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Snapchat Spotlight & Stories API: Extract Public Video Data

#api #snapchat #dataengineering #webscraping

Finally, a reliable way to integrate Snapchat Spotlight, Stories, and Creator intelligence into your applications.

The "Black Box" of Social Media Data

For developers and data engineers, Snapchat has always been the final frontier. While platforms like Twitter (X), YouTube, and even TikTok have had varying degrees of accessibility for data extraction, Snapchat has remained notoriously closed.

Its core value proposition—ephemerality—is practically designed to resist archiving and analysis. Content disappears. URLs expire. Sessions are tightly guarded.

For businesses building influencer marketing platforms, social listening tools, or competitive intelligence dashboards, this created a massive blind spot. You could track a creator's YouTube growth and Instagram engagement, but their Snapchat influence? That was a black box.

Introducing the Snapchat Media API

At ImbueData, we specialize in turning social chaos into structured data. Today, we are proud to announce the launch of our Snapchat Media API.

We have engineered the infrastructure to handle the heavy lifting of session management, request signing, and data normalization. The result? A clean, RESTful interface that gives you programmatic access to the ephemeral web.

What You Can Build

This isn't just about scraping; it's about intelligence. Here is what the new API unlocks:

  1. Spotlight Analytics: Track the viral performance of Spotlight videos. Get view counts, engagement stats, and metadata to identify trending content before it hits the mainstream.
  2. Stories & Highlights Preservation: Capture public User Stories and Highlights before they vanish. Perfect for brand monitoring and automated archiving workflows.
  3. Creator Intelligence: Access verified profiles, subscriber counts, and bio information to score influencers and vet partnerships.

Developer Experience: JSON, Not Headaches

We believe APIs should be intuitive. You shouldn't have to reverse-engineer private APIs or manage thousands of proxies. We do that for you.

Here is what a typical response looks like when fetching a Spotlight video:

{
  "status": "success",
  "data": {
    "id": "638ccc72-ac9c-4bd0-8d85-1b1dc3cad24a",
    "title": "Real family moments ❤️",
    "description": "Wait for the end...",
    "uploader": "niikiinfamily",
    "uploader_url": "https://www.snapchat.com/add/niikiinfamily",
    "upload_date": "20230124",
    "timestamp": 1674567890,
    "view_count": 12500,
    "url": "https://cf-st.sc-cdn.net/d/...",
    "thumbnail": "https://cf-st.sc-cdn.net/...",
    "ext": "mp4"
  }
}
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You get direct access to:

  • High-Res Media: Watermark-free MP4 URLs.
  • Clean Metadata: Normalized timestamps and integer-based metrics.
  • Creator Context: Deep links to the uploader's profile.

Use Cases

We are already seeing partners use this endpoint for:

  • Influencer Marketing Platforms: Automatically updating media kits with the latest Snap metrics.
  • Digital Asset Management (DAM): Archiving brand collaborations ensuring no content is lost after 24 hours.
  • Trend Detection AI: Analyze video descriptions and engagement velocity to spot viral trends early.

Getting Started

The Snapchat Media API is available today on the ImbueData platform. We offer a free tier for developers to test the data quality and integration ease.

Stop treating Snapchat as a blind spot. Start building with the full picture of social influence.

👉 Get your API Key

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