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Instagram Metrics

❗Instagram switched from Impressions to Views. Full details here 👉 Instagram replaces “Impressions” with “Views”: What you need to know

Instagram



To access all Instagram metrics, your account must be connected via Facebook. A direct connection through Instagram only provides basic stats. Check the connection details here.

Instagram account-level metrics include both organic and paid data. In the Posts and Reels sections, an organic data summary is provided, but you can view detailed information on promoted posts by connecting your Meta Ads account. For Stories, only organic data is available.

In addition to scheduling and auto-publishing, you can also boost your Instagram posts and reels from Metricool. Find the information here.

You can review ad campaigns (both on Instagram and Facebook) in the Meta Ads analytics. We recommend specifying the social network in your campaign name for easy identification. If you manage multiple clients, Facebook recommends having an advertising account for each client.

For more details, refer to "Differences between boosted posts and ads".

👀 Considerations


Reach: Reach refers to unique users. For Instagram, it is counted once (although noted as an estimate). In Metricool, we receive reach data per day, meaning it is aggregated (the total would be the sum of each day). This can be distorted if the same user views multiple posts, as it would no longer be unique. For this reason, in the organic summary, we show the data as an average, as it better reflects reality. It is recommended to review impressions for total data.
Account Impressions: These represent the total impressions generated by posts (organic and paid), stories, reels, user searches, profile visits, etc. In summary, each time someone interacts with any content related to the Instagram account, an impression is generated. However, it is important to note that it is not possible to manually calculate the total number of these impressions. Only Instagram can provide the exact total number of impressions for an account. This data is obtained directly from Instagram's platform and can be accessed through its analytics tools.
Collaborative Posts: They will only appear if your account is the content creator. To view the details of a post where you are a collaborator, you can add the content creator's account as a competitor.
Paid Data: To display detailed paid data for your posts and reels, you need to connect the corresponding Meta Ads account to the brand.
Reels Views: Organic views are counted from 3 seconds of viewing, while paid views are counted regardless of the duration. In paid interactions, replays are included.
Appendix: Consult here the deprecated metrics and the note on privacy in stories.

Below, you can check all the available metrics for your professional Instagram account (business or creator).

Community



✅ GROWTH

Followers: Total number of followers at the end of the period selected.
Following: Total number of users followed
Total content: Total number of posts published in the period selected, including posts + reels + stories.
Followers: Growth of followers in the selected period (the difference between the last selected day and the day preceding the first selected day).
Daily followers: Average number of followers gained or lost in the period of time analyzed.
Followers per post, Following, Posts per day, Posts per week: average between the total data and the selected time range.

💡 The percentages of these metrics show a comparison with the same period immediately prior. For example, if a week is selected it will be compared to the previous 7 days.



✅ BALANCE OF FOLLOWERS

The Followers balance records data on all the movements of our followers. If a follower for example unfollows us and then follows us again, it would count as two followers. Movements of deleted or restricted accounts are also included.

The graph visually highlights the days where followers were gained or lost the most. However, unlike Instagram, it doesn't display the gained or lost followers but rather shows the net increase or decrease for each day. The Metricool balance represents the difference in the number of followers for each day compared to the previous day.

Followers: Balance number of followers in the selected period.



Demographics


Gender, Age, followers by country and city. Instagram will start providing this information from 100 followers. You can see the information as a chart or a table.

Account



✅ PROFILE

Impressions: Total number of times that the profile or publications (post, reels, and stories) are shown. It includes organic and paid data.

👀 Account impressions represent the total number of impressions generated by posts (organic and paid), stories, reels, user searches, profile visits, and more. In summary, every time someone interacts with any content related to the Instagram account, an impression is created.
However, it is important to note that it is not possible to manually calculate the total number of these impressions. Only Instagram has the capability to provide the exact number of total impressions generated by an account. This data is provided directly by the Instagram platform and can be accessed through its analytics and statistics tools.

Avg. reach per day: Average number of people who have been reached with our publications(post, reels, and stories) and profile. The average is taken over the number of days.
Posts: Total number of posts published in the period selected, including posts + reels + stories.

👀 Collaborative posts will appear only if your account is the content creator. To view the information of a post in which you are a contributor, you can add the content creator account as a competitor.

Publications in the period



✅ ORGANIC SUMMARY



Engagement: Engagement of our publications. Engagement is defined as interactions received per 100 or 1000 people reached, depending on the formula you have set. In this post you can find more information.
Interactions: Total number of interactions on the posts published in the time span selected.
Avg. reach per post: Average number of people reached by our publications. The average is calculated by the number of posts. If we want to access the paid data we must connect Meta Ads to Metricool and check the information about Instagram campaigns.
Impressions: Total number of times that publications are shown. It only collects organic data. If we want to access the paid data we must connect Meta Ads to Metricool and check the information about Instagram campaigns.
Posts: Total number of posts published in the period selected.

✅ ORGANIC INTERACTIONS

Likes: Total number of likes on posts published in the period selected.
Comments: Total number of comments on posts published in the period selected.
Saved: Total number of times that post published in the period selected have been saved.
Posts: total number of posts published in the time frame selected.
Likes per day, Likes per post, Comments per day, Comments per post, Likes per comment: Average between the total data and the selected time range.

✅ TYPES

Data on the type of publication: image, carousel or video. It is possible to view it as a graph or as a table.
Impressions: data on organic and promoted impressions of our publications.

✅ LIST OF POSTS



Type: type of publication: image, carousel or video.
Date: Date of post publication
Impressions: Total number of times that posts has been shown. Below the data you can see a bar indicating organic and promoted impressions.
Organic Reach: Total number of people that have been reached by each publication organically.
Paid reach: Total number of people reached with each publication through promoted posts.
Organic Likes: Total number of likes received organically of each post published in the period selected.
Organic Saved: Number of times that each post published in the period selected has been saved organically.
Organic Comments: Total number of organic comments on each publication.
Organic Clicks: Total number of organic clicks on each publication. This click refers to the link in the BIO.
Organic Interactions: Total of organic interactions on each publications. (Likes, Comments and Saved)
Paid interactions: total paid interactions for each publication. Meta Ads provides this data directly from the campaign, without a detailed breakdown.
Engagement: Engagement of our publications. Engagement is defined as interactions received per 100 or 1000 people reached, depending on the formula you have set. In this post you can find more information.
Video views: Total number of views of the video. Below the data you can see a bar indicating organic and promoted data. It is counted as a view from 3 seconds onwards.
Paid Post Clicks: total number of clicks on any part of the paid post.
Spent: Spent of the promoted post.

👀 In order to display separate payment data, you need to have the corresponding Meta Ads account connected to that brand.

Hashtags



✅ LIST OF HASHTAGS

Metrics for the hashtags used in your Feed posts (Reels data not included).

Impressions: Number of impressions of a post that includes a hashtag. If the hashtag has been included in multiple posts, those numbers will be averaged.
Number of posts: Number of posts that include each hashtag.
Likes: Likes on publications that used each hashtag. If the hashtags have been included in several posts, the numbers will be averaged.
Comments: Number of comments on publications that used each hashtag. If they have been used in several publications, the numbers will be averaged.

Reels in the period



✅ ORGANIC SUMMARY

Engagement: Engagement of each publication. This is organic data. Engagement is defined as interactions received per 100 or 1000 people reached, depending on the formula you have set. In this post you can find more information.
Interactions: total organic interactions for the period. It includes Likes, Comments, Saves and shareds.
Avg. Reach per Reel: Average number of people reached with our Reels. The average is calculated by the number of Reels. It is organic data.
Video views: total number of video views for the periodo. Replays are not included. Only initial reel plays are available by API.
Reels: total number of Reels in the selected period.

✅ ORGANIC INTERACTIONS

Likes: total number of Likes on the Reels in the selected period.
Comments: total number of Comments on the Reels in the period.
Saved: total number of times our Reels have been saved in the period.
Shared: total number of times our Reels have been shared in the period.
Reels: total number of Reels in the selected period.

✅ LIST OF REELS

Video views: total number of times the video has been viewed. Replays are not included. Only initial reel plays are available by API.
Organic Reach: organic reach of the video.
Paid Reach: paid reach of the video.
Organic Likes: organic likes of the video.
Organic Saved: total number of times the reel has been saved organically.
Organic Shared: total number of times our Reel has been shared in the period.
Organic Comments: total number of organic comments the video has received.
Organic Interactions: organic interactions of the video. Include likes, comments, saved and shared.
Paid Interactions: Total paid video interactions. Meta Ads provides this data directly from the campaign, without a detailed breakdown.
Engagement: Engagement achieved by the Reel. Engagement is defined as interactions received per 100 or 1000 people reached, depending on the formula you have set. In this post you can find more information.
Paid Post Clicks: total paid clicks achieved on a promoted post.
Spent: Spent of the promoted reel.

On Reels, organic views are counted from 3 seconds of viewing, whereas paid views are counted regardless of the duration in seconds. In paid interactions, replays are counted.

Stories in the period



✅ EVOLUTION

Impressions: Number of times that stories are shown.
Avg. reach per story: Average number of people reached per story.
Stories: Total number of stories published in the period selected.

✅ LIST OF STORIES

Date: Date of story publication.
Impressions: Total number of times that stories has been shown. Below the data you can see a bar indicating organic and promoted impressions.
Organic Reach: Total number of people who have been reached by each story. Organic data.
Paid Reach: Total number of unique people who have been reached by the story. Paid data.
Organic Replies: Number of replies on each story. It does not include reactions. Instagram does not provide data on organic responses to stories in Europe and Japan (Footnote)
Organic Taps back: Number of times that users have tapped back to see a story again.
Organic Taps forward: Number of times that users have tapped forward to skip a story.
Organic Exits: Number of times that users have gone to the next account without seeing all our stories.

💡 To see the paid data, you need to connect Meta Ads to the brand.

Competitors



✅ LIST OF COMPETITORS (SUMMARIZED MENU)

Followers: Total number of followers.
Posts: Total number of posts published by each competitor.
Reels: Total number of competitor’s Reels in the time rage selected.
Likes: Average number of likes per post.
Comments: Average number of comments per post.
Engagement: The engagement formula for competitors is as follows: Avg. Interactions/ # followers * 100 or 1000 , depending on the formula you have set. In this post you can find more information.

💡 The engagement of competitors is calculated differently from the engagement of your account, we recommend adding your own account as a competitor to make the data comparable. Unlike account engagement, we use the average number of interactions and the number of followers in the denominator. We do not use the reach because this metric is not public and therefore we cannot access it for competitors.

✅ LIST OF COMPETITORS (MENU 'MORE STATS')

⚡️ Community

Followers: Total number of followers of our competitor.
Posts: Total number of posts of the competitor's account.
Reels: Total data of the competitor's Reels in the rank.

⚡️ Posts

Engagement: The engagement ratio is the interactions received per 100 or 1000 followers,depending on the formula you have set. In this post you can find more information.
Likes: Total number of organic likes on posts in the selected time range.
Comments: Total number of organic comments from competitors in the selected time range.
Posts: Total number of publications made by the competitor's account in the selected time range.

⚡️ List of posts

Date: Date of publication of the post.
Likes: Total number of likes of the post.
Comments: Total number of comments of the post.
Interactions: Total number of interactions of the post.
Engagement: The engagement ratio is the interactions received per 100 or 1000 followers,depending on the formula you have set. In this post you can find more information.

⚡️ Reels

Engagement: The engagement ratio is the interactions received per 100 or 1000 followers,depending on the formula you have set. In this post you can find more information.
Likes: Total number of likes on posts in the selected time range.
Comments: Total number of comments from competitors in the selected time range.
Reels: Total number of Reels published by the competitor's account in the selected time range.

⚡️ List of reels

Date: Date of publication of the reel.
Likes: Total number of likes of the post.
Comments: Total number of comments of the post.
Interactions: Total number of interactions of the post.
Engagement: The engagement ratio is the interactions received per 100 or 1000 followers,depending on the formula you have set. In this post you can find more information.

Appendix



Deprecated Metrics


As of January 8, 2025, Instagram has discontinued the following metrics in its API. If you had access to these metrics in Metricool before this date, you will still be able to view them for previous periods.

Profile Views: Visits to the profile of your Instagram account.
Website Clicks: Number of times the URL in the BIO of your account has been clicked.
Clicks: Section showing the clicks made on each button of the Instagram profile (Emails, directions, calls, and messages). You can check this in Instagram’s profile activity statistics.

Meta Note: Privacy Update on Instagram Stories Interaction Metrics

Due to privacy rules, interactions with multimedia content on Instagram Stories related to user messages in certain regions will no longer be included in some result calculations. These regions include: Europe, starting December 1, 2020, and Japan, starting April 2021.

For stories created by users in the affected regions, the "replies" result will now return a value of 0.
For stories created by users outside the affected regions, the "replies" result will return the number of responses, but those from users in the affected regions will not be included in the calculation.

How to grow on Instagram: Strategies to grow a brand. Tutorial available on our blog.

Updated on: 07/04/2025

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