Reels Downloader

Paste a public Reel link — Instagram or Facebook — and this page resolves the video and offers it as an MP4.

Reels get confused with Stories constantly, and the two behave nothing alike. The first section sorts that out, because it decides whether you are on the right page at all.

A Reel is not a Story

They look similar — both vertical, both full-screen, both scrolled with a thumb — but they are different objects with different rules.

A Reel is permanent. It lives on the account's profile grid until deleted, and its link keeps working indefinitely. There is no rush.

A Story expires after 24 hours and then stops being served entirely. That is a different tool: the Story Downloader.

If your link came from tapping a circle at the top of the feed, it is a Story. If it came from the Reels tab, a profile grid, or a share sheet on a permanent post, it is a Reel and you are in the right place. Getting this wrong is the single most common reason a link fails here.

Instagram Reels vs Facebook Reels

Both resolve here, and both go through the same pipeline, but they do not behave identically.

Facebook Reels are generally the more reliable of the two, particularly when posted by a Page — Page content is public by default and does not sit behind visibility settings.

Instagram Reels fail more often. Instagram is aggressive about blocking automated access, and it restricts more content to logged-in viewers than it used to. A Reel that plays fine for you while logged in may not be publicly reachable at all.

The practical move: if an Instagram Reel refuses and the creator also cross-posted it to a Facebook Page, take the Facebook copy. Same clip, better odds. The Facebook Downloader page explains why Meta links behave this way.

Living with a 9:16 file

Take Best quality (auto) and you get a single MP4 in the Reel's original vertical frame — nothing cropped, rotated or padded. What that means afterwards catches people out.

On a phone it is perfect. Full screen, exactly as it looked in the app.

On a desktop player it gets black bars. A 9:16 video in a 16:9 window has to fill the sides with something. That is correct behaviour, not a fault in the file.

In a horizontal edit it is a problem. Dropping a vertical clip into a widescreen timeline leaves you cropping to roughly the middle third, or building a blurred-background filler. Decide which before you start, because re-cropping late is painful.

On a TV it depends entirely on the app. Some pillar-box it, some stretch it. Stretching is the app's choice, not something in the download.

If you want a horizontal version there is no download setting for it — the extra picture was never filmed. That is a deliberate crop you make in an editor.