What engagement rate measures, the two formulas people use, what counts as a good follower to engagement ratio, and what actually moves the number.
Engagement rate is the share of people who interact with your posts. It's measured against either your follower count or the number of people who actually saw the post. "Interact" usually means likes and comments, and some people count saves and shares too.
It's popular because raw numbers can mislead. Five hundred likes means one thing on an account with 2,000 followers and something quite different on one with 200,000. Turning interactions into a percentage lets you compare posts, months and accounts on equal terms.
(likes + comments) ÷ followers × 100
You can work this out for a single post, or for the whole account by using your average likes and average comments over recent posts. Followers, likes and comments are usually public, so you can check any public account this way, not just your own. This is the version most calculators use, including ours.
interactions ÷ reach × 100
Reach is the number of unique accounts that saw a post. You'll only find it in your own insights, on a professional account. This version tells you how well a post landed with the people who saw it, whether they follow you or not. The two figures can differ a lot. A post shown to only part of your followers will often score higher by reach, while one that travels well beyond them can score lower.
Use followers for a quick check or to compare accounts. Use reach to judge your own content. Whichever you pick, stick with it. Switching formulas from month to month makes the trend meaningless.
Say an account has 4,000 followers, and its last five posts did this:
| Post | Likes | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Post 1 | 150 | 10 |
| Post 2 | 120 | 6 |
| Post 3 | 180 | 14 |
| Post 4 | 90 | 4 |
| Post 5 | 160 | 6 |
| Average | 140 | 8 |
By followers: (140 + 8) ÷ 4,000 × 100 = 3.70%.
By reach, for post 3 alone: if insights showed it reached 2,500 accounts and it also picked up 6 saves, that's 180 + 14 + 6 = 200 interactions. So 200 ÷ 2,500 × 100 = 8.00%. Same account, very different figure. That's why you shouldn't compare a reach-based number with a follower-based one.
One post on its own tells you very little. It might have gone out at a quiet time, or caught a lucky wave of shares. For an account-wide figure, use a recent run of posts. Somewhere between six and twelve is a sensible range for most accounts. Leave out anything that clearly isn't typical, such as a giveaway post where people commented to enter. If you post on a fixed schedule, a month's worth of posts works well. It also makes it easy to recheck on the same date next month.
As a general tendency, smaller accounts have higher rates. Early followers are often friends, family and genuine fans who see and react to most posts. As an account grows, more people follow casually, some accounts go quiet, and Instagram shows each post to only some of your followers. Likes usually keep climbing, just not as fast as followers, so the percentage slips. It isn't a fixed rule, though. Some large accounts keep very lively audiences.
It depends heavily on niche, account size and the kind of content you post, so treat any figure as a rough rule of thumb. For the follower-based formula, a loose guide:
The most useful comparisons are with your own past posts and with similar accounts in your niche, not with a number from someone else's corner of Instagram.
Some people put it as a ratio rather than a percentage. One interaction per post for every 50 followers is 2%. One for every 30 is about 3.3%. One for every 20 is 5%. It's the same measure written differently, so the rule of thumb above still applies.
To be straight about it: a follower package raises your follower count. It doesn't add likes or comments. Followers are the number you divide by, so unless engagement rises as well, your rate goes down.
In the example above, adding 1,000 followers with no change in interactions takes the account from 148 ÷ 4,000 (3.70%) to 148 ÷ 5,000 (2.96%). The profile looks bigger, but the percentage is lower.
Pairing followers with likes helps a post's numbers. A likes package goes to one post and raises its like count, which is what most visitors actually notice. It won't add comments, and it won't change how your audience behaves. If you're weighing up whether the trade-off is worth it, our guide on whether buying followers works goes through it honestly. If you do go ahead, the 1,000 follower package is a sensible size for most smaller accounts.
Give a post's like count a lift. Likes from £2.49, one-off.
See like packagesFor the bigger picture, see our guide on how to grow Instagram followers. Then come back to the calculator in a month to see whether the number has moved.