How to See Follower Growth on Instagram

Watching your Instagram follower count is more than just a vanity check, it's a direct signal of your brand's health and content resonance. Understanding how that number changes over time helps you know what's working, what isn't, and where to focus your creative energy. This guide will walk you through three different methods for seeing your follower growth on Instagram, from the built-in analytics to more advanced tracking techniques.

Why Tracking Follower Growth Matters

That little number on your profile tells a big story. It’s not just about getting more followers, it's about getting the right followers and understanding the journey. When you track your growth, you can start answering important questions:

• Is my content strategy effective? A steady increase suggests your content is connecting with your target audience.
• Which campaigns are driving results? Did that collaboration or giveaway actually lead to new followers, or was it just a temporary engagement spike?
• Am I reaching new audiences? Growth indicates your content is being discovered through hashtags, the Explore page, or shares.
• When did I lose followers? Pinpointing dips can help you understand if a specific type of content or a change in posting frequency is turning people away.

Think of follower growth as direct feedback. Every follow is a vote of confidence, and every unfollow is a data point. When you learn to read these signals, you can stop guessing and start creating content that consistently attracts and retains an engaged community.

Method 1: Use Instagram's Native Analytics (Instagram Insights)

The easiest and most direct way to check your recent follower growth is through Instagram's own built-in tool, Instagram Insights. This feature is free and incredibly valuable for at-a-glance performance checks. To access it, you’ll need to have an Instagram Business or Creator account.

If you have a personal account, switching is simple and free. Just go to your Settings and privacy, scroll down to Account type and tools, and select Switch to professional account. Follow the prompts, and you'll unlock access to your analytics.

How to Check Follower Growth in Instagram Insights:

1. Go to your profile page.
2. Tap the Professional dashboard button located below your bio.
3. Under Account insights, tap See all.
4. Tap on Total Followers.

Here, you'll find a detailed breakdown of your follower activity. This screen gives you a wealth of information:

• The Growth Chart: At the top, you’ll see a line graph visualizing your follower count over the last 30 days (by default). You can tap the dropdown menu to extend this view to the Last 90 Days, giving you a wider picture of your recent trends.
• Overall Growth: This section shows your net follower change for the selected period. It’s a simple calculation: (Total Follows) - (Total Unfollows) = Net Growth.
• Daily Breakdown: If you tap and hold on any point in the graph, you can see the exact number of follows and unfollows for a specific day. This is perfect for seeing the immediate impact of a big post or collaboration. Noticing a huge spike on Tuesday? You probably posted something that hit big. Seeing a dip last Friday? Maybe that off-brand post didn't land as you'd hoped.

The primary limitation of Instagram Insights is that it only holds onto data for a maximum of 90 days. For social media managers and brands who need to see year-over-year growth or track trends across longer campaigns, this isn't enough. That's where manual tracking comes in.

Method 2: Track Your Growth Manually with a Spreadsheet

For a reliable, long-term view of your follower history, nothing beats a simple spreadsheet. It might sound old-school, but manually logging your data gives you complete ownership and control. A few years from now, you’ll be glad you have a complete historical record to look back on. This method allows you to spot seasonal trends, measure annual growth, and prove the long-term impact of your strategy.

You can use Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, or any other spreadsheet software.

Setting Up Your Follower Growth Spreadsheet

Creating your tracker is straightforward. Your goal is to capture weekly snapshots of your account's health.

1. Create Your Columns:

Open a new spreadsheet and set up the following columns at a minimum:

• Date
• Total Followers

2. Add Contextual Columns (The Secret Sauce):

This is where manual tracking truly shines. By adding columns for context, you can turn raw numbers into actionable insights. Consider adding:

• New Followers This Week (Calculated automatically)
• Posts This Week (The number of feed posts you published)
• Reels This Week (The number of Reels you published)
• Stories This Week (The number of story slides you published)
• Notes & Highlights (Your secret weapon! Note things like "Posted viral Reel about Topic X," "Ran a giveaway," "Got a shoutout from @username," or "Started an ad campaign.")

3. Use a Simple Formula to Calculate Growth:

In the New Followers This Week column, you can use a simple formula to do the math for you. If a week's "Total Followers" is in cell B3 and the previous week's is in B2, the formula would be:

=B3-B2

Drag this formula down the column, and it will automatically calculate your weekly net growth.

4. Be Consistent:

Pick one day of the week (e.g., every Monday morning) to log your numbers. Consistency is what makes this data powerful. After a few months, you’ll have a clear, week-by-week history of your progress. Did your follower growth double two weeks ago? Check your 'Notes' column. Ah, that was the week you collaborated with another creator in your niche. Now you know that’s a strategy worth repeating.

Method 3: Leverage Third-Party Analytics Platforms

If you're managing multiple accounts, creating reports for clients, or just need more robust data without the manual work, a third-party social media management tool is your best option. These platforms connect directly to your Instagram account via its API and automate the entire process of data collection and analysis.

Why use a third-party tool?

• Long-Term Historical Data: Unlike Instagram's 90-day limit, most third-party tools store your data indefinitely from the moment you connect your account. You can easily compare this year's holiday season performance to last year's.
• Automated Reporting: These tools are built for reporting. You can generate professional, easy-to-read reports in seconds, perfect for sharing with teammates, managers, or clients.
• Deeper Audience Insights: Many platforms provide more detailed demographic data than Instagram's native tools, such as the best times to post based on when your specific audience is most active.
• Competitive Analysis: Some advanced tools even allow you to track the follower growth of your competitors, giving you a benchmark for your performance within your industry.

These platforms take the manual labor out of tracking and give you a more powerful, all-in-one dashboard to manage and analyze your performance. If social media is a serious part of your business, investing in a tool can save you hundreds of hours in the long run and provide insights you simply can't get otherwise.

Turning Data into Action: What Your Growth Patterns Mean

Seeing your growth is one thing, understanding it is another. Your data is telling you a story. Here’s how to read it.

If you see... Steady, Consistent Growth

• What it means: Your current content strategy is working. Your posts are consistently reaching and resonating with the right people. You have found a sustainable rhythm.
• What to do: Keep going! Double down on your most successful content pillars. You can also experiment with small variations - for example, if carousels always perform well, try a carousel that uses a video on the second slide.

If you see... Sudden Spikes

• What it means: Something out of the ordinary happened. This is usually caused by a viral post (often a Reel), a mention from a much larger account, a successful ad campaign, or a PR hit outside of Instagram.
• What to do: Investigate immediately. Go to that date in your Insights or spreadsheet. What did you post? Can you identify the source of the new followers? If a Reel went viral, analyze it. What was the hook? The audio? The topic? Create more content that follows that successful formula.

If you see... Stagnation or Decline

• What it means: Your content is no longer connecting as it used to, or you may be losing existing followers faster than you're gaining new ones. This could be due to posting inconsistency, content fatigue, or a shift in what your audience wants to see.
• What to do: Time for a content audit. Look back at your top-performing posts from when you were growing. What do they have in common? It might also be a good time to engage your community directly. Use a Story poll or question sticker to ask them what they'd like to see more of from you. Often, the best ideas come directly from your audience.

Final Thoughts

Tracking your Instagram follower growth is about so much more than chasing a bigger number. It’s about building a better understanding of your audience and making smarter decisions with your content. By combining Instagram's native Insights for short-term feedback, a manual spreadsheet for long-term history, and potentially a third-party tool for automation and deeper analysis, you'll have everything you need to build a strategy that works.

We know how important it is to connect your content efforts to real results, which is why we built the analytics dashboard in Postbase to be straightforward and actionable. You can see your follower growth, engagement rates, and top-performing content across all your platforms in one clean dashboard. It helps you quickly identify what content is helping you grow so you can spend less time guessing and more time creating what your audience loves.