Post to Instagram with n8n — FREE Meta Developer Setup

Want to post to Instagram with n8n — for free, with no paid scheduling tool? In this video I connect the Instagram API to n8n and publish a real image with a caption straight from a workflow, using nothing but a free Meta developer app. Most creators and small business owners pay every month for tools like Buffer or Later just to push a single Instagram post. But Instagram has its own free API, and once you connect it to n8n you can publish images, captions, and eventually entire content calendars on autopilot — at zero cost. The hard part has always been the setup: the Meta developer dashboard is confusing, access tokens expire in an hour, and the official docs are written for engineers. So I broke the whole thing into 4 simple steps that anyone can follow, even if you've never touched an API before. Here's what we do. You'll create a Meta developer app from scratch, add your own Instagram account as a tester so the app is allowed to access it, and generate a long-lived access token that stays valid for 60 days instead of dying in an hour. Then we move into n8n and call the Instagram Graph API live — /me to grab your Instagram user ID, /media to create the image container along with your caption, and /media_publish to push the post live to your feed. By the end you'll have published a real image to Instagram entirely through n8n and the Meta API, and you'll understand exactly how each call fits together so you can build anything on top of it. This is part of The AI Solopreneur — a build-in-public series where I build a complete AI consultancy business from zero using free and open source tools. Every episode adds one more layer you can copy for your own business: a free website, business email, a booking system, and now Instagram automation. Follow along and you'll end up with the same stack I'm using to run everything. WHAT YOU'LL SET UP ✅ A free Meta developer app ✅ Your Instagram account added as a tester ✅ A 60-day Instagram access token ✅ Your Instagram user ID via the /me endpoint ✅ A media container with /media (image + caption) ✅ A published post with /media_publish ✅ The whole thing wired into one n8n workflow TIMESTAMPS 00:00 — The 4 steps (what we're building) 00:25 — Step 1: Create your Meta developer app 01:40 — Step 2: Add your Instagram account as a tester 02:35 — Step 3: Generate your access token 03:48 — Step 4: Build the n8n workflow 04:00 — Get your Instagram ID with /me 04:47 — Create the image container with /media 07:35 — Publish the post with /media_publish 08:10 — T he post is live + what's next TOOLS USED 🔧 n8n — https://n8n.io 🔧 Meta for Developers — https://developers.facebook.com CONNECT 🌐 Website: https://byabhishekdubey.com ✉️ Work with me: hi@byabhishekdubey.com WATCH PREVIOUS ▶️ Free Booking System with Cal.com:    • Free Booking System for Your Website — Cal...   📺 Full series — The AI Solopreneur:    • The AI Solopreneur   #n8n #InstagramAPI #automation #AISolopreneur #nocode