The best app for Instagram stories, ranked honestly

Start with what Instagram already has

Most story apps exist to sell you something Instagram gives away, and it is worth knowing what is already there before installing anything.

Layout mode inside the Stories camera makes a grid of two to six photos in seconds. Text has several typefaces, alignment, colour, a highlight plate behind the words and a size slider, which is enough for almost any story that is mostly words. Stickers cover polls, questions, countdowns, music, links, location and quizzes, and they are the only part of a story designed to get a reply. Draw includes a marker and a highlighter that people use as a background fill.

What Instagram does not do well: multi-layer design, precise typography, brand colours saved for reuse, and anything resembling a consistent template applied across a run of stories. Those four are the honest reasons to install something else, and if none of them describe what you want, you do not need an app.

Our page on Instagram story ideas covers what to post; this one is only about what to post it with.

The shortlist, ranked

1. Instagram itself. Free, already open, and the only place the interactive stickers work. Verdict: the answer for most stories, most of the time. Weakness: no saved styles, no layering, and typography that is fine rather than good.
2. Canva. The largest free template library of anything here, a real design canvas with layers, brand colours saved for reuse, and clean exports on the free plan. Verdict: the best app to add if you want stories that look designed. Weakness: drop in one premium element and the whole export is watermarked, and its templates are widely used enough to be recognisable.
3. Edits, by Instagram. Free, from Meta, for the video half: trimming, cutouts, green screen, generated captions, audio cleanup, and 4K export with no watermark. Verdict: the obvious video companion. Weakness: it is a video tool, so it does nothing for a still photo story.
4. Unfold. The original minimal story template app, still the best at that specific editorial look: generous white space, restrained type, film-like frames. Verdict: worth it if that aesthetic is exactly what you want. Weakness: a subscription for most of the packs, and the look is strongly associated with the app.
5. CapCut. Overkill for a still story and the right tool for a story that is a short edited video with captions and music. Verdict: use it when the story is really a small reel. Weakness: the usual upsell, and its music does not travel outside its own platforms.
6. Lightroom or Snapseed. Not story apps at all, and named because a well-edited photo posted plainly beats a badly lit photo in a beautiful template. Verdict: fix the photo first. Weakness: no layout or text tools worth using.
7. Dedicated story template apps. A large category of apps offering hundreds of animated templates. Verdict: occasionally useful for a specific effect. Weakness: most watermark the free tier, many charge a subscription for a library you will use twice, and the templates are recognisable at a glance.

Compared: best for, and the real weakness

ShutterAI has no row here. It is our own app, it has not shipped, and it is not a story editor. There is a labelled note at the end.

The trouble with templates

Templates solve a real problem and create a different one, and it is worth being clear about both.

The problem they solve is consistency. A run of stories that share a typeface, a colour and a margin reads as considered, and most people cannot rebuild that by hand every day. Saving one layout and reusing it is the single biggest improvement available to anyone posting regularly.

The problem they create is recognisability. A popular template is used by thousands of accounts, and the people who follow you see it several times a day. The story then reads as the template first and as your content second, which is precisely the effect you were trying to avoid.

The way through is to make one template rather than to use many. Pick one typeface, one text size, one margin and two colours, taken from the photos you actually post. Build it once in Canva, save it, and use it for months. It will be plainer than anything in a template store and it will be yours.

A reliable shortcut for the colours: pull them from your own photographs rather than from a palette generator. Stories built around colours that already appear in your images sit together naturally, which is the same principle as our feed aesthetic guide.

The video half of stories

A growing share of stories are video, and that is a different toolset.

Edits is free, made by Meta, and the natural fit: frame-accurate trimming, cutouts and green screen, video overlays, generated captions, audio cleanup and 4K export with no watermark. Since a single story clip can now run up to about a minute, a whole explanation can live in one frame, and an editor is genuinely useful for tightening it.

CapCut is the alternative when you want templates and effects, with the caveats that apply everywhere: premium templates watermark the export, free export tops out at 1080p, and its music library is licensed for its own platforms. Our video editing app comparison covers both in full.

Filming is a separate question again, answered on our video camera app page. Short version: the stock Camera app for anything handheld, because its stabilisation is not available to third-party apps.

One practical point for stories specifically: captions matter more here than anywhere, because stories are watched with the sound off in public more than any other format. Generated captions take thirty seconds and are the highest-value thing you can add to a story video.

Where ShutterAI fits

Disclosure: this is ours, and it has not been released, so it is here as a note rather than a recommendation. ShutterAI is a camera, not a story editor. There are no story templates, no layout tools and no text layers, and for the job on this page Instagram's own tools plus Canva will serve you better.

The parts that touch stories are Photo Dump curation, which cuts a large camera roll down to a set that hangs together, and captions written in your own voice from examples you give it, which helps when the story needs words and none are coming. It reaches iPhone this fall and is free to start. The waitlist is here.