How to Schedule and Publish on Instagram with Metricool

Posting on Instagram efficiently can make a big difference in your social media strategy. With Metricool, you can schedule and auto-publish your content as long as your account is a business or creator profile. However, in some cases, manual publishing via notifications is required.

✅ Quick Summary

Format	Auto-Publishing	Exceptions (Require Manual Publishing)
Post	✅ Yes	Carousels with videos over 60s
Reel	✅ Yes	Trending music
Story	✅ Only for business accounts	Creator accounts, links, interactive stickers

In this article:

Things to Consider
Formats & Available Options
Auto-Publishing
Instagram Presets
Multimedia Options
Manual Publishing
Feed Preview
Image & Video Requirements

👀 Things to Consider

Posting Limit: Instagram’s API allows a maximum of 50 posts (feed posts, Reels, and stories) every 24 hours.
Restrictions when connecting with Instagram credentials: If you connect using Instagram credentials, you can’t tag products, add a first comment, or include locations. To access these options, you’ll need to connect your Instagram account through Facebook.
Video Format: Instagram only allows individual videos to be published as Reels via its API. From Metricool, all videos will be sent as Reels (not as feed posts). You can still include videos in carousels, as long as their aspect ratio is between 4:5 and 16:9.

Formats & Available Options

Metricool allows you to schedule and auto-publish the main Instagram formats, with some exceptions based on API restrictions.



Posts: Appear in the feed and can include an image, video, or carousel (up to 10 images or videos).
Reels: Vertical videos, up to 15 minutes, with the option to also appear in the feed.
Stories: Vertical ephemeral content that disappears after 24 hours.

Option	Posts	Reels	Stories
Add a location	✅	✅	❌
Promote post	✅	✅	❌
Hashtag search (Premium only)	✅	✅	❌
Tag people (Not available in video carousels)	✅	✅	❌
Tag products	✅	✅	❌
Add Alt Text	✅	❌	❌
Mention accounts with @	✅	✅	❌
Add a video thumbnail	✅	✅	❌
Add first comment	✅	❌	❌
Add collaborators (Up to 3)	✅	✅	❌
Tag audio (Must be original audio)	❌	✅	❌
Add trending music	❌	❌	❌

📝 Notes
Character limit: 2,200 per post.
# Limit: 30 per post.

Auto-publishing

With Metricool, you can schedule and auto-post to your Instagram account is a professional business or creator account. Exceptionally, stories for Creator accounts must be published by notification, as well as stories that include links, stickers... which are currently not supported in automatic posting.

Likewise, images and videos (up to 15 minutes) must meet certain requirements to automatically post successfully. You can check the specifications here.
Exceptionally, videos included in carousels should not exceed a duration of 60 seconds.

When you create the post, make sure you select "Feed Post" , "Reels" or "Stories" and that the auto-publish button is enabled.

Instagram Presets

Show Reel on Feed: Activate this option to display your reels in the feed.

Add Collaborator: Add up to 3 collaborators.
The collaborator must validate it, and both accounts will appear as authors of the post. Stories are excluded.
Due to Instagram API limitation, private or age-restricted accounts are not eligible as collaborators Here you can check the steps to verify if your account has age restrictions set.

💡 To learn more, check out our blog post "How to Create Collaborative Posts on Instagram". Remember that collaborative posts will only appear if your account is the creator of the content. To view information about a post where you are a collaborator, you can add the content creator's account as a competitor.

Boost this post: Increase the reach of your posts by promoting them. See more details here.

Multimedia Options

Click on the three dots in the attachment to see all the options:

Edit Video/Image: Edit your multimedia content; expand details in this post.
Tag People: Tagged accounts must be public on Instagram. Refer to the post "Mention and Tag Other Accounts" for more information (not supported for video carousels or stories).
Tag Products: Tag products on Instagram; see the step-by-step here.
Upload video thumbnail: Import a cover for your video.
Select Cover: Choose a frame from the video as the cover.
Tag Audio: Edit the name of the audio (only for Reels) that will be displayed when published. By default, it will show as Original Audio (the video must contain audio, only the name will be edited, and it must be original audio. If it is previously registered, Instagram will automatically rename it).



From Metricool it would not be possible to add trending music to the Reels, the video must be attached edited with the music or disable the 'autopublish' option and publish the post manually as indicated below. About the cover, you can choose it within the video, or upload a file (the image recommended size is 1080px x 1800px). The option is available on the three dots icon on the thumbnail of the attached video.

Manual Publishing

The publication is manual and works via notifications in these cases:

Stories on Creator accounts.
Stories that include links, mentions, stickers...
Videos with Trending Music on Instagram
Any post that does not meet the requirements for autopublishing

When creating the content, select the type of post in the dropdown menu and ensure the auto-publish button is toggled off.

Manual posting works through notifications that you can set up to receive in your email or mobile device (recommended option). This way, when it's time to post, and you click on the notification, the image/s will be downloaded to your gallery, and the text will be automatically copied to the clipboard and redirect you to the Instagram app.

In this tutorial you can see in detail how to set up notifications.

Feed Preview

This feature will help you visualize the design of your Instagram Feed with the scheduled posts in the calendar.

From Planning, click on the three dots and, in the dropdown menu, select "Preview feed". Then, choose the view: iOS (vertical) or Android/Web (square).



Content Information
The information button is displayed on scheduled content, allowing you to easily distinguish scheduled content from already published content (which does not include the button).
Click on the information button of the post to see the scheduled date and the status of the content (pending or draft).
To hide/show the icon, click on the information icon on the right.

The opacity filter visually indicates that the content is in draft.

Edit the content: To edit the post, click on the pencil button.

Additionally, you can zoom in or out on the preview with the magnifying glass icons on the right.

Image & Video Requirements

✓ Images:

- Format: JPEG or PNG
- Size: up to 8 MB
- Aspect ratio: between 4:5 and 1.91:1
- Minimum width: 320 pixels (scaled to minimum if necessary).
- Maximum width: 1440 pixels (scaled down to the maximum if necessary).
- Height: Varies, depending on width and aspect ratio.

Image size:

- Maximum Columns (horizontal pixels): 1920
- Minimum aspect ratio [cols / rows]: 4:5
- Maximum aspect ratio [cols / rows]: 16:9

Instagram does not support ProPhoto RGB, the standard color profile in Photoshop and Lightroom. If used, it may affect the color in the published images.

✓ Reels:

- Size : up to 500 MB
- Duration: from 3 seconds up to 15 minutes
- Container: MOV or MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14), no edit lists, moov atom at the front of the file.
- Audio codec: AAC, 48khz sample rate maximum, 1 or 2 channels (mono or stereo).
- Video codec: H264, progressive scan, closed GOP, 4:2:0 chroma subsampling.
- Audio bit rate: 128kbps
- Video bit rate: VBR, 25Mbps max.
- Frame rate: 23-60 FPS. - Frame rate: 23-60 FPS.

Video size:
- Maximum columns (horizontal pixels): 1920
- Aspect ratio: 9:16 to avoid cropping or blank spaces.

Instagram only allows individual videos to be published as Reels via its API. From Metricool, all videos will be sent as Reels (not as feed posts). You can still include videos in carousels, as long as their aspect ratio is between 4:5 and 16:9.

✓ Stories:

- Story Image Specifications:
Format: JPEG
File size: 8 MB maximum.
Aspect ratio: We recommended 9:16 to avoid cropping or blank space
Color Space: sRGB. Images using other color spaces will have their color spaces converted to sRGB

- Story Video Specifications
Container: MOV or MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14), no edit lists, moov atom at the front of the file.
Audio codec: AAC, 48khz sample rate maximum, 1 or 2 channels (mono or stereo).
Video codec: H264, progressive scan, closed GOP, 4:2:0 chroma subsampling.
Frame rate: 23-60 FPS.
Picture size:
Maximum columns (horizontal pixels): 1920
Required aspect ratio is between 0.1:1 and 10:1 but we recommend 9:16 to avoid cropping or blank space
Video bitrate: VBR, 25Mbps maximum
Audio bitrate: 128kbps
Duration: 60 seconds maximum, 3 seconds minimum
File size: 100MB maximum

Related articles

Tag Instagram Products
Instagram posting errors & troubleshooting
Edit images and videos while scheduling your content
Mention and tag other accounts
How to schedule a first comment
How to add a cover to your posts
Content planning: full guide & FAQs

Don't miss the Trending Hashtags on Instagram. Check them here

Updated on: 05/05/2025