Instagram Engagement Rate Statistics & Benchmarks
Want to know the average engagement rate on Instagram? You’re in the right place.
In this post, we’ll be revealing useful Instagram engagement rate statistics and benchmarks that you can use to measure your performance.
We’ll cover the average engagement rate across different industries, profile sizes, and types of posts. Plus, we’ll share some statistics that highlight tips and best practices that you can use to get more engagement.
By the end of this post, you’ll know whether your Instagram profile is performing on, below, or above average—and how to improve.
Ready? Let’s jump into it.
What is Instagram’s engagement rate?
Instagram engagement rate is a metric that tells you what percentage of your audience interacts with your content.
The general formula to calculate Instagram engagement rate is as follows:
Engagement rate = (engagements / audience) * 100
However, different marketers use different metrics to determine the size of their audience and the total number of engagements.
Most marketers add up the total number of likes and comments to determine the number of engagements. But you might also count other interactions like saves, shares, video views, etc.
For the audience, you can either use your total followers, total reach or total impressions, depending on what you’re trying to achieve. Most marketers use total followers.
With all that in mind, in most cases, the calculation will look more like this:
Engagement rate = (# of likes + comments / # of followers) * 100
How important is Instagram engagement rate?
Instagram engagement rate is one of the most important KPIs you can track as it gives a good indication of how engaged your followers are and your overall performance.
In fact, 78.71% of surveyed social media marketers said they track engagement, making it the #1 metric. Follower count is the second most commonly-tracked metric at 71%, and website traffic came third at 63.2%.
Not only that, but 61.84% of social media marketers also said the goal of their SMM campaigns is to increase brand engagement, making it the second top goal overall. This shows that boosting engagement rates on Instagram is a top priority for most businesses.
What’s the average Instagram engagement rate?
The average Instagram engagement rate varies by profile size, industry, location, and post type. And it also varies depending on whether you’re talking about engagement by reach, impressions, or followers.
As such, different studies have found wildly different average Instagram engagement rates. But perhaps the most extensive study of the past year was one by Hubspot, which looked at 110 million posts.
The Hubspot study found that the average Instagram engagement rate globally was 5.86% in 2022. And the average number of engagements per post was around 460.
While this is a useful benchmark, it makes much more sense to measure your own performance against benchmarks that are specific to your account size and industry. So with that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the data.
Average Instagram engagement rate by country
As we said, the global average Instagram engagement rate is 5.86%, but that varies substantially from country to country.
For example, it’s slightly lower in North America (5.21%) and in the UK + Ireland (5.43%).
On the other end of the spectrum, Japan is the country with the highest average Instagram engagement rate. In Japan, the average Instagram engagement rate is over 11%, which is around twice as high as the global average.
Instagram engagement rate by country (in ranked order):
| Rank | Country |
| #1 | Japan |
| #2 | Germany |
| #3 | Poland |
| #4 | India |
| #5 | Iran |
| #6 | Finland |
| #7 | Korea |
| #8 | Norway |
| #9 | France |
| #10 | Switzerland |
Instagram average engagement rate by industry
RivalIQ also recently carried out a large-scale study looking at average social media engagement rates by industry.
According to RivalIQ, the average Instagram engagement rate, across all industries, is 0.67%. Note that this is much lower than the Hubspot figure we discussed above.
The difference may have something to do with RivalIQ’s dataset, sample size, and the way they calculated the engagement rate (per post, by follower).
RivalIQ also found that higher education was the industry with the highest average engagement rate at 2.99%, while health and beauty was the industry with the lowest average engagement rate at just 0.32%.
Here’s a complete breakdown of the average Instagram engagement rate by industry, per the RivalIQ study:
| Industry | Instagram average engagement rate |
| Higher education | 2.99% |
| Sports teams | 1.84% |
| Influencers | 1.18% |
| Nonprofits | 1.04% |
| Alcohol | 0.76% |
| Hotel & resorts | 0.7% |
| Media | 0.64% |
| Food & beverage | 0.63% |
| Tech & software | 0.59% |
| Home decor | 0.45% |
| Financial services | 0.45% |
| Fashion | 0.36% |
| Retail | 0.33% |
| Health & beauty | 0.32% |
Instagram average engagement rate by followers
Another study from Mediakix, which looked at the average engagement rate on Instagram by followers, found that engagement inversely correlates with follower count.
Nano-influencers (smaller accounts with <5k followers) have the highest average engagement rates at 4.84%. This figure typically decreases as the number of followers increases.
Average engagement rate by followers (per Mediakix):
| #1 of Followers | Average engagement rate |
| 1,000 – 5,000 | 4.84% |
| 5,000 – 20,000 | 1.7% |
| 20,000 – 100,000 | 1.22% |
| 100,000 – 1 million | 1.06% |
| 1 million+ | 1.23% |
Similar results were found by Trendhero based on their analysis of 7.5 million accounts. As with Mediakix, Trendhero found that follower count inversely correlated with Instagram engagement rates.
However, the average engagement rate determined by Trendhero for each follower bracket was different from those provided by Mediakix, as shown below.
Engagement rate benchmarks by followers (per Trendhero):
| #1 of Followers | Average engagement rate | Good engagement rate | Excellent engagement rate |
| 5,000 – 10,000 | 2.6% | 5.9% | 11.2% |
| 10,000 – 100,000 | 1.8% | 4.1% | 8.1% |
| 100,000 – 1 million | 1.5% | 3.6% | 7.3% |
| 1 million+ | 1.5% | 3.7% | 7.2% |
The takeaway from all of this is that the more followers you have, the lower you should expect your engagement rate to be.
If you have a large following, you should be aiming in the ballpark of 1.5% – 5% to be performing on or above average.
If you have a smaller following, aim for 2.5% – 10%.
Average Instagram engagement rate by post type
According to Hootsuite’s Digital 2022 Global overview, the average engagement rate for posts published by Instagram business accounts is 1.94%. That’s the average across all posts, but it varies by post type, as shown below:
Engagement rate by post type (per Hootsuite):
| Post type | Average engagement rate |
| Photos | 1.18% |
| Videos | 1.5% |
| Carousels | 3.15% |
As you can see, Carousel posts were found to generate the most engagement by a wide margin—with more than double the average engagement rate of video posts and almost triple that of regular photo posts.
Needless to say, then, Carousels should be a core part of your Instagram content mix if you’re trying to boost engagement,
That said, it’s also worth pointing out that Hubspot also looked at engagement rates by post types in their analysis of 110 million posts, with different results.
Unlike Hootsuite, they found video to be the most engaging type of content with an average of 24.25 comments and 1097.9 likes per post.
Carousels came second with 23.2 comments and 933.7 likes. And images came last with less than 15 comments per post.
Sources: Hootsuite, Hubspot, RivalIQ, Influencer Marketing Hub, Trendhero
Which Instagram account has the highest engagement rate?
It’s tough to determine which Instagram account has the highest average engagement rate as the data can be misleading
There are thousands of accounts with a 99%+ engagement rate on Instagram, but the vast majority of them have very few followers and thus have inflated engagement rates. Many are also bot accounts that artificially boost their engagement rates by purchasing likes, comments, and shares.
Therefore, in order to get an accurate picture of the accounts with the highest engagement rates, we have to eliminate low-follower accounts from the dataset.
If we narrow down the pool to look only at mega-influencers with at least 1m+ followers (thus eliminating low-follower accounts and bot accounts), the account with the highest engagement rate is k-pop band @realstraykids at 9.99%.
9.99% might not seem like a lot, but when you have over 1 million followers, it’s super impressive. As we determined earlier, the average engagement rate for mega-influencers is closer to 1%, which means @realstraykids generates almost 10x more engagement than average.
Top 10 Instagram mega-influencers by average engagement rate:
| Instagram account | Followers | Average engagement rate |
| @realstraykids | 6.4 million | 9.99% |
| @staceysolomon | 3.2 million | 9.95% |
| @lachlan | 1.8 million | 9.94% |
| @heylaurensummer | 2.4 million | 9.92% |
| @oscar_casas | 2.4 million | 9.9% |
| @jdabrowsky | 1.7 million | 9.88% |
| @liekemartens | 1.3 million | 9.88% |
| @the_parthsamthaan | 2.3 million | 9.84% |
| @tylerjcameron3 | 2.4 million | 9.82% |
| @iam_evaqueen | 1.7 million | 9.82% |
As you can see, there’s not a huge difference between the top 10 spots. All of them hover around 10% average engagement rate. This is the goalpost you should be aiming for as a mega-influencer if you want to be a top performer.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are a fair few mega-influencers with over 1 million subscribers but an engagement rate of less than 0.1%.
Source: IGStats
Instagram best time to post
Statistics show that the overall best time to post on Instagram is on Sunday from 8 PM to 9 PM. This is the time slot with the highest average engagement rate (7.33%).
However, this isn’t a hard and fast rule, and it won’t necessarily hold true for every account. The best time to post for you will depend on your audience, and the easiest way to determine it is to look at your own analytics and see when your content tends to perform best.
When is the best time to post on Instagram for engagement?
According to a study by Hubspot, Instagram content posted between 6 PM and 9 PM has the highest average engagement rate. This makes sense as it’s when most people are home from work and can relax and browse their phones.
On the other end of the spectrum, content posted between 5 AM and 12 PM gets the lowest average engagement rate.
So the clear takeaway is that if you’re unsure when to post on Instagram, evenings are probably a safe bet, and you should steer clear of posting in the morning.
Just remember that we’re talking about evenings in your audience’s local timezone here – not your own timezone – as this is when they’re most active.
When is the best day to post for engagement?
According to the same study, Sunday is the best day to post if you’re aiming to maximize your engagement. On Sunday, average engagement rates are around 6.47%, which is higher than any other day.
Saturday and Monday are next at 6.05% and 5.95% respectively.
Content shared between Tuesday and Friday generates the lowest average engagement rate at around 5.6%. But again, this will vary from one account to the next.
Sources: Hubspot
What factors influence Instagram engagement rate?
Hubspot’s analysis found that the use of both captions and emojis has a substantial impact on Instagram engagement rate.
Adding a caption boosts average engagement from under 4% to 6%+, on average. The length of the caption also affects the average engagement rate, with the most engaging posts being those with captions of either under 20 characters or over 2000 characters.
Average engagement rates tend to drop off in the middle, so the best advice is to pick a lane: keep your captions brief or go long.
Adding emojis also boosts the average engagement rate from under 6% to over 6%. Using 11+ emojis has the greatest impact, so the more the better.
What are the top Instagram hashtags for engagement?
The most engaging hashtags tend to be community hashtags that target very niche, hyper-engaged audiences.
Top 10 hashtags by average engagement rate (per Hubspot)
- #Bar
- #Team07
- #GoPro
- #F1
- #Nehakakkarlive
- #bb13
- #NehuDaVyah
- #NehuPreet
- #Sonukakkar
- #RohanpreetSingh
All of the above had between 1000 and 3000 average engagements. And as you can see, the top 10 list consists mainly of community hashtags and Indian and Korean celebrities.
RivalIQ also looked at the top-performing hashtags by average engagement rate across different industries. According to their analysis, the top influencer hashtag is #tbt with an average engagement rate of 2.27%.
Top 10 Influencer hashtags on Instagram by engagement rate (per RivalIQ):
- #tbt – 2.27%
- #love – 1.6%
- #internationalwomensday – 1.4%
- #happynewyear – 1.36%
- #ad – 1.21%
- #mothersday – 1.07%
- #halloween – 1.01%
- #earthday – 0.74%
- #newyear – 0.71%
- #sponsored – 0.63%
Final thoughts
That concludes our roundup of Instagram engagement rate statistics.
As we’ve shown, it can be tough to benchmark your engagement rate on Instagram as averages vary depending on several factors including the number of followers you have, the country your audience is based in, and your industry.
That said, a good benchmark to aim for is probably around 2-5%. If you can achieve an ER in this range, you’ll likely be performing above average.
Want to learn more about Instagram and other social media platforms? Check out our roundup of social media statistics.
Good luck!
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