness — every response reports its freshness mode, age and serving layer; you choose cache or live per request and pay accordingly.
• ▸Usage-based billing — per-request Credits with published per-capability prices, no seats and no flat plans; the meta block reports what each call consumed.

Billing is per request in Credits: each capability has a published per-call price, cache answers cost less than live fetches, and top-ups are self-serve. Endpoints are rate-limited — a throttled call returns the documented RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED error rather than a silent failure — and every response's meta block reports the credits it consumed. Current per-capability prices live on the pricing page; the docs carry the full error-code and rate-limit reference.

View pricing →