How to Find Your Competitors on Instagram

Finding your competitors on Instagram is the first step to understanding your industry's entire conversation and where you fit into it. This guide breaks down exactly how to find them, from direct searches to using Instagram’s own features to uncover accounts you never knew existed. We’ll also cover what to do once you've found them so you can turn that knowledge into a better content strategy.

Why Looking at Your Competitors Matters

Competitive analysis isn’t about copying what others are doing. It’s about gathering intelligence to make smarter decisions for your own brand. Think of it as market research that helps you:

• Get content inspiration: See what topics, formats, and styles are already working well in your niche.
• Understand audience preferences: Your competitors' most popular posts reveal what your shared target audience loves, engages with, and wants more of.
• Spot market gaps: What are your competitors not talking about? Where are they failing to engage their audience? Their weakness can become your opportunity.
• Benchmark your performance: It helps to have a realistic baseline. Knowing the average engagement rate or follower growth in your industry gives you a reference point for your own goals.

In short, you’re not looking for a playbook to steal, you’re looking for data to build a better one for yourself.

How to Find Your Direct and Indirect Competitors on Instagram

You probably already have a few direct competitors in mind - the businesses that sell a similar product or service to the same target audience as you. But your competitive landscape also includes indirect and aspirational competitors.

• Direct Competitors: The obvious ones. If you sell running shoes, Nike and Brooks are direct competitors.
• Indirect Competitors: Businesses that solve the same problem but with a different solution. For a running shoe company, a brand selling high-end athletic socks or a fitness app with running plans are indirect competitors. They’re competing for the same customer’s disposable income and attention.
• Aspirational Competitors: Brands you look up to. They might be leaders in your industry or in an adjacent one, but they excel at social media and building community. Red Bull is an aspirational competitor for anyone in the lifestyle or action sports space.

Keep all three types in mind as you work through these methods.

Start with a Simple Keyword Search

The most straightforward method is usually the best place to begin. The Instagram search bar is more powerful than people give it credit for.

1. Search Broadly and Then Narrow Down

Start by searching for keywords related to your product, service, or niche. For example, if you own a coffee shop in Brooklyn that specializes in pour-overs, your searches might look like this:

• Broad keywords: "coffee," "coffee shop," "cafe"
• Niche keywords: "Brooklyn coffee," "pour over coffee," "third wave coffee"
• Action-based keywords: "NYC coffee blogger," "what to do in Brooklyn"

Once you’ve made a search, be sure to tap over to the “Accounts” tab. This filters out all the individual posts and shows you only the profiles that match your search term, instantly giving you a list of potential competitors to investigate.

2. Search Relevant Hashtags

Hashtags are libraries of user-generated content organized by topic. This makes them a goldmine for finding active accounts in your niche.

Go to the search bar and tap the "Tags" tab. Start searching for the hashtags your ideal customers are likely to use. Following the coffee shop example, you could search:

• #brooklyncoffee
• #nyccoffee
• #specialtycoffee
• #alternativebrewing

When you click on a hashtag, check the “Top” posts. The accounts that consistently appear in the top results for relevant keywords are a great indicator of who is leading the conversation in that space. These are the brands and creators who have mastered the art of creating high-engagement content for that specific topic.

Let Instagram’s Algorithm Do the Work for You

Instagram is designed to show you more of what it thinks you like. Once you start signaling your interests, the platform will lead you directly to your competitors.

Use the “Suggested for You” Feature

This is one of the fastest and most effective ways to build a list of competitors.

1. Find one direct competitor you already know about and go to their profile.
2. Tap the “Follow” button.
3. A dropdown or a box of suggested similar accounts will instantly appear. Instagram will serve you a list of profiles that share a similar audience or create similar content.
4. If you miss the initial pop-up, you can also see suggestions by tapping the small dropdown arrow next to the "Following" button or the person icon with a plus sign.

Go through this list and visit each profile. Every time you find a relevant competitor and follow them, Instagram will refine its suggestions and show you even more related accounts. You can easily spiral through this process and find 10-20 solid competitors in just a few minutes.

Expand Your Reach by Looking Outward

Once you have a handful of competitors, you can use their activity to find even more players in your ecosystem.

Investigate Their "Tagged" Mentions

On every business profile, there is a gallery for posts they've been tagged in. This feed is an uncensored look at what customers and partners are saying about them.

Look for a few things here:

• Influencer Collaborations: What creators are they working with? These influencers are likely niche specialists who also work with your other competitors. Their profiles are another lead.
• Partnerships and Co-Promotions: Are they co-hosting giveaways with other brands? Collaborating on products? These brand partners are often complementary to your own business and important to know.
• Customer Content: Real customers using their products can give you huge insights into who their audience is and what they care about.

See Who Else Your Audience Follows

Your existing followers are your most valuable source of information. Take a look at the profiles of a few of your most engaged fans and see what other brands in your space they are following. If you notice dozens of your followers also follow a specific account, that account is definitely one you should be paying attention to.

You've Found Your Competitors. Now What?

Creating a long list of competitors is just the starting point. The real value comes from a structured analysis of what they’re doing. Here’s a framework to guide your review.

Analyze Their Profile and Positioning

First impressions matter. What message does their profile send in the first three seconds?

• Bio: What words do they use to describe what they do? Is their value proposition clear? What call-to-action (CTA) are they using?
• Link in Bio: What are they linking to? A homepage, a specific product, a link farm like Linktree? This tells you their current business priority.
• Story Highlights: How have they organized their highlights? Are they used for FAQs, sharing user-generated content, or promoting specific product categories?

Deep Dive into Their Content Strategy

This is where you'll spend most of your time. Look at their last 10-15 posts to get a sense of their current strategy.

• Content Formats: What type of content are they posting most often? Is it mostly Reels, photo carousels, static images, or graphics? This signals what format is driving the best results for them right now.
• Content Pillars: What are the main themes or topics they post about? Do they focus on education, entertainment, inspiration, or promotion? Try to identify 3-5 core “pillars” they build their content around.
• Posting Frequency: How often are they posting to their feed? To Stories? This helps you set a realistic baseline for how active you need to be to compete.
• Top Performing Posts: Scroll through their feed and identify the posts with unusually high engagement (comments and shares are more meaningful than likes). What are these posts about? What format are they? There’s a good lesson in every standout post.
• Captions and CTAs: How long are their captions? Do they ask questions to spark conversation? What do they ask their followers to do after reading (e.g., "save this post," "tag a friend," "click the link in bio")?

Observe Their Audience Engagement

A large follower count means nothing without an engaged community.

• Comment Replies: Do they reply to comments on their posts? How quickly? What is their tone?
• Community Management: Do they encourage conversations between followers? Do they reshare user-generated content in their Stories?
• Story Interactions: What interactive stickers do they use in their Stories (e.g., polls, quizzes, Q&As, sliders)? How are they fostering a two-way conversation?

Organize Your Findings

Don't let all this great research go to waste. Create a simple spreadsheet in Google Sheets or Excel to keep track of your findings. It doesn’t need to be complicated.

Set up columns for:

Account Name | Followers | Content Focus | Avg. Engagement | Strengths | Weaknesses | Notes

Updating this document a few times a year will help you stay on top of industry trends and spot new opportunities as they emerge.

Final Thoughts

Finding and analyzing your competitors on Instagram opens up a world of insight that can help you sharpen your own strategy, better serve your audience, and find clever ways to stand out. It transforms your thinking from "What should I post today?" to "What does my audience need that no one else is providing?"

Tracking this valuable competitive data alongside your own content schedule, engagement, and analytics can feel like a juggling act. We built Postbase to make managing your social media intuitive. With our visual content calendar, you see your whole strategy at a glance, while our unified analytics brings all your performance data into one clean place. It helps you spend less time gathering data and more time creating great content informed by it.