Yes. Instagram Stories can be scheduled and published automatically.
The more interesting question is which Stories should be, because a Story is ephemeral by design and scheduling something that disappears is a different proposition from scheduling a feed post.
What a Story needs
Through BulkPublish:
| Media | Required. Every Instagram format requires media, Stories included |
| Images | Up to 8 MB, JPG |
| Video | Up to 1 GB, MP4 or MOV |
Full-screen vertical, same as a Reel. A landscape image in a Story sits in a band with empty space above and below.
Interactive stickers stay native
This is the honest limitation worth stating up front.
Stories are known for polls, question boxes, quizzes, countdowns and music stickers. Those interactive elements are built into Instagram’s own composer and generally stay there. A scheduled Story is the media and the caption, not the sticker set.
So the split is roughly:
Worth scheduling: announcements, reminders, links, behind-the-scenes photos, anything that’s fundamentally an image or video with a message.
Do natively: anything built around a poll, a question box or a trending audio sticker. The interaction is the point, and it needs the native composer.
Which Stories benefit from being scheduled
A Story disappears, so scheduling one is about hitting a moment rather than filling a library. The ones that genuinely benefit:
- Event reminders, timed to an hour before something starts
- Launch-day sequences, where several Stories need to land in order across a day
- Recurring prompts, like a weekly reminder that something is open
- Time-zone coverage, where you want a Story live while you’re asleep
What doesn’t benefit is the spontaneous, which is most of what Stories are for. If you’re scheduling every Story, the format is probably not being used for what it’s good at.
Scheduling one
- Connect your Instagram account
- Choose Story as the format
- Upload the vertical image or video
- Pick a date and time and queue it
Media rules are checked before it’s queued, so an oversized file is caught while you’re composing.
Facebook Stories too
Facebook also supports Stories, and takes the same vertical media. If both are part of what you run, they can be queued together from one upload rather than done twice.
Plan limits
BulkPublish publishes to Instagram and 14 other networks.
- Channels: Free: 3 (1 per platform). Pro: 30 (2 per platform). Business: 75 (5 per platform).
- Posts: Free: 3/day. Pro: 30/day. Business: unlimited.
- Storage: Free: 100 MB. Pro: 2 GB. Business: 10 GB.
Note that a Story counts against your daily posting limit like any other post, which matters if you post Stories in sequences.
Short answer
Yes, Stories can be scheduled, and they need vertical media like any Instagram format. Interactive stickers stay in Instagram’s own composer, so schedule the announcements, reminders and sequences, and do the polls and question boxes natively.