Post

Any endpoint that returns a post returns it in this shape, whichever platform it came from. Write one parser and it reads posts from every platform the API serves. This page describes schema 2, which every key gets from October 4, 2026. What changed from the previous shape is on Schema 2.

Where posts sit in data

A list also carries data.total, the total the platform states (not the size of this page), and data.truncated, true when the platform cut the list short. Both are null when the platform does not say. The next page is in pagination.next_cursor; see Pagination.

Example

One row from /v1/instagram/profile/posts?handle=nasa, shortened:

{
  "success": true,
  "platform": "instagram",
  "endpoint": "/v1/instagram/profile/posts",
  "schema_version": "2",
  "data": {
    "items": [
      {
        "post": {
          "id": "3983374110243288826",
          "url": "https://www.instagram.com/nasa/p/DdHyaYAifb6/",
          "kind": "carousel",
          "content": {
            "text": "Cementing their names in history. …",
            "media_urls": ["https://scontent-lga3-2.cdninstagram.com/v/…", "https://scontent-lga3-3.cdninstagram.com/v/…"],
            "thumbnail_url": null,
            "duration_seconds": null
          },
          "author": {
            "id": "528817151",
            "username": "nasa",
            "display_name": "NASA",
            "avatar_url": "https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/…",
            "verified": true
          },
          "engagement": { "views": null, "likes": 120041, "comments": 978, "shares": null, "saves": null },
          "flags": {
            "nsfw": null, "spoiler": null, "pinned": true, "deleted": false,
            "likes_hidden": null, "comments_hidden": null, "shares_hidden": null,
            "views_hidden": null, "saves_hidden": null
          },
          "published_at": "2026-09-10T21:20:24.000Z",
          "language": null,
          "ext": { "media_type": "carousel", "carousel_count": 4 }
        }
      }
    ],
    "total": null,
    "truncated": null
  },
  "pagination": { "next_cursor": "v2c.ZIyWbi3x…", "has_more": true, "page_size": 12 },
  "unavailable": [],
  "credits_used": 10,
  "credits_remaining": 9990,
  "request_id": "req_bc4ed40ba570",
  "cached": false,
  "idempotent_replay": false,
  "charge_reason": "miss",
  "free_call": false
}

Fields

Every field below is always present. A value the platform does not give is null, never left out and never a placeholder.

Counts: null is not 0

A count is a whole number of zero or more, or null. null means the platform does not show it, or hides it on this post. 0 means it really is zero. Do not add a null into a total as if it were zero.

Extension fields (ext)

Platform-specific extras. Each one appears only on platforms that provide it and is left out elsewhere, so treat all of them as optional. They hold detail the unified fields cannot, and the IDs that let you pass a result from one endpoint into the next. ext is null when a post has no extras.

Keys are always snake_case, on every platform, YouTube included (made_for_kids, category_id). An ext value whose key ends in _id is a string, and one whose key ends in _at is an ISO 8601 UTC time. ext never carries our cursors or tokens; page with pagination.next_cursor.

Which platforms fill which fields

Every platform returns this shape. id and flags.deleted are never null. The table covers the nine platforms the API launched with. The others return the same shape, and each response's unavailable list names the fields it could not fill. How to read the table: yes marks a field the platform is able to supply, though any single row can still have it null. An empty cell marks a field that platform never supplies, so expect null every time.

Instagram saves come only from /v1/instagram/post/stats with include=saves. See Metric substitutions for the full list of per-platform nulls.

The three fields schema 2 added are filled where the platform gives them:

• author.id: Facebook, Instagram list endpoints, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube (the channel ID) and Reddit, where it is the account's t2_… ID with the prefix kept, the same value comments and profiles carry. On Threads, Twitter/X and Pinterest the source usually gives none, so it is null and the response lists it in unavailable.
• kind: read from the platform's own media or content type where it sends one (Instagram, YouTube), and otherwise only where the format is certain: a reel or Shorts URL, a TikTok video, a LinkedIn article. null otherwise.
• language: only where the platform tags it, such as YouTube, Reddit and Twitter/X.

unavailable

When a field the platform normally fills is null on every post in a response, the response lists its path in unavailable, for example "items[].post.author.id". One filled row is enough to keep a field off the list. Fields a platform never shows publicly are never listed, so you are not told on every call:

Instagram shares and saves are on the list because only the endpoints named above fill them; a plain Instagram post leaves them null without that being a gap. TikTok and Twitter/X have nothing on the list. kind, content.* and language are never listed on any platform, because null there usually describes the post (a photo has no duration) rather than a missing field.

More on this in Data availability.

Returned by

Endpoints that return a post or a list of posts use this shape on:

Facebook · Instagram · LinkedIn · Pinterest · Reddit · Threads · TikTok · Twitter/X · YouTube

To see which native platform field feeds each unified field, read Field equivalence.