Short answer. When products show on Facebook but not on Instagram, the catalog is usually fine and the shop is the difference. A product can be hidden from your shop and still run in ads; a shop set to Advanced inventory shows only the products you add to it; a shop is not visible on Instagram until the commerce account review is done and an Instagram business account is connected; and on Instagram an item can be pending or not approved under Meta's commerce policies. Each of these is checked in Commerce Manager, not in your feed.
Your Facebook and Instagram shop and your Meta ads read the same catalog, but they do not show it the same way. That is why “the product is in my catalog, it runs in ads, and it isn't in my Instagram shop” has several possible causes, and why none of them looks like an error in the feed. Below are the ones Meta documents, in the order worth checking.
1. The product is hidden from your shop
By default every product in the catalog is included in the shop, and you can hide or show products one by one. Meta's own note is the key to this case: products that are hidden from your shop can still appear in ads, while archived products appear nowhere (control which products appear in your shop). So a product that advertises on Facebook and is missing from the Instagram shop may simply be hidden there.
To check: in Commerce Manager open the catalog, go to Catalog → Items, click the product and open Shops — it lists the shops the product is shown in and hidden from. To show it again, tick it in Items, open the Shops menu and choose Show in Shops.
2. The shop uses the Advanced inventory setting
Businesses with several shops on one catalog may see two inventory settings under Edit shop → Settings → Inventory. On Default, every catalog product is in the shop unless you hide it. On Advanced, products are not added automatically: they appear only if you add them to a collection, feature them on the shop's home page, show them one by one or tag them in a post (Meta's inventory settings). A new product on an Advanced shop is in the catalog, in your ads, and nowhere in the shop until one of those happens.
3. The shop isn't visible on Instagram yet
Three steps of shop setup decide whether a shop can be seen at all (set up a shop on Facebook and Instagram):
- An Instagram business account has to be in your business portfolio for the shop to be visible on Instagram.
- The commerce account review — “Checking your shop info” in Commerce Manager — can take up to four weeks, and shows as not completed until it is done.
- A checkout URL, which sends shoppers from the shop to checkout on your website, is required for the shop to be visible.
Meta also notes on the same page that some Shops and checkout features are no longer supported, so what a shop offers in your market is worth confirming there before chasing anything else.
4. The item is pending or not approved on Instagram
For accounts already approved for shopping, Instagram reviews items against its commerce policies. The review usually takes seconds but can take longer. An item that is pending or not approved most likely goes against those policies; review it in Commerce Manager, and if you believe it was rejected in error, request a second review (Instagram's product approvals help). A pending collection is visible to you but not to shoppers until it is approved.
5. A product issue keeps it out of the shop
Meta lists the statuses and issues that stop a product from showing in ads or the shop, and adds that they can also make it ineligible for product tagging on Instagram (troubleshoot products not showing). They include policy violations, archived, hidden from Shops, image upload issues, broken links, a missing title, description, price, availability, link, condition or image, a description in capitals or the same as the title, and a missing size. To find them: open the catalog, go to Catalog → Products, click Filters, and under Issues choose Shops and Marketplace; under Status, Hidden from Shops and Archived.
Two of these are feed problems we cover in detail: a required field is missing and product image upload issues — every product image must be JPEG or PNG, at least 500 × 500 pixels and under 8 MB (Meta's product data specifications).
6. Links outside your domain
A catalog used for a shop has to link each product to its own page on your business's website domain — the same domain you added under Brand Safety → Domains — and not to a Facebook Page or another business's domain (catalog eligibility for Shops). The fix is in the link of each product, in your store or feed.
The opposite case: in the shop, not in ads
Out-of-stock products work the other way round. Meta does not show them in ads, but they stay in shops on Facebook and Instagram for up to 56 days, marked as sold out (availability, in Meta's specification). If a product is in your Instagram shop and missing from your ads, check its availability first.
Where FeedRobin fits
Most of the causes above are shop settings and reviews that live in Commerce Manager, and nothing in a feed can change them — including ours. What a feed does decide is the product data: every required field, images that meet Meta's minimum, links on your own domain, and availability in the words Meta accepts. FeedRobin builds the Meta feed from your catalog and checks those before Meta does, and the free feed check runs the same checks on any feed URL, with no account. For the feed-side reasons a catalog item is rejected, see why Facebook and Instagram reject catalog products.
Sources
Meta Business Help Center: control which products appear in your shop on Facebook and Instagram (hidden products, Default and Advanced inventory), set up a shop on Facebook and Instagram (Instagram business account, review time, checkout URL), troubleshoot products not showing in your ads or shop (statuses, issues, filters), catalog eligibility requirements for Shops (product links) and product data specifications (images, availability). Instagram Help Center: troubleshoot product and collection approvals for shops.