Instagram user posts API: exporting the profile grid

A profile grid is the public face of an account — and a complete grid export is engagement analysis, content auditing and growth tracking in one dataset. The user media endpoint walks it page by page.

The endpoint

GET /v1/ig/user/media/{user_id}?count=12&max_id=<cursor>

user_id is the numeric pk (see username resolution); count sets the requested page size; max_id carries the cursor from the previous response's next_max_id.

The walk

from getsocialapi import Client

ig = Client(api_key="gsa_live_...").instagram

posts, cursor = [], None
while True:
    page = ig.user_medias(user_id="25025320", count=12, max_id=cursor)
    posts += page["items"]
    cursor = page.get("next_max_id")
    if not cursor:
        break

print(len(posts), "posts")

Pages concatenate cleanly — no dedupe needed for a stable account. For an account that posts mid-export, re-run and merge by media pk.

What each item carries

Field	Meaning
media_type	1 = photo, 2 = video, 8 = carousel
caption.text	post caption (first carousel item for carousels)
like_count, comment_count	engagement counters
view_count	video views
taken_at	publish timestamp
carousel_media[]	per-item media for type 8

The media-type split alone answers most content-strategy questions: photo/video/carousel ratio, engagement by format, posting cadence from taken_at deltas.

Variants worth knowing

• Tagged posts — posts where the account appears tagged; same pagination contract. Good for UGC monitoring.
• Stories — the ephemeral layer, no pagination (active stories in one response).
• Hashtag posts — the same item shape from a different entry point.

Sizing the export

A 500-post archive is ~40 requests at count=12 — under a minute within plan RPS. For 10 000+ post archives, checkpoint the cursor every N pages; it is stable across sessions, so the export can resume after any interruption without re-walking.

The Python walker above is ~8 lines — 100 free calls cover a medium-sized profile end to end.

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