One of the most important factors for both personal and professional Instagram accounts is the number of followers. How many fans do you need? Can you tell me how I can tell if my numbers are too low? What does the number of a company’s Instagram followers tell you? Should you be preoccupied with how many people follow you? Let’s tally up all the possible interpretations of this core Instagram feature.
How Does Instagram Count Followers?
Instagram’s follower count is a mystery, with no publicly available details. Yet, it’s rather risk-free to figure it out by comparing the number of followers on other Instagram accounts. If a certain threshold is reached, 10,000 to be exact, Instagram rounds down an account’s number to the closest hundred. So if an account has 30,775 followers, its profile will only show 30.75k.
When viewing your profile, you’ll see the same rounded-down figure (given, of course, that you have over 10k followers). Instagram rounds up to the nearest thousand if the number of a user’s followers is in the hundreds of thousands. If the account has more than 1,000,000 followers, the total is lowered to the closest to 200,000. As a result, the gap between the true number and the rounded-off total grows larger as the number of followers increases.
How to Check Instagram Follower Count and Live Instagram Follower Count?
For accounts with fewer than 10,000 followers, the true number of followers is shown. Unless you have a Creator or Business account on Instagram, you won’t be able to see your follower count or see who is following you in real-time. Keep in mind that the app is required for this. Follow these directions:
- Visit your profile and tap the three-bar menu to the right of your Instagram handle.
- Locate the app labeled “Insights,” and press it to open it.
- The “Overview” section of Instagram Insights is where you’ll get your precise follower count.
If you want to know exactly how many people are following another account, you’ll need to use a browser-based version of Instagram and follow these steps:
- Open Instagram on your computer and navigate to your profile.
- Simply right-click the page and choose “See page source” from the list of options that appears.
- In another tab, you can access the page source by pressing Ctrl + F.
- Just enter edge followed by in the search bar.
- The text will be highlighted in yellow and followed by “count”: XXX, where XXX is the precise number of Instagram followers.
There are a lot of reasons why Instagram’s follower count checker might not always be as up-to-date as a live Instagram counter. But, you can use one of these widely-used follower count/tracker applications to learn how many people are currently following you on Instagram and how many people have followed you in the past.
- Hootsuite
- Iconosquare
- Crowdfire
- Follower Analyzer
- FollowMeter
Instagram Follower Count History

On the Instagram Insights app, under “Audience,” you can see a log of your account’s growth in followers. The demographics of your actual, live Instagram followers are displayed here, too.
See how many people followed and unfollowed you during the past 7, 14, 30, or 90 days. Keep in mind that this may only be done with your account. The performance of your Instagram account might be gauged by looking at the behavior of your followers over time. You will gain useful insights into the habits of your target audience, including the possible causes of fluctuations in the number of people that follow or unfollow you.
How to Hide Follower Count On Instagram: Can It Be Done?
Instagram followers can’t be hidden (public or private) and there’s no option to disable the counter. Instead, users can choose to conceal their own and/or others like counts for individual postings. Users have the option of disabling the like counter that appears next to each article in their feed. In early 2021, Instagram released a change designed to ease users’ concerns over their posts’ popularity.
How to Sort Instagram Followers by Follower Count
When you access your Instagram Insights, you’ll find several filters you may use to organize your followers. Your follower information can be broken down by age, location, gender, and more. If you want to organize your Instagram followers by the number of people who follow you, you have a few possibilities.
- To collect information that is already available to the public, like the number of people who follow you on Instagram, use a third-party app. All of the information can be downloaded in CSV format and then sorted in whatever way you see fit.
- Manually gather the information and enter it into a spreadsheet. After that, you can use the spreadsheet’s sorting feature.
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How Important Are Follower Numbers on Instagram?

Instagram popularity is generally gauged by the number of followers a user has. Theoretically, a more popular account would have more followers.
The number of a user’s followers is used by the Instagram algorithm for a variety of purposes, including but not limited to calculating the account’s growth rate, engagement rate, and relevance score. Instagram analytics, including your own and your competitors, can be analyzed with the use of a free Instagram engagement calculator.
Instagram: Who Has the Most Followers? and “How to Get 10,000 Followers in Five Minutes”
Having a large number of followers is important, but that’s not all there is to be successful on Instagram. Remember that certain accounts can have their numbers inflated by false and/or paid followers. You may verify the authenticity of an Instagram account by using a free auditing tool and looking at the username. Businesses shouldn’t necessarily assume that a higher number of followers means more customers and revenue. Getting a massive amount of devoted fans has made becoming a macro influencer a common goal.
The best way to expand your Instagram following is to steadily and naturally increase your follower count. But, the ultimate measure of your success on the platform will be an increase in views, engagement, clicks, and other metrics that mirror this trend.
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How to Increase Follower Count On Instagram?
The ideal strategy for growing your Instagram audience is always to focus on organic growth. Here are some tried-and-true methods of expansion that should help you achieve your goals.
- The success of your content strategy depends on your familiarity with your intended audience.
- Instagram Insights can let you track your audience and make adjustments to your targeting and content as needed.
- Improve your brand’s discoverability by making use of hashtags and geotagging.
- Determine when your niche’s and industry’s Instagram users are most active.
- Find out as much as you can about how to get the most out of your Instagram ads.
- Use partnerships with other brands and influencers to reach their audiences.