How to See How Many New Followers on Instagram

Figuring out exactly how many new followers you've gained on Instagram over a specific period can feel like a guessing game. While the app shows your total follower count, it doesn't offer a simple, built-in way to see the daily or weekly changes that tell you what’s working. This guide will walk you through a few straightforward methods to track your follower growth, from using Instagram’s own professional tools to creating a simple system that gives you real insight into your content strategy.

Why Your Follower Growth Matters More Than You Think

Tracking your follower count isn't just about stroking your ego. It's one of the clearest indicators of your account's health and the effectiveness of your content. When you can connect a spike in new followers to a specific action - like a viral Reel, a targeted ad campaign, or a collaboration with another creator - you've uncovered a repeatable strategy for growth. Sudden dips, on the other hand, can be just as informative, hinting at content that might be misaligned with your audience's expectations.

Monitoring your follower growth helps you answer critical questions:

• Did that new video series bring in new people?
• Was our latest giveaway a success in terms of audience growth?
• Is the content we posted last week resonating more than what we posted this week?

By regularly checking how many new followers you get, you move beyond guesswork and start making data-backed decisions. It transforms a simple number into a powerful feedback loop for building your brand organically.

Using Instagram Insights to Track Follower Growth

If you have an Instagram Creator or Business account, you have access to a suite of analytics tools called Instagram Insights. This is the most direct way to get a quick overview of your follower trends without leaving the app. If you're still on a Personal account, switching is free and only takes a minute in your account settings.

Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Follower Changes

Once you have a professional account, finding your follower data is easy. Here’s a breakdown of how to get there and what to look for.

1. Go to Your Profile: Open the Instagram app and navigate to your main profile page.
2. Access Your Professional Dashboard: Tap the "Professional Dashboard" button located near the top of your profile, right under your bio.
3. View Account Insights: In the dashboard, you'll see a section for "Account Insights." Tap on "See all" to open the full analytics view.
4. Find Follower Details: Tap on "Total Followers." This will take you to a dedicated screen showing your overall follower growth graph and more detailed breakdowns.

On this screen, you’ll find a graph that displays your follower count over a selected time period. You can toggle between different date ranges, usually "Last 7 Days," "Last 30 Days," "Last 90 Days," or the previous month.

Below the graph, Instagram provides a summary of "Follower Activity," which is the key piece of information you're looking for. It breaks down:

• Follows: The total number of new accounts that followed you during the selected period.
• Unfollows: The total number of accounts that unfollowed you.
• Overall Growth: A net calculation (Follows - Unfollows).

While Instagram Insights gives you the net change, the separate "Follows" number is exactly what you need to see how many new followers you've gained. This is perfect for seeing the near-immediate impact of a great post or a successful promotion.

Manual Calculation for Custom Date Ranges

What if you want to track growth over a custom timeframe, like the five days of a specific product launch? Instagram Insights doesn't let you select custom dates, but you can do it with a little manual effort. Simply take a screenshot or write down your total follower count at the start of your campaign. Then, do the same at the end. The difference between the two numbers is your net growth for that specific period. It’s not as detailed as the Insights breakdown, but it's a solid workaround for tracking custom events.

The Manual Method: Track Your Growth with a Simple Spreadsheet

While Instagram's built-in tools are great for quick check-ins, they have limitations. The data is only retained for 90 days, and you can't see long-term trends or add your own notes. For anyone serious about growth, a simple tracking spreadsheet is a game-changer. It gives you a permanent record of your progress and helps you connect growth spikes to the actual content you posted.

This approach moves you from just seeing the number to understanding it.

Setting Up Your Follower Tracking Spreadsheet

You can use Google Sheets, Excel, or any basic spreadsheet program. Create a document with the following columns:

• Date: The day you're recording the data.
• Total Followers: Your follower count for that day.
• Daily Change: The increase or decrease from the previous day.
• Notes: This is the most valuable column. Here, you’ll jot down what you did that day (e.g., "Posted behind-the-scenes Reel," "Ran story ads," "Collaborated with @creatorname").

How to Make It Work for You

Choose a consistent time each day to log your follower count (first thing in the morning is a good habit). In the "Daily Change" column, use a simple formula to calculate the difference. If your daily follower counts are in column B, the formula for cell C3 would be:

=B3-B2

Drag this formula down the column, and it will automatically calculate your daily follower gain or loss. Over a few weeks, patterns will start to emerge. You’ll be able to glance at your "Notes" column and see a direct correlation between your most successful days and the content that caused it.

For example, you might look back at your spreadsheet and a pattern jumps out: every time you post a tutorial-style Carousel, you gain an average of 100 new followers, while your static image posts only bring in about 20. That is an incredibly powerful piece of information to guide your future content strategy.

Going Deeper with Third-Party Analytics Tools

For brands, agencies, and full-time creators, manually pulling data from Instagram and plugging it into a spreadsheet can become tedious. This is where third-party social media management and analytics platforms come in handy. These tools connect directly to your Instagram account via its API and automate the tracking process for you.

The primary benefits of using a dedicated tool include:

• Historical Data: They store your data indefinitely, so you can look at your growth over a year or more, long after Instagram's 90-day window closes.
• Automated Reporting: Instead of manual entry, these platforms automatically pull your follower numbers and other key metrics into clean, easy-to-read dashboards.
• Competitive Analysis: Some tools let you track the follower growth of your competitors, giving you a better sense of how you stack up in your niche.
• Deeper Correlations: They often layer other metrics on top of follower growth, like engagement rate, reach, and link clicks, giving a more holistic view of your performance in one place.

While this is a paid option, the time saved and the depth of insight can be well worth the investment if managing a social media presence is a core part of your business.

From Numbers to Action: What to Do with Your Follower Data

Collecting data is only the first step. The real value comes from turning those numbers into an actionable plan. Once you start consistently tracking your new followers, you can use that information to supercharge your Instagram strategy.

1. Identify Your 'Growth' Content

Look back at the days with the biggest follower spikes. What did you post? Was it a Reel with a trending audio? A Carousel of helpful tips? An unfiltered look behind the scenes? Whatever it was, that's what your potential new followers want to see. Your data just handed you a blueprint for what you should be creating more of.

2. Fine-Tune Your Posting Schedule

As you gather data, you might notice that posts published on certain days or at certain times correlate with higher follower growth. Maybe your audience is most active and open to discovering new accounts on Sunday evenings. Use these patterns to optimize your content calendar for maximum visibility and impact.

3. Measure Campaign Success With Real Numbers

When you run a giveaway, a collaboration, or an ad campaign, your primary goal is often to grow your audience. By tracking your daily follower count before, during, and after the campaign, you'll have a clear, measurable result. Did that 3-day giveaway bring in 500 new followers? Now you know the exact return on your effort.

4. Understand What Pushes People Away

Insights aren't just about what works, they're also about what doesn't. If you notice a follower drop after a certain type of post - maybe something too sales-heavy or off-brand - take note. This feedback is invaluable for keeping your content aligned with what your established community values.

Final Thoughts

Tracking your new Instagram followers effectively is about turning a vanity metric into valuable feedback. Whether you use Instagram Insights, a simple spreadsheet, or a more advanced tool, the goal is always the same: to understand which of your efforts are attracting a new audience so you can learn from your wins and build a thriving community.

Manually keeping up with all this data across different platforms can quickly become a full-time job. At Postbase, we designed our analytics dashboard to cut through the noise and give you clear, actionable insights in one place. You can track follower growth, see which content is performing best, and understand your audience across all your accounts without constantly jumping between apps or drowning in spreadsheets. We built it to help you make better content, faster.