How to Cite an Instagram Post or Reel in MLA & APA | Examples

By MLA Generator Editorial Team · Updated July 7, 2026

An Instagram post breaks most of the assumptions a citation is built on. The “title” is a caption — sometimes a paragraph with hashtags and emojis, sometimes nothing at all. The “author” is an account with two names, a display name and an @handle. A Reel, a Story, and a photo post cite differently, and a Story deletes itself after 24 hours. None of this is unsettled, though: the MLA Style Center published Instagram-specific guidance in June 2021, and APA Style covers Instagram in Section 10.15 of the Publication Manual, on a page last updated in June 2024. This guide walks through both, plus how the other five major styles handle the same post.

The shortest answer: in MLA, the account name is the author, with the @handle in square brackets when it differs from that name; the caption, in quotation marks, is the title; Instagram is the italicized container; then the date and the URL without https://. In-text, cite the first element: (Chabon). APA adds the handle in brackets always, caps the caption at 20 words in italics, and appends [Photograph] or [Video].

What counts as an Instagram post or Reel

For citation purposes, an Instagram post is one item with its own permalink: a photo, carousel, video, or Reel living at a URL of the form instagram.com/p/… or instagram.com/reel/…. Those two URL forms resolve to the same content — a Reel is just Instagram’s name for a short video post — so everything in the MLA and APA sections below covers both. APA’s page never uses the word “Reel,” but its Instagram video format is the one that fits — a Reel is a video posted to Instagram.

Some things on Instagram are better cited as something else:

• A profile, account, or Highlight — the page rather than one post — has its own format in both MLA and APA, covered below.
• A Story or an Instagram Live that was never saved is not archived. APA cites unarchived, unretrievable posts as personal communications: in-text only, no reference list entry. MLA still allows a works-cited entry built from a description and the story URL.
• A photo you are reproducing in your paper — pasting the image itself, not just referring to the post — is a figure, and needs an image citation with a credit line.
• A video cross-posted from another platform cites from its original home: a TikTok reposted as a Reel is still a TikTok.
• Something said to you in comments or DMs is a personal communication or interview, not a post.

If it was posted to Instagram and lives at an Instagram permalink, this page applies.

Information to collect before you cite

Open the post in a web browser rather than the app — the web page shows the full date and puts the canonical permalink in the address bar. Then copy:

• Account display name — the name shown on the profile, e.g. “Philadelphia Museum of Art”.
• @handle — the username, e.g. @philamuseum. MLA wants it only when it differs from the display name; APA wants it always.
• The full caption — exactly as written, hashtags and emojis included. This is the title of the work.
• Exact posting date — the app shows “3d” or “2w”; the web page shows the real date.
• The permalink — the instagram.com/p/… or instagram.com/reel/… form, without share-sheet baggage like ?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link.
• What kind of post it is — photo or video. APA’s bracketed label depends on it.
• Date you accessed it — Harvard, Vancouver, IEEE, and AMA want it; MLA and APA do not for an ordinary post.

The generator at / extracts most of these fields from a pasted Instagram URL. Double-check the caption and the date — captions get truncated in previews, and the date is the field Instagram hides hardest in the app.

One Instagram post in all seven styles

The post below is the one APA Style uses as the official Instagram video example — the Reel-equivalent — so the APA entry here is authoritative rather than constructed.

The source: a video posted by APA’s Public Interest Directorate, which posts as @apapubint. The caption opens: “Male depression is serious, but many men try to ignore it or refuse treatment. Different men have different symptoms, but …” Posted June 14, 2019. URL: https://www.instagram.com/p/BysOqenB1v7/. Accessed July 4, 2026.

Three details in that table deserve a closer look. First, the handle. MLA and APA both record it in square brackets after the account name — MLA only because “APA Public Interest Directorate” and “@apapubint” differ, APA always and with the @ sign attached. Chicago’s rule, CMOS 18 (2024), section 14.106, puts the real name first and the handle in parentheses. The remaining styles use the account name alone, like any web author.

Second, the caption as title. MLA puts it in quotation marks as written; this caption runs long, so the entry gives its opening words followed by an ellipsis — MLA’s marker for a shortened title. APA cuts the caption at exactly 20 words, italicizes it, and appends [Video]. Harvard italicizes it; Vancouver, IEEE, and AMA treat it as an ordinary webpage title and add an access date.

Third, the URL. APA’s official entry ends with ?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link because that is the share link APA’s own staff copied — proof that a tracking parameter will not get your citation marked wrong. A clean /p/ or /reel/ permalink is still the safer habit, and it is what every other row uses. APA takes no period after the URL; MLA does.

The in-text citation for the same post:

• MLA: (APA Public Interest Directorate) — first element of the entry, no date
• APA: (APA Public Interest Directorate, 2019) or narrative: APA Public Interest Directorate (2019)
• Chicago author–date: (APA Public Interest Directorate 2019) — no comma
• Harvard: (APA Public Interest Directorate, 2019)
• Vancouver: (1), [1], or superscript ¹, per your journal
• AMA: superscript ¹
• IEEE: [1]

How to cite an Instagram post or Reel in MLA

The MLA 9 works-cited template:

Account Name [@handle]. “Caption of the post.” Instagram, Day Mon. Year, URL.

The MLA Style Center’s own post example, from “How do I cite material posted on a social media platform like Instagram?”:

Chabon, Michael. “#rip Milton Glaser. I grew up in his work. So hard to pick a favorite, maybe this, which also features one of the many awesome typefaces he designed, Baby Teeth. #mahaliajackson #miltonglaser.” Instagram, 28 June 2020, www.instagram.com/p/CB-E9gngVwo/.

Note what the example keeps: the whole caption, hashtags included, reproduced as written rather than converted to title case. No handle appears because account name and author name match; when they differ, the handle goes in square brackets, as in the video example below. The container Instagram is italicized, the URL drops https://, and months longer than four letters are abbreviated (Dec., Sept.) while short ones are spelled out (June, July).

The in-text citation is whatever begins the entry, with no date: (Chabon) or (Hamilton Videos).

The variants, each from MLA’s official examples:

A Reel or any video. MLA’s page is dated 30 June 2021 and never uses the word “Reel” — but its video example is exactly the pattern a Reel needs. With no caption, a plain description takes the title slot, no quotation marks; a work’s title inside the description keeps its italics:

Hamilton Videos [@hamilton.vods]. Video of King George in Hamilton. Instagram, 5 July 2020, www.instagram.com/p/CCPEUJLDz0l/.

A photo with no caption. Same move — describe it:

Thomas, Angie. Photo of burned copy of The Hate U Give. Instagram, 4 Dec. 2018, www.instagram.com/p/Bq_PaXKgqPw/.

A profile. Cite the page with the generic label “Posts.” in the title slot and the year alone:

Gay, Roxane. “Posts.” Instagram, 2020, www.instagram.com/roxanegay74/.

A Story or Highlight. A Highlight is cited like a profile, with its name as the title — Guggenheim Museum. “People.” Instagram, 2020, www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17850044881917911/. — and even an unsaved Story can be cited with a description, the posting date, and the story URL:

The Museum of Modern Art. Image of Fernand Léger’s The Three Musicians. Instagram, 14 July 2020, www.instagram.com/stories/themuseumofmodernart/2353246125954046321.

MLA does not require an access date for any of these, but calls one optional and useful for content that can vanish — which a Story does, 24 hours after posting, unless it is saved as a Highlight.

How to cite an Instagram post or Reel in APA

The APA 7 reference template, from APA Style’s “Instagram references” page (Publication Manual, 7th ed., Section 10.15 — guidance new to the 7th edition, last updated June 2024):

Account Name [@handle]. (Year, Month Day). First 20 words of the caption [Photograph]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/ID/

The official photo example:

Philadelphia Museum of Art [@philamuseum]. (2019, December 3). “It’s always wonderful to walk in and see my work in a collection where it’s loved, and where people are [Photograph]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/B5oDnnNhOt4/

That title starts with a quotation mark that never closes — the caption itself opens with a quote, and the 20-word cutoff falls inside it. APA reproduces the fragment exactly rather than tidying it. The rules behind the entry, quoted from the page: “Provide the first 20 words of the post as the title. Count a URL, a hashtag, or an emoji as one word each, and include them in the reference if they fall within the first 20 words. Do not italicize emojis.” The bracketed label says what the post is — [Photograph], [Video] — and the same page notes that “the format used for Instagram is also used for X and TikTok.” For a Reel, use the video format, as in the table above. No period follows the URL.

In-text: parenthetical (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2019) or narrative Philadelphia Museum of Art (2019).

APA’s variants:

A profile. Profiles change over time and are not archived, so APA dates them (n.d.), labels them [Instagram profile], and — unlike a post — requires a retrieval date:

Swift, T. [@taylorswift]. (n.d.). Posts [Instagram profile]. Instagram. Retrieved January 9, 2020, from https://www.instagram.com/taylorswift

A Highlight. Same logic, with the Highlight’s name as the title:

The New York Public Library [@nypl]. (n.d.). The raven [Highlight]. Instagram. Retrieved January 6, 2020, from https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17962199170163462/

A Story or Instagram Live. APA’s rule: cite a temporary post or livestream that is not archived and cannot be retrieved by any other means as a personal communication — in-text only, (Account Name, personal communication, June 14, 2019), no reference list entry. If the Story was saved as a Highlight, cite the Highlight instead.

Edge cases

No caption at all. MLA fills the title slot with your own plain-text description — “Photo of …”, “Video of …” — no quotation marks, sentence-style capitalization. APA lets the bracketed description stand alone as the title: [Photograph]. Either way, describe what the post shows, factually, and keep any work titles inside the description italicized.

Emojis and hashtags. They are part of the caption, so they are part of the title. MLA reproduces the caption as written. APA counts each URL, hashtag, or emoji as one word toward the 20-word cap and keeps them if they fall inside it — but never italicizes an emoji. Chicago’s CMOS 18 counts emojis within the up-to-280 characters of post text it quotes in place of a title. Do not strip any of this out to make the citation look tidier; the caption is a quotation of the account’s own text.

The other five styles. Chicago’s rule is CMOS 18, section 14.106, “Social media content” (2024 — many library guides still point to the 17th edition’s 14.209): cite in the text or a note where possible, real name then (@handle), the post text quoted up to 280 characters in place of a title, then a label and date like “Instagram video, June 14, 2019,” and the URL; DMs are personal communications. AMA 11 covers social media in section 3.15.4 of its online manual but recommends citing a more stable source when one exists. The IEEE Reference Guide has no Instagram-specific entry, so IEEE papers adapt the online-media template, ending “Accessed: date. [Online]. Available: URL”. Harvard has no central authority; Leeds Harvard’s published pattern is author, year, title, [Instagram], day month, accessed date, URL. Vancouver’s source manual, NLM’s Citing Medicine, has no social-media entry; the closest fit is its blogs format, filed in Chapter 26 with email and discussion forums — the table above shows the engine’s rendering of all five.

The account changed its name, or the post was deleted. Cite what you saw: the name, handle, caption, and date as they stood when you accessed the post. Chicago says explicitly to retain a copy of anything you cite from social media, and that is good practice in every style — take a screenshot or save a Wayback Machine snapshot at the moment you cite. If the post is gone and you have an archive link, give the archive URL with a brief note.

”Instagram video” vs. IGTV vs. Reel. Instagram retired IGTV in 2021, folding it first into “Instagram Video” and later into Reels — yet APA’s page, last updated June 2024, still shows an IGTV profile example, and MLA’s page — published in June 2021, after Reels launched — never mentions Reels at all. Neither is a problem: both styles cite by what the source is — a video posted to Instagram on a date, at a URL — not by Instagram’s marketing name for it that year. Use [Video] in APA and the caption-or-description pattern in MLA, whatever the app called the format.

”Can I cite Instagram in an academic essay?” Yes — MLA and APA both publish official Instagram formats, so the mechanics are settled. The evidentiary question is separate: a post is a primary source, strong for what an account said or showed and when, weak for whether a claim in the caption is true. Verify facts against a conventionally published source and cite that too.

A final principle: cite the post as the account published it — name and handle, the caption with its hashtags and emojis, the date the platform records — and give a permalink that will still resolve when your reader clicks it. Everything Instagram-specific in MLA and APA is just machinery for those two commitments.

Editorial methodology and sources