How to See Accounts Reached on Instagram

Knowing your Instagram content resonated with people is a great feeling, but knowing exactly how many people it resonated with is powerful. This guide cuts through the confusion around Instagram analytics to show you exactly how to find your Accounts Reached metric - and more importantly, how to use that data to create better content and grow your audience.

What is "Accounts Reached" vs. Impressions? (And Why It Matters)

Before checking your analytics, it’s important to understand the two most fundamental metrics you'll encounter: Reach and Impressions. They sound similar, but they tell very different stories about your content's performance.

• Accounts Reached: This is the number of unique accounts that saw your post, Story, or Reel at least once. Think of this as the size of your audience for a specific piece of content. If 1,000 accounts were reached, it means 1,000 individual people saw it.
• Impressions: This is the total number of times your content was viewed. This number will almost always be higher than your reach because a single person can see your post multiple times.

Here’s a simple way to think about it: imagine you’re speaking in an auditorium. The reach is the number of individual people in the seats. The impressions are the total number of times those people looked up at the stage. If one person looks at the stage three times, that’s one person reached, but three impressions.

Why does this distinction matter so much? Reach tells you how broad your message is spreading and how effective you are at finding new audiences. Impressions give you a sense of your content’s visibility and how often it's popping up in feeds, sometimes indicating that your content is being rewatched or shared.

First Things First: You Need a Professional Account

Instagram makes its robust analytics suite, called "Insights," exclusively available to Professional Accounts (which includes both "Creator" and "Business" profiles). If you're still using a personal account, you won't be able to see any of these metrics.

Switching is free, easy, and unlocks a treasure trove of data. Plus, you can switch back at any time if you change your mind.

How to Switch to a Professional Account:

1. Go to your Instagram profile and tap the three horizontal lines (☰) in the top-right corner to open the menu.
2. Tap Settings and privacy.
3. Scroll down to the "For professionals" section and tap Account type and tools.
4. Tap Switch to professional account.
5. Follow the on-screen prompts to choose a category that best describes what you do and select either a "Creator" or "Business" profile. For most influencers, coaches, and personal brands, "Creator" is the perfect fit.

Once you’ve switched, Instagram will begin collecting data. Note that you won't be able to see historical data from before you made the change, so it's best to do this as soon as possible.

How to See Accounts Reached on Instagram (The Big Picture)

Your main analytics dashboard gives you a high-level overview of your account's performance across a specific time frame. This is the best place to spot overall trends in your reach.

Here’s how to find it:

1. Go to your main Instagram profile page.
2. Below your bio, you'll see a button that says Professional Dashboard. Tap it.
3. You’ll see a snapshot of your performance. Under "Account Insights," tap the See All link.
4. You're now in your main Insights dashboard. Accounts Reached is usually the first metric at the top.

From this screen, you can tap on "Accounts Reached" to get a more detailed breakdown. You can also change the time period by tapping the date range in the top-left corner (e.g., "Last 30 Days"). This allows you to see if your reach is growing, shrinking, or staying flat over time. This top-level view is excellent for monthly or quarterly reports and for understanding the general health of your account's visibility.

Going Deeper: How to See Reach for Individual Posts

While the overall overview is helpful, the real learning comes from analyzing the performance of individual pieces of content. Why did one post explode while another fell flat? The insights on each post hold the answer.

How to Find Reach on a Feed Post (Photo, Carousel, or Video):

1. Navigate to the specific post on your profile grid.
2. Right below the image or video on the left, you’ll see a button that says View Insights. Tap it.
3. A screen will slide up showing all the stats for that post. Right near the top, under the "Reach" heading, you’ll find Accounts Reached clearly listed.

Below the main reach number, Instagram provides an incredibly valuable breakdown of where that reach came from, often splitting it between Followers and Non-Followers. A high percentage of non-follower reach is a fantastic sign - it means your content is landing on the Explore page, being surfaced through hashtags, or getting shared. This is how you attract new people to your profile.

How to Check Accounts Reached for Your Stories

Instagram Stories have their own analytics, which you can check while they're live or after they've expired and moved to your archive.

How to Check Reach on a Live Story:

1. While your Story is active (within 24 hours of posting), open it as if you were going to watch it.
2. On your Story panel, swipe up from the bottom.
3. This will open the viewer list. In the top-left, tap the graph icon (📊) to switch to the Insights view.
4. You'll see "Accounts Reached" listed right at the top.

How to Check Reach on an Archived Story:

1. Go to your profile and tap the hamburger menu (☰) in the top-right.
2. Tap Archive.
3. Make sure your "Stories Archive" is selected at the top. You can then tap on any past Story.
4. Once you open the old Story, just swipe up to see its final reach and engagement metrics.

The Holy Grail: Finding Your Reel Reach

Understanding the reach of your Instagram Reels is ridiculously important, as they are one of the most powerful tools for growing an account right now. The metrics here are slightly different, as "Plays" are often shown more prominently, but reach is just as easy to find.

How to See Accounts Reached on an Instagram Reel:

1. Go to the Reels tab on your profile and select the Reel you want to analyze.
2. Tap the three dots (...) in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
3. From the menu that appears, tap View Insights.
4. On the Insights screen, you'll see a clear breakdown showing Accounts Reached and Plays.

Pay close attention to the difference between these two numbers. If a Reel has 10,000 Plays but only reached 5,000 accounts, it means the average viewer watched it twice. This is a very strong signal to the algorithm that people are enjoying your content, which can boost its visibility even further.

What Now? Turning Your Reach Data Into Smart Decisions

Seeing the number is step one. Using it to inform your content strategy is where you win. Now that you know how to find your reach across all content types, here’s how to put that information to work.

1. Identify Your Breakout Content

Systematically go through your posts, Reels, and Stories from the past month. Which ones had the highest reach? Don't just look at the raw numbers, look for outliers. Did one Reel reach twice as many people as your average? Did one specific type of post consistently outperform others? Those pieces of content are your roadmap. Analyze everything about them:

• The Topic: What was the subject? Was it educational, entertaining, inspirational, or relatable?
• The Format: Was it a talking-head Reel, a quick-cut tutorial, a beautiful photo, or an in-depth carousel?
• The Hook: What did you say or show in the first 3 seconds? How did you grab attention?
• The Audio: For Reels, did you use trending audio? Your own voiceover?

When you find a winning formula, replicate it. Don't copy it exactly, but create new content based on the principles that made the original a success.

2. Diagnose Your Underperformers

Just as important as identifying your winners is understanding your losers. Find the posts with the lowest reach. Be honest with yourself about why they might have flopped. Was the topic too niche? Was the hook weak? Was the visual quality poor? Every underperforming post is a free lesson in what your audience doesn't want to see from you.

3. Check Your Non-Follower Reach

As mentioned earlier, the "Follower vs. Non-Follower" reach breakdown is a goldmine. If a post has high reach but it's 95% from your existing followers, that means it isn't effectively reaching new people. If another post has lower overall reach but 50% of it came from non-followers, that content is doing a much better job at discovery.

Focus on creating more content that appeals to non-followers. This type of content is usually broader, more shareable, and provides instant value to someone who has never heard of you before. Think searchable guides, highly relatable memes, or stunning visuals that stop the scroll.

4. Align Your Reach with Your Goals

Finally, tie your reach metrics back to what you're trying to achieve. If your goal is brand awareness, your primary metric for success should be consistently growing your overall reach. If your goal is converting followers into customers, you might care more about reach on promotional Stories that lead to a product page.

Data without context is just numbers. By analyzing not just the "how many" but the "who" and "why" behind your reach, you turn analytics from a confusing chore into your most valuable marketing tool.

Final Thoughts

Checking your Accounts Reached on Instagram is incredibly straightforward once you know where to tap inside your Professional Dashboard and Post Insights. The real skill is moving beyond just watching the number, and instead, using that data to understand what content truly connects with both your current followers and potential new ones.

Once you get into the habit of reviewing these analytics, the next challenge becomes organizing what you've learned. For our team, using a visual platform like Postbase makes it easy to schedule our content and see everything in one simple calendar. This bird's-eye view helps us quickly spot patterns in what’s performing best so we can double down on the content that actually drives growth.