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Instagram engagement rate calculator
Paste a handle — that is the whole thing. You get the rate a brand asks for, the band they expect at that account size, and what it is actually worth in money.
Interface preview — this is an example profile. Handle lookups are not wired up yet.
Median of the last 3 posts — 426 engagements against 12,400 followers. Creator accounts in the 10k – 50k band typically run 1.8% – 5%.
The number a brand means when it asks for your engagement rate, and the one they can check without your permission.
A gap this wide means one post is carrying the number. Quote the median — the average is the one that gets you caught.
How hard the Reels work on the people who actually saw them. Only the creator can see this one, which is why it belongs in a media kit.
A healthy ratio. Comments are the expensive engagement, so this is the one that survives scrutiny.
Per sponsored post, at 31.6¢ per engagement. This is the $100-per-10,000-followers rule of thumb scaled by where the account sits in its band — a place to open a negotiation, not a price. Usage rights and exclusivity move it more than follower count does.
The spread between the best and worst post, against the median. Under about 100% is an audience that turns up every time. Far above it and a brand is buying a lottery ticket — which is the argument for being paid on what the video did, rather than on what the profile says.
What counts as a good engagement rate on Instagram, by follower count
These are the bands the calculator grades against, and they describe creator accounts — people posting to an audience that chose to watch them.
| Followers | Below typical | Typical band | Strong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 10k | under 2% | 2% – 6% | over 6% |
| 10k – 50k | under 1.8% | 1.8% – 5% | over 5% |
| 50k – 250k | under 1.5% | 1.5% – 4% | over 4% |
| 250k – 1M | under 1.2% | 1.2% – 3.5% | over 3.5% |
| 1M and up | under 1% | 1% – 3% | over 3% |
Round numbers, on purpose. Published benchmarks for creator accounts disagree by a lot — reported nano-tier figures run from roughly 2% to nearly 7% — because they measure over different windows and summarise with a median in one study and an average in the next. A single decimal place on top of that spread would be false confidence. What matters is not whether you are at the 47th percentile of an aggregate nobody can reproduce; it is whether you are below, inside, or above the range a brand is used to seeing.
The slope is the part every study agrees on. Engagement roughly halves between the smallest accounts and the largest — which is why a 200k account running 4% is doing something a 9k account running 4% is not, and why "my rate dropped as I grew" is usually a description rather than a problem. The other half of the answer is that a benchmark mixing creators with business pages lands under 1%. Grade yourself against that and 0.9% looks average, when for a creator it is a quarter of the band.
There are three Instagram engagement rates and a brand means one of them
The formula is not in dispute. What changes is what you divide by — and on the same Reel, the three answers can be ten times apart.
By followers
(likes + comments) ÷ followers × 100The only one anybody can work out about you without your permission, which is exactly why it is the one they quote. It is also the least flattering on Reels, because a Reel is shown to people who do not follow you and they are not in the denominator.
By reach
(likes + comments) ÷ accounts reached × 100The honest read on whether a post worked. Insights gives it to you and nobody else can see it, so it belongs in a media kit with a screenshot beside it. On a post that travelled, this will be far lower than your follower rate and that is not a problem.
By views
(likes + comments + shares) ÷ views × 100The one that matters when a brand is buying distribution rather than an audience. A 2% view rate on 400,000 views is worth more to them than 8% on 4,000, and a rate that only knows followers cannot tell them that.
Put the follower one in the media kit. Not because it is the kindest — it usually is not — but because a brand can recalculate it from your public profile in about twenty seconds, and a number that does not survive that check costs you more than a low number ever will. Put reach and views underneath it, labelled, with a screenshot.
Reels changed the maths and follower-based rates never caught up
A feed post is shown mostly to your followers, so dividing by followers roughly works. A Reel is shown to whoever the algorithm thinks will watch it, and most of them do not follow you. Divide that by your follower count and you get a number about distribution wearing the costume of a number about your audience.
- Carousels0.55%
- Reels0.52%
- Single images0.37%
Per follower, from a study of 35M posts across 447,613 profiles, 2026. Profiles of every size, so the ranking is the finding — these levels are not comparable to the creator bands above.
- Compare Reels to Reels. Views and reach are different denominators, so a median across a mixed run of Reels and carousels is not a rate of anything.DOMedian of my last 9 Reels, by viewsNOT5 Reels and 4 carousels in one number
- Carousels beat Reels on engagement per follower — 0.55% against 0.52% in that study — while Reels win on reach by a distance. Which one you should post depends entirely on whether the brief is paying for an audience or for distribution.
- Do not quote a view-based rate as your engagement rate without saying so. It is the higher number on a small account and the lower one on a Reel that travelled, and a brand who spots the swap stops trusting the rest of the kit.
- Do not grade yourself against a whole-platform average. Those are dominated by business pages and land under 1%. A creator matching one is not average — they are running at a quarter of their band.
What your Instagram engagement rate is actually worth
The percentage is not the question — you want to know what to put in the email. Two different jobs, two different answers, and the difference between them is the single most expensive thing a new UGC creator gets wrong.
A sponsored post on your account
Here your audience is the product, so the rate tracks followers and engagement together. The working rule of thumb is around $100 per 10,000 followers, moved up or down by how your rate compares to your band — which is what the estimate in the results above does. A 12k account at double its band midpoint is not asking for the same money as a 12k account at half.
A UGC video the brand runs themselves
Here your audience is not part of the deal at all — they are buying footage to run as an ad. The going range in 2026 is $150–$300 per video, with usage rights adding 30–50% on top. Follower count barely enters it. This is why creators with 800 followers get booked, and why an engagement rate is a door-opener rather than a price tag.
Treat both as an opening position, not a price. Published rate ranges are observations of a market, not surveys with a stated method, and nobody who quotes them has a sample size to show you. Usage rights, exclusivity, whitelisting and how many videos are in the batch will each move your fee more than a percentage point of engagement does.
What to send a brand when they ask for your engagement rate
Four lines. It fits in an email, it survives being checked, and it says more about you than the percentage does.
- The number, the method and the window. Not "4.2% engagement" — that invites the assumption you picked the months. Say which posts and which period, and the claim turns into a measurement.DO3.4% median across my last 12 posts, Jun–AugNOT4.2% average engagement
- A second rate they cannot see, with a screenshot. Reach or view rate from Insights. It is the only thing in the kit that is genuinely privileged information, and attaching the screenshot is what makes the rest of the numbers believable.
- Your worst recent post, not just your best. Counter-intuitive and it works: a brand's real question is whether the next video lands, and a creator who volunteers their floor is telling them the floor is survivable. It also pre-empts the check they were going to run anyway.
- Do not send a follower count as the headline. It is the one number they already have, it is the one most easily bought, and leading with it frames you as an audience for rent rather than someone who makes video that performs.
What a brand reads in your numbers that you cannot see
Anyone vetting you runs three checks, and all three come out of the same figures you just typed in. The calculator shows you two of them so nothing in your media kit is a surprise to you.
- Comments per 100 likes. Real audiences land somewhere between one and four. Under one is the signature bought likes leave, because likes are cheap to buy and comments are not. If yours is low and your audience is real, it is usually a caption problem — you are not asking anything.DO1.8 comments per 100 likesNOT0.3 comments per 100 likes
- The gap between your mean and your median. A wide gap means one post is carrying the number. Quote the median: the average is the one that gets checked and does not hold up, and a creator who has already corrected for it reads as someone who understands their own data.
- Engagement that does not track follower growth. Flat followers with a jump in likes is the shape a pod or a purchase makes, and it is visible from outside your account. There is no version of this that is worth the fifteen minutes it saves.
- One good month presented as your baseline. If your last twelve posts include a breakout, say so and give the median as well. A brand that finds the outlier themselves stops reading; a brand you showed it to starts trusting the rest.
Questions
Add up the likes and comments on a post, divide by your follower count, and multiply by 100. Do it for your last nine to twelve posts and take the median of those, not the average — one post that ran away with it will drag an average somewhere your account does not actually live.
For a creator account, roughly 2% to 6% depending on your size, with the band drifting down as you grow. Below about 1.5% is worth diagnosing; above about 5% is genuinely strong. Business pages sit far lower — whole-platform figures land under 1% — so a benchmark that says 0.5% is average is describing brand pages, not you.
Three reasons, and all three are usually invisible. Some rates divide by followers, some by reach, some by views — on a Reel those can be a factor of ten apart. Some use a median across a dozen posts, some an average across whatever was handy. And some benchmarks describe creator accounts while others describe business pages. The formula is rarely the disagreement; the inputs are.
For your own read on a post, yes — a save is the strongest signal Instagram collects and it feeds distribution directly. For a number you hand a brand, know that most of them will recalculate it from likes and comments only, because those are the two they can see from the outside. Quote the likes-and-comments figure and mention saves separately rather than folding them in quietly.
For a creator account under 50k it is below the typical band and worth diagnosing. But 1% of an audience that actually buys is worth more than 6% of an audience that followed you for a giveaway. This is the limit of the metric: it counts interactions, not intent, and no calculator can tell the two apart.
Hidden likes only hide the count from other people. You still see your own in Insights — Professional Dashboard, then the post itself. Nothing about hiding likes changes what you or a brand can work out about your account; it changes who has to ask you for the number.
It gets you shortlisted, and it moves the rate for a sponsored post on your own account. It moves flat-fee UGC work much less, because there the brand is buying a video to run as an ad on their account — your audience is not part of what they bought. Plenty of well-paid UGC creators have four-figure follower counts.
Yes. No account, no email, no limit, and we do not keep the handles people check. We make money when brands hire creators, so a creator who can prove what their content does is the entire point.
Next, once you know your number
Stop arguing about the percentage. Get paid on the result.
An engagement rate is a guess about what a video will do. On Everyday UGC the brand posts the brief, you film it on your own phone, and you get paid on what the video actually did — measured, fraud-checked, no follower minimum.