[7] Inta was founded around 1940 as a settlement to support a geological expedition to explore coal deposits and projecting of mines.

The city and a separate forced labor camp (Intalag) was built by deportees and political prisoners working in the coal mines of the Pechora coal basin.

During the Soviet era, a "corrective labor camp", Intalag, was located here.

Within the framework of administrative divisions, it is, together with two urban-type settlements (Verkhnyaya Inta and Kozhym) and twenty rural localities, incorporated as the town of republic significance of Inta—an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts.

At Inta, there is a CHAYKA-transmitter with a 460-meter tall guyed mast, which is the second-tallest structure in Europe.