Instagram API alternative for reading public posts

Meta retired the Instagram Basic Display API in December 2024, and the Graph API only reads accounts that have explicitly authorised your app through app review. There is no first-party way left to read an arbitrary public profile. Public hashtag search is gone too, so profile lookup and search-by-name are the only entry points that still exist.

What people try first

The one-call fix

One request, unified JSON, no proxies or parsers to keep alive. 3 credits a call once you are on credits, and free for your first 5.

curl -H "x-api-key: $SS_KEY" \
  "https://api.socialsearchapi.com/v1/instagram/user-posts?handle=nasa"

Signup is an email and a 6-digit code — no card — and gives you 5 free calls on any platform, so the command above runs as-is.

Real response from that endpoint, captured 2026-07-25:

{
  "success": true,
  "platform": "instagram",
  "data": {
    "total": 12,
    "items": [
      {
        "id": "3948507321457537241",
        "platform": "instagram",
        "type": "post",
        "text": "Sound on! Sonifications take images from across the universe and turn them into music, with different notes correspon...",
        "url": "https://www.instagram.com/p/DbL6n0ggXDZ/",
        "author": "nasa",
        "created_at": "2026-07-24T18:46:42Z",
        "metrics": {
          "comments": 997,
          "likes": 244933,
          "views": 5112905
        },
        "extra": {
          "created_at_raw": 1784918802
        }
      }
    ]
  },
  "credits_used": 3
}

Related

Last verified 2026-07-25. Platform terms and pricing change often — if something here has gone stale, tell us at [email protected].