Instagram Media Scraper Without API (Working January 2024)

This is simple Node.js (v18.16+) script to get public information and media (images, videos, carousel) from a specific instagram post or reel URL without API. Working in 2024.

You can get information, image versions, video versions and carousel media with their respective image versions and/or video versions of each of them.

How to get your Cookie, User-Agent and X-Ig-App-Id

• Login to Instagram

• Go to your profile page or any instagram page.

• Right click and inspect or press F12 (Chrome).

  1. Select Network tab.
  2. Selec All filter.
  3. Select timeline/ or yourusername/ or instagram/ or any of the graphql files. You can use the filter field to search for it. If it's empty just refresh the page.
  4. Select Headers bar.
  5. Scroll down and look for Request Headers tab.
  6. Look for ds_user_id and sessionid and copy its values from your Cookies.
  7. Copy your User-Agent code.

     User-Agent is included in the code, but I recommend to get your own.

  8. Copy your X-Ig-App-Id code.

  - Your cookie will expire if you log out or switch accounts, you will need to get it again.

Don't share your cookie code with anyone!

Example

// Required headers example
const _userAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/114.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"; // Use this one or get your User-Agent from your browser
const _cookie = "ds_user_id=...; sessionid=...;"; // required! get your Cookie values from your browser
const _xIgAppId = "93661974..."; // required! get your X-Ig-App-Id from your browser

// Function to get instagram post ID from URL string
const getId = (url) => {
  const regex = /(?:https?:\/\/)?(?:www\.)?instagram\.com\/(?:[^/]+\/)?([^/?]+)/;
  const result = regex.exec(url);
  return result && result.length > 1 ? result[1] : null;
};

// Function to get instagram data from URL string
const getInstagramData = async (url) => {
  const igId = getId(url);
  if (!igId) return "Invalid URL";
  // Fetch data from instagram post
  const response = await fetch(`https://www.instagram.com/p/${igId}?__a=1&__d=dis`, {
    headers: {
      "cookie": _cookie,
      "user-agent": _userAgent,
      "x-ig-app-id": _xIgAppId,
      ["sec-fetch-site"]: "same-origin"
    }
  });
  const json = await response.json();
  const items = json.items[0]; // You can return the entire items or create your own JSON object from them
  
  // Check if post is a carousel
  let carousel_media = [];
  items.product_type === "carousel_container" ? (() => {
    items.carousel_media.forEach(element => {
      carousel_media.push({
        image_versions: element.image_versions2.candidates ?? null,
        video_versions: element.video_versions ?? null
      })
    })
    return carousel_media;
  })() : carousel_media = null;
  
  // Return custom json object
  return {
    code: items.code ?? null,
    created_at: items.taken_at ?? null,
    username: items.user.username ?? null,
    full_name: items.user.full_name ?? null,
    profile_picture: items.user.profile_pic_url ?? null,
    is_verified: items.user.is_verified ?? null,
    is_paid_partnership: items.is_paid_partnership ?? null,
    product_type: items.product_type ?? null,
    caption: items.caption?.text ?? null,
    like_count: items.like_count ?? null,
    comment_count: items.comment_count ?? null,
    view_count: items.view_count ? items.view_count : items.play_count ?? null,
    video_duration: items.video_duration ?? null,
    location: items.location ?? null,
    height: items.original_height ?? null,
    width: items.original_width ?? null,
    image_versions: items.image_versions2?.candidates ?? null,
    video_versions: items.video_versions ?? null,
    carousel_media: carousel_media
  };
};

(async() => {
  // Get data from instagram post or reel URL string
  const data = await getInstagramData("https://www.instagram.com/reel/CtjoC2BNsB2");
  console.log(data);
})();

Stringified JSON output example

{
  "code": "CtjoC2BNsB2",
  "created_at": 1686930107,
  "username": "fatfatpankocat",
  "full_name": "Panko A. Cat",
  "profile_picture": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-19/351028002_1390928218140357_6492853570855484928_n.jpg?.............",
  "is_verified": false,
  "is_paid_partnership": false,
  "product_type": "clips",
  "caption": "Processing speeds are at an all time low",
  "like_count": 50799,
  "comment_count": 112,
  "view_count": 357385,
  "video_duration": 5.293,
  "location": null,
  "height": 1024,
  "width": 576,
  "image_versions": [
    {
      "url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/354801788_1023848012117396_6220977847781610270_n.jpg?.............",
      "height": 1024,
      "width": 576
    },
    {
      "url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/354801788_1023848012117396_6220977847781610270_n.jpg?.............",
      "height": 853,
      "width": 480
    },
    {
      "url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/354801788_1023848012117396_6220977847781610270_n.jpg?.............",
      "height": 569,
      "width": 320
    },
    {
      "url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/354801788_1023848012117396_6220977847781610270_n.jpg?.............",
      "height": 427,
      "width": 240
    },
    {
      "url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/354801788_1023848012117396_6220977847781610270_n.jpg?.............",
      "height": 1080,
      "width": 1080
    },
    {
      "url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/354801788_1023848012117396_6220977847781610270_n.jpg?.............",
      "height": 750,
      "width": 750
    },
    {
      "url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/354801788_1023848012117396_6220977847781610270_n.jpg?.............",
      "height": 640,
      "width": 640
    },
    {
      "url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/354801788_1023848012117396_6220977847781610270_n.jpg?.............",
      "height": 480,
      "width": 480
    },
    {
      "url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/354801788_1023848012117396_6220977847781610270_n.jpg?.............",
      "height": 320,
      "width": 320
    },
    {
      "url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/354801788_1023848012117396_6220977847781610270_n.jpg?.............",
      "height": 240,
      "width": 240
    },
    {
      "url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/354801788_1023848012117396_6220977847781610270_n.jpg?.............",
      "height": 150,
      "width": 150
    }
  ],
  "video_versions": [
    {
      "width": 576,
      "height": 1024,
      "url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/o1/v/t16/f1/m82/F5462086DC54DD10E6E0AC3C9902A2A3_video_dashinit.mp4?.............",
      "type": 101
    },
    {
      "width": 432,
      "height": 768,
      "url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/o1/v/t16/f1/m82/5542D63645ABB4B44E5B31785E6A6181_video_dashinit.mp4?.............",
      "type": 102
    },
    {
      "width": 432,
      "height": 768,
      "url": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/o1/v/t16/f1/m82/5542D63645ABB4B44E5B31785E6A6181_video_dashinit.mp4?.............",
      "type": 103
    }
  ],
  "carousel_media": null
}