What is a Facebook Post ID
If you've ever tried to connect a Facebook post to an analytics tool, an ad, or an automation and been asked for a "post ID," you've probably hit a wall. You look at the post's URL, expecting a tidy number, and instead find a long jumble of letters and digits that starts with pfbid. The number the tool wants seems to have vanished. It hasn't, exactly, but Facebook has made it harder to find than it used to be.
This guide explains what a Facebook post ID actually is, how it differs from the post URL, why recent links hide the numeric ID, and the reliable ways to find it in 2026. It also covers the question most people should ask first: do you even need the post ID, or just the URL?
What a post ID is
Facebook assigns a unique identifier to almost every piece of content on the platform, posts, photos, videos, comments, events. For a post, that identifier is the post ID: a number that points to that exact post and never changes, even if the post is edited or the page is renamed. Think of it as the post's permanent serial number.
You'll often see it written in a combined form, the page or profile ID, then an underscore, then the post's own ID, like 100001234567890_123456789012345. The first part identifies who posted; the second identifies the specific post. Some tools want just the post portion, others want the full combined string, so it's worth knowing both exist.
Post ID versus post URL
These two get confused constantly, so it's worth being clear.
The post URL is the web address you copy to share a post, the thing you'd paste into a message or a comment picker. The post ID is the underlying numeric identifier that the URL points to. The URL is for humans and sharing; the ID is for systems, APIs, and integrations.
For a long time the two were closely linked, because the post ID sat right there in the URL where you could read it. That's the part that changed.
Why the pfbid change makes this harder
In 2022, Facebook rolled out a new URL format. Instead of showing the numeric post ID, share links now contain a long token, around 70 characters of mixed letters and numbers, beginning with pfbid. So a modern post URL looks like facebook.com/[name]/posts/pfbid0... with no readable number in sight.
Facebook introduced these tokens partly to make links harder to tamper with or guess. The practical side effect is that you can no longer just read the post ID out of a typical share URL the way you once could. The numeric ID still exists, the post still has one, but the pfbid link deliberately doesn't expose it. That's why so many people end up confused: they're looking for a number that the URL no longer shows.
How to find the numeric post ID in 2026
There are several reliable routes, from the easy to the technical. Pick the one that matches how comfortable you are poking around.
The simplest, a post ID finder tool. Several free tools let you paste a Facebook post URL, even a pfbid one in many cases, and return the numeric ID. This is the fastest option for non-technical users and the one most people should reach for first.
From an older or numeric URL. Not every post uses a pfbid link. Older posts, some page posts, and certain permalink formats still show a number. If your URL contains /posts/123456..., or a story_fbid=123456... parameter, that number is the post ID. Group posts are especially friendly here: their permalink URLs usually look like groups/[group]/permalink/123456789/, and that figure is the ID.
The embed method. Open the post, click its three-dot "…" menu, and look for "Embed." The embed code Facebook generates contains a reference back to the post that often includes the numeric ID or a clean link to it. This is a handy built-in route that doesn't require any outside tool.
View the page source. If you're comfortable with a little technical digging, open the post in a desktop browser, view the page source or open developer tools, and search the HTML for story_fbid or share_fbid. The numeric ID is usually embedded in the page's underlying code even when the visible URL hides it.
These options range from one-click to mildly technical, but between them you can almost always recover the ID you need.
Do you actually need the post ID?
Here's the question worth asking before you go hunting. For a lot of common tasks, including running a giveaway, you don't need the post ID at all. You need the post URL.
Most comment pickers, including FB Picker, work directly from the post URL you copy with "Copy link." You paste the link, the tool pulls the comments, and you draw a winner, no post ID required. The ID becomes necessary mainly for developer-style tasks: calling Facebook's API, wiring a post into certain analytics or ad systems, embedding it programmatically, or troubleshooting an integration. If you're simply trying to pick a giveaway winner, skip the ID entirely and use a random comment picker for giveaways with the plain URL.
Knowing this saves a lot of wasted effort. People often go searching for a post ID because a guide mentioned it, when the tool in front of them only ever wanted the link.
When the post ID genuinely matters
That said, there are real cases where you need it. If you're working with Facebook's Graph API, the post ID (often in the combined pageID_postID form) is how you reference the post in your calls. Ad platforms and some social management tools ask for it to attach reporting to a specific post. Developers embedding posts or pulling data programmatically rely on it. And if an integration is misbehaving, the post ID is often the precise reference that helps you debug which post is involved. In all of those, the ID is the stable, language-neutral way to point at one exact post.
Post ID versus the other Facebook IDs
The post ID is one of several identifiers Facebook uses, and they're easy to mix up. Your page ID identifies your whole Facebook Page and stays the same across everything you post. A user ID, or profile ID, identifies an individual account. A group ID identifies a group. And the post ID identifies one specific post within a page or profile. Because some tools combine them, you'll often see a post written as pageID_postID, which is simply the page's ID and the post's ID stitched together so a system knows both who posted and which post.
Knowing which one a tool is asking for saves a lot of confusion. If something wants your "page ID," it means the number for your whole page, not a post. If it wants a "post ID," it means the identifier for one post. They live in different places and serve different purposes, even though they often travel together.
A note on comment IDs
There's one more identifier worth mentioning, because it trips people up during giveaways: comments have their own IDs, separate from the post they sit under. A comment ID points to one specific comment, not the post and not the commenter. You almost never need to handle comment IDs yourself. A comment picker reads all the comments on a post automatically once you give it the post URL, and selects the winner at random without you ever touching an individual comment's ID. It's good to know they exist, but for a normal giveaway they stay safely under the hood.
Why Facebook hides the ID now
It's natural to wonder why Facebook made this harder. The shift to pfbid tokens in 2022 was largely a privacy and security measure. The old numeric IDs were sequential and predictable enough that they could be guessed, scraped, or used to enumerate content at scale. By replacing the visible number in share links with a long, opaque token, Facebook made posts harder to harvest programmatically and harder to tamper with. For the average user it's a non-event, you copy and share links exactly as before. It only becomes noticeable when you specifically need the underlying number for an integration, which is the moment the hidden ID suddenly matters. The reassuring part is that the ID wasn't removed, just tucked away, which is why recovering it takes a tool or a peek at the page source rather than a glance at the URL.
A few practical tips
If a tool asks for a post ID, first check whether it actually means the URL, many do, and label it loosely. If you genuinely need the number and your URL is a pfbid link, reach for a post ID finder tool before trying to dig through page source. Save both the URL and the ID for important posts, so you're not re-deriving them later. And remember the distinction: the URL is for sharing and for most everyday tools, the ID is for systems and integrations. For the everyday giveaway, you almost never need to leave the URL behind, and the best free Facebook comment picker along with any solid free comment picker and giveaway tool runs entirely on the link you already have.
The short version: the post ID still exists, the pfbid URL just hides it, and you can recover it with a finder tool, the embed option, or the page source when you genuinely need it. But most of the time, especially for giveaways, you don't. Reach for the post ID only when a developer-style task demands it, and reach for the plain URL for everything else. Knowing the difference is what stops you wasting twenty minutes hunting for a number no tool in front of you ever actually wanted.