How can you auto post to Instagram?

At a set time: Instagram’s own scheduler

Instagram schedules photos, carousels and Reels from its app, for public accounts, up to 25 posts a day and up to 30 days ahead (Instagram’s Help Center, read on 10 October 2026). For a post: tap Create, then Post, choose the media and tap Next, add a caption, tap More options, turn on Schedule this post, choose a date and time, tap Done, then Back, then Schedule. The Reels steps, and where scheduled posts show, are in how to schedule Instagram Reels. Stories are scheduled elsewhere: how to schedule an Instagram Story.

One post to Facebook and Instagram, scheduled

On a computer, from Meta’s page:

1. Open Meta Business Suite and click Create post.
2. Under Post to, select your Facebook Page and your Instagram profile.
3. Add the media. Meta notes a limit of 10 photos for Instagram. Write the text, which you can customise for each network.
4. Under Scheduling options, select the date and time. Active times suggests when followers were most active on both over the past 7 days.
5. Click Schedule.

When the two are connected, Meta’s page on creating content says posts, reels and stories publish to both by default, and you deselect one under Post to or Share to. The Facebook side takes times from 20 minutes to 29 days away (Meta). Scheduled posts are managed under Content, Posts & reels, Scheduled, or in Planner.

Between Meta’s apps, automatically

Meta also has settings that copy what you post from one of its apps to another. They don’t post for you; they repeat a post you made.

• Instagram to Facebook. With a professional profile connected to a Page, open Menu, Crossposting, and under Share to Facebook as switch on Automatically share (Instagram).
• Facebook to Instagram. In the Facebook app, with both accounts in one Accounts Center, the Instagram button under your name leads to a toggle for Your Facebook posts. Facebook’s page says it isn’t available on a computer (Facebook).

Both are walked through in cross-posting between Facebook and Instagram, and Instagram to Threads in auto-posting from Instagram to Threads.

Through a tool or an agent

A scheduling tool or an AI agent publishes through Instagram’s API. Meta’s content publishing guide limits it to professional accounts and to 100 API-published posts within a moving 24 hours, a carousel counting as one. It has no field for a time: the tool holds the post and publishes it when it is due. A personal account can’t be reached this way, but a public one can use the scheduler above.

Mellow Hub is one such tool. A professional (Business or Creator) Instagram account. A personal account cannot publish through any API. It publishes an Instagram post, Reel or Story and a Facebook Page post together from one request, each with its own caption. An agent that uses it gets only what you choose: its networks, whether its posts publish or wait for your approval, and a daily limit. Can Claude post to Instagram? and Is social media automation allowed? cover the agent route and the networks’ rules.

1. Create a Hub account.
2. Connect your accounts in Channels. Each network’s own sign-in screen opens, so Hub never sees a password. Bluesky is the exception: Hub connects it with your handle and an app password, which you can revoke in Bluesky’s settings.
3. Write the post in Compose, choose the channels and add the media. Where one network’s limit is shorter, give that network its own caption. The composer can shorten it for you.
4. Hub checks every network’s rules before anything is sent: caption length, media count and type, a required title or board. It lists every problem at once, naming the network.
5. Publish now or pick a time. Each network succeeds or fails on its own and returns its own link.

Hub is paid: plans start at $19 a month (Solo), after a 7-day trial with a card on file that costs nothing if you cancel before it ends, and a monthly plan's first month is 20% off. Publishing is unlimited on every plan, under a fair-use ceiling that stops automated floods (900 publications a month on Solo). One publication is one post on one account, so a post sent to five networks counts as five. There are no automatic overage charges.