A social media feed on your website shows your latest posts from Instagram, X, TikTok, Facebook or YouTube on your own pages. Every platform has an official way to embed a single post, and some can embed a whole profile. Instagram is the tricky one: Meta shut down the Instagram Basic Display API on December 4, 2024, so an automatic Instagram feed now needs a business or creator account and a widget that uses the Instagram API (Meta for Developers).
What each platform lets you embed
| Platform | What you can show | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|
| Single public posts. A live feed only through the Instagram API | On instagram.com: three dots > Embed > Copy Embed Code (BU) | |
| X | Single posts, or a profile or List timeline with the latest 1 to 20 posts | Post menu > Embed post; timelines at publish.x.com (X Help, X docs) |
| TikTok | Single videos, or a creator profile with up to ten recent videos | In a desktop browser: Share > Embed (TikTok for Developers) |
| The Page Plugin for a public Page, 180 to 500 pixels wide | Facebook for Developers | |
| YouTube | Videos | Share > Embed (YouTube Help) |
| Pin, board and profile widgets | Pinterest Developers |
Instagram: what changed in December 2024
Many website widgets used the Basic Display API to show Instagram photos. Since December 4, 2024 “all Instagram Basic Display API requests will fail” (Meta for Developers), so those widgets stopped updating.
- Your own feed now needs a professional account (business or creator) and a widget built on the Instagram API with Instagram Login. You don’t need a Facebook Page for it (Meta for Developers).
- Single posts can be embedded only from public accounts. Private and age-restricted accounts, and accounts that turned embeds off, aren’t supported (Meta for Developers).
- Hashtag feeds, which show other people’s posts with your hashtag, need the other version of the API (with Facebook Login) and are limited to 30 different hashtags in any 7 days (Meta for Developers). If you show customers’ posts as reviews, ask them first.
X and Facebook: the rules that matter
An embedded X timeline shows the latest posts from a profile or a List, and protected accounts can’t be embedded (X Help). Likes, Collections and Moments timelines were retired in January 2023 (X docs). If you build your own display through the X API instead, X’s rules say not to edit posts and to remove a post within 24 hours if it’s deleted on X (X developer guidelines). The API is paid per use, for example $0.005 per post read (X docs).
On Facebook, the Page Plugin still works. The Like and Comments plugins were discontinued on February 10, 2026 and now show as an empty 0x0 pixel (Meta for Developers), so remove them if your site still has them.
The costs: privacy and speed
- Privacy. An embed loads the platform’s own code. X says that through embeds it may receive the page visited, the visitor’s IP address, browser type, operating system and cookie information (X docs). In the EU, the Court of Justice ruled in 2019 that a website embedding Facebook’s Like button shares responsibility for that data and needs visitors’ consent first (CJEU). YouTube offers a Privacy Enhanced Mode that embeds from youtube-nocookie.com (YouTube Help).
- Speed. Many popular embeds add over 100 KB of JavaScript, sometimes up to 2 MB. Load them lazily, show a static preview that loads the real embed on click, and set a width and height so the page doesn’t jump (web.dev).
A few rules for a website feed
- Show a few recent posts rather than a whole wall of them.
- Put the feed below your main content, so it doesn’t slow down what people came for.
- Keep alt text on images. Instagram’s API returns each post’s alt text for this (Meta for Developers), and a useful description is short and says what matters in the image (W3C).
- Link to your profile, so people can follow you there.
A feed only helps if the account behind it is active. For ideas, see how to promote your business on Instagram.
FAQ
Why did my Instagram feed widget stop working?
It most likely used the Basic Display API, which Meta shut down on December 4, 2024. Reconnect it with a business or creator account through the Instagram API.
Can I embed posts from a private account?
No. Instagram and X only embed public accounts.
Do social embeds slow down a website?
They can. Load them lazily or behind a click, and keep the number of embeds low.
Do embedded TikTok videos play on their own?
No. Autoplay is off by default in TikTok’s embed player, and browsers can block it anyway (TikTok for Developers).