Engagement rate is the number brands ask for before they pay an Instagram creator. It is also the number most often quoted without a source. So we measured it on the accounts IGDataHub tracks: likes plus comments on each post, divided by the account's followers.
We used 2,549 accounts with at least 1,000 followers and at least six recent posts with a visible like count. Their profiles were read between September 6 and October 8, 2026.
The short answer: the bigger the account, the lower the rate
Across all 2,549 accounts the median post gets likes and comments equal to 1.28% of the account's followers. Size changes that a lot:
| Followers | Accounts | Median rate | Middle half |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1K to 10K | 642 | 3.04% | 1.28% to 6.48% |
| 10K to 100K | 699 | 1.36% | 0.52% to 2.97% |
| 100K to 1M | 535 | 0.81% | 0.27% to 2.03% |
| 1M to 10M | 384 | 0.66% | 0.24% to 1.75% |
| 10M and up | 289 | 0.61% | 0.20% to 1.85% |
A typical account with under 10,000 followers gets about five times the rate of a typical account with over 10 million. Each group is also wide: in every size group, a quarter of accounts get less than half the median, and a quarter get more than twice it.
What counts as a good rate?
How many accounts in each group clear 3%, and how many sit under 1%:
| Followers | Over 3% | Under 1% |
|---|---|---|
| 1K to 10K | 50.5% | 20.2% |
| 10K to 100K | 24.6% | 41.1% |
| 100K to 1M | 16.8% | 56.1% |
| 1M to 10M | 15.4% | 60.4% |
| 10M and up | 13.1% | 61.2% |
Half of the smallest accounts clear 3%. Above 100,000 followers, most accounts are under 1%. A rate of 1% to 2% on a million-follower account is better than the median for its size, not a warning sign.
Among the biggest names, rates run from 0.02% to 1.83%
Size sets the typical rate, but individual accounts stray far from it. These are twelve of the largest accounts we track, from the posts we read in early October 2026:
| Account | Followers | Median likes per post | Engagement rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virat Kohli (@virat.kohli) | 271.4M | 4,887,417 | 1.83% |
| Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) | 272.7M | 4,435,859 | 1.63% |
| Neymar Jr (@neymarjr) | 241.9M | 2,493,591 | 1.03% |
| Beyoncé (@beyonce) | 298.8M | 1,670,736 | 0.56% |
| Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano) | 679.9M | 3,576,189 | 0.53% |
| Kylie Jenner (@kyliejenner) | 380.7M | 1,953,013 | 0.51% |
| Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) | 402.8M | 1,932,423 | 0.48% |
| Kendall Jenner (@kendalljenner) | 277.6M | 1,265,753 | 0.46% |
| Justin Bieber (@lilbieber) | 286.2M | 429,684 | 0.15% |
| Instagram (@instagram) | 686.6M | 257,583 | 0.04% |
| Nike (@nike) | 291.0M | 65,110 | 0.02% |
| Dwayne Johnson (@therock) | 380.9M | 69,971 | 0.02% |
Virat Kohli and Taylor Swift have smaller audiences than Cristiano Ronaldo, and still collect more likes on a typical post. At the other end, Dwayne Johnson has more followers than Kylie Jenner but a typical post of his gets about a twenty-eighth of her likes; his recent posts ranged from about 13,000 to 293,000 likes. Brand and platform accounts (Nike, Instagram's own account) sit near the bottom. For anyone pricing a sponsored post, this is the reason to look at likes per post and not only at the follower count.
Verified accounts do slightly better
Where we have enough of both, verified accounts have a higher median rate than unverified ones of the same size: 3.38% against 2.84% under 10,000 followers (127 and 515 accounts), 1.42% against 1.32% from 10,000 to 100,000 (418 and 278), and 0.87% against 0.68% from 100,000 to a million (468 and 59). Almost every account we track over a million followers is verified, so there is no fair comparison above that. We can't tell from this whether the badge helps, or simply marks accounts that already have an engaged audience.
Photos still get more likes than videos
We compared videos and photos inside the same account, for the 1,028 accounts with at least three of each among their recent posts. Videos had the higher median rate in only 32.8% of them (337 accounts). The gap grows with size: videos won for 41.9% of accounts under 10,000 followers and for 21.8% of accounts over 10 million.
This counts likes and comments against followers. Videos can also be shown to people who don't follow the account, so a video can reach more people while collecting fewer likes per follower. Views are not part of this rate.
Comments are a small part of engagement
For the median account, comments make up 2.91% of all likes and comments under 10,000 followers, and 0.84% over 10 million. An engagement rate is almost entirely likes.
How we measured this
- Who: the Instagram accounts IGDataHub tracks, with 1,000+ followers and six or more usable recent posts. They are chosen for public interest, not at random. 1,185 more accounts had too few usable posts and are left out.
- Which posts: the most recent posts we read from each public profile, usually 12. Pinned posts are left out, because Instagram shows them first however old they are. Posts with no visible like count are left out too.
- Rate: (likes + comments) / followers for each post; an account's rate is the median over its posts, and each group's figure is the median across its accounts.
- Videos and photos: Instagram's own video flag on each post.
- What this cannot show is why. One likely reason is that big accounts collect followers who no longer see their posts, but this data measures the rates, not the reasons.
- Second read: the twelve-account table and the verified comparison come from the same method run again on October 9, 2026, when 2,524 accounts qualified.
Data: IGDataHub, public Instagram profile data read September 6 to October 8, 2026. How every number on IGDataHub is calculated: methodology. Related: most big Instagram accounts are losing followers.