Instagram Business metrics

Sep 3, 2026
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Article updated: March 20, 2026

Instagram Business metrics

Instagram Business metrics help you figure out how you're doing on Instagram. Analytics collects data for your posts- it does not include data from posts you collaborated on. This article goes over the Instagram Business metrics available in Analytics. Use CTRL+F (CMD +F on Mac) to search content in this article.

Important: Meta deprecated some Instagram metrics. To learn more about how this may affect your reports, see Changes to Instagram metrics - April 17, 2025.

To collect analytics data for Instagram, you must have an Instagram Business profile connected to a Facebook Page. See Meta's help article Connect or disconnect an Instagram account and your Page for setup instructions.

Hootsuite Analytics does not support IGTV.

For details and limitations on how we collect, backfill, and store data for each social network, see Understand data in Analytics.

Instagram Business Page-level metrics

Page metrics or Page-level metrics display results that occurred during the selected date range for all posts published to a Page, regardless of when the posts were published. So, if you track any Page-level metrics in your reports, the data you see is for the entire Page. For example, a metric like Page views shows you the total number of views that your posts received during your selected date range - it doesn't matter if the posts were published during or outside of that range. Learn more about the difference between post-level and Page-level metrics

Instagram Business Page-level metrics
Metric	Description
Audience > Age	The number of followers broken down by city, country, gender, and age. Does not include current day's data or data from paid promotion
Engaged audience	The countries, cities, gender, and age of the engaged audience. Does not include current day's data or data from paid promotion. Instagram requires at least 100 followers to return this data
Followers	The number of people following your accounts
Followers online	The number of followers who were online during the selected date range, broken down by day of the week and time of day. When you select more than a week, it displays the average number of followers. All times are in GMT
Inbound messages	The number of inbound messages (direct messages and comments posted by others) your accounts received
Inbound messages table	The list of inbound messages (direct messages and comments posted by others) your Instagram accounts received, analyzed by sentiment, gender, and language
Lost followers	The number of followers who unfollowed you or left Instagram during the selected date range. Instagram requires at least 100 followers to return this data
New followers	The number of new followers gained per day in the selected date range, without paid promotion. Instagram requires at least 100 followers to return this data. The data may be delayed by up to 48 hours due to network limitations
Page engagement	The number of interactions (reactions, comments, shares, and more) content you published during the time frame received. Content includes posts, stories, reels, videos, and ads. Instagram requires at least 100 followers to return this data
Page engagement rate	The average engagement rate for all posts, calculated as the sum of engagement rates for each post divided by the number of posts. The engagement rate for a post is calculated as the number of interactions (reactions, comments, shares, and more) for posts, stories, reels, videos, and ads you published during the time frame, as a percentage of the number of people who saw them. To chart daily values over time, we recommend using Line, Area, and Column visualizations. Number, Gauge, Pie, and List visualizations can only display average daily values
Posts	The number of posts published to your accounts. Posts include photos, videos, carousels, reels, and stories
Posts ROI	The total return on investment (ROI) for all posts published to the selected Advanced Analytics accounts during time frame. We calculate ROI as the sum of metric values assigned by the social network (for example, 12 likes) multiplied by metric values assigned by you (for example, 2 points)
Profile daily average reach	A daily average of how many people saw at least one of your organic or boosted posts or ads. Repeat views and views across different types of posts (photo, video, or carousel) by the same person are counted as a single view. To calculate the average per profile, we add each day's value and then divide that by the number of days in your selected time frame
Profile reach	The number of people that have seen at least one of your organic or boosted posts or ads. Repeat views and views across different types of posts (photo, video, or carousel) by the same person are counted as a single view
Profile views	The number of times your posts were played or displayed on people's screens, including from paid promotion. Posts include photos, videos, carousels, reels, and stories. This metric is estimated by Meta
Reached audience	The countries, cities, gender, and age of the reached audience. Does not include current day's data or data from paid promotion. Instagram requires at least 100 followers to return this data
Received DMs	The number of direct messages your Instagram accounts received

Instagram Business post-level metrics

Post metrics or post-level metrics only display results for posts published during the selected date range. So, if you review your post performance results or track any post-level metrics in your reports, like Post impressions, the data you see is only for the posts published during your selected date range. Learn more about the difference between post-level and Page-level metrics

Instagram Business post-level metrics
Metric	Description
Post comments	The number of comments on content you published during the time frame. Content includes photos, videos, carousels, reels, and stories
Post engagement	The number of times someone liked, commented, saved, or shared content you published during the time frame. Content includes photos, videos, reels, and carousels. Note, this metric does not support stories. If you include this metric in a report, and filter by stories, it will return a 0 value
Post engagement rate	The average engagement rate for all your posts, calculated as the sum of engagement rates for each post, divided by the number of posts. The engagement rate for a post is calculated as the number of people who liked, commented, saved, or shared a photo, video, reel, or carousel, or shared a reel you published during the time frame, as a percentage of the number of people who saw it. To chart daily values over time, we recommend using Line, Area, and Column visualizations. Number, Gauge, Pie, and List visualizations can only display average daily values. Note, this metric does not support stories. If you include this metric in a report, and filter by stories, it will return a 0 value
Post follows from a post	The number of people that started following you from content you published during the time frame. Does not include followers from IGTV or stories
Post likes	The number of times someone liked organic posts you published during the time frame. Does not include likes received after a post was promoted. Posts include photos, videos, carousels, and reels. Note: You may notice that "likes" in Hootsuite appear lower than what you see natively in the Instagram app. This is because the Instagram app shows an aggregated total that includes engagement from reels cross-posted to Facebook. However, the Instagram API currently only provides Instagram-specific data to third-party tools like Hootsuite, excluding the Facebook-side engagement.
Post reach	The number of people who saw content you published during the time frame at least once. Content includes photos, videos, carousels, reels, and stories
Post reels average watch duration	The average time reels you published during the time frame were watched, including replays and views of less than three seconds. Returns 0 for reshared reels
Post reels watch duration	The time reels you published during the time frame were watched, including replays and views of less than three seconds
Post saves	The number of times people saved content you published during the time frame. Content includes photos, videos, carousels, and reels
Post shares	The number of times people shared content you published during the time frame. Does not include stories
Posts table	A list of posts published by your Pages and their lifetime engagement metrics. The table includes the following columns: Date Message Collaborators Likes Comments Shares Saves Views Reach Engagement Engagement rate
Post views	The number of times people saw the organic posts you published during the time frame, including from paid promotion. Posts include photos, videos, carousels, reels, and stories
Post views table	The list of videos and their view metrics for videos you published to your accounts during the date range
Profile activity from a post	The number of actions people take when they visit your profile after engaging with posts you published during the time frame. Does not include actions from IGTV or stories
Profile visits from a post	The number of times people visited your profile from content you published during the time frame. Does not include profile visits from IGTV or stories
Story exits	The number of times people swiped out of stories you published during the time frame before they ended
Story replies	The number of replies to stories you published during the time frame. This does not include replies made by users in Europe and Japan. For stories created by users in Europe and Japan, the number of replies will be zero.
Story taps back	The number of times people tapped to see the previous photos or videos in stories you published during the time frame
Story taps forward	The number of times people tapped to see the next photos or videos in stories you published during the time frame
Top posts	The best performing posts on all your accounts. Thumbnails include a list of collaborators on the post, where applicable.

Return to the full list of metrics available in Analytics

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Instagram Business metrics

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igb-metrics