Why the Instagram Graph API won't download reels — and what does

It is an account-management API: publish to a professional account you own, read its insights, moderate its comments. The media_url field exists and points at real files — for media that belongs to the account that granted your token. There is no call that takes an arbitrary public reel and returns its video.

First, every media endpoint is scoped to the authorised account. Second, the Basic Display API — the one that used to read a consenting user's own feed — was shut down in December 2024. Third, oEmbed, the only endpoint that accepts a public URL, returns embed HTML and a thumbnail, needs App Review to use, and never returns a video file.

The request is the link and your key. There is no OAuth flow, no App Review and no Instagram account on your side. The endpoint accepts reels, posts, carousels and stories in whatever form the share sheet produced.

curl -s "https://api.saveapi.org/v1/instagram" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_xxxx" \
  -G --data-urlencode "url=https://www.instagram.com/reel/ABC123/"

medias[] holds every file in the post in order, each with a type and a direct URL to the source CDN. meta carries the author and caption. A carousel with two photos and a clip gives two image entries and one video entry; the shape does not change per post.

data = resolve("https://www.instagram.com/reel/ABC123/")

for media in data["medias"]:
    # "video" yoki "image"; karuselda post tartibida keladi
    print(media["type"], media["url"])

print(data["meta"]["author"], data["meta"]["title"])

If you are publishing to your own account, reading its analytics or replying to its comments, stay with the Graph API — that is what it is for and nothing here replaces it. Use a downloader API for the one thing it cannot do: resolving a public post you do not own.