How to see instagram followers over time


How to Track Instagram Follower Count Over Time? [in 2023]

Measuring Instagram statistics is one of the keys to success when it comes to growing your business on this social platform. 

In this article, we’ll show you how to track your Instagram follower count over time and how your business can benefit from using analytics tools for Instagram. 

  • What is Instagram follower growth rate?
  • Why should you track Instagram follower growth metric?
  • Using native Instagram analytics tools
  • Is Instagram Insights good enough? 
  • Instagram follower growth tracker
  • Instagram follower tracker for competitors’ accounts
  • Instagram follower count – FAQs
    • How to check your Instagram follower count
    • How to check your Instagram follower count history
    • Why would you need an Instagram follower count tracker?
    • Typical Instagram follower trackers vs. NapoleonCat

Instagram Follower Count History

Check how many followers you had on any given date. Get in-depth Instagram analytics for your profiles and track your competitors. Try NapoleonCat for free:

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What is the Instagram follower growth rate?

Growing your business on Instagram from scratch may not be easy, but if you make the effort to develop a good strategy and produce appealing content, you will definitely start to see some movement on your business profile. 

Regardless of whether you are only just developing a new Instagram account or you’ve already been driving business communication on Instagram for some time, sooner or later you will discover that just staying active is not enough to grow your results effectively.

At this point, you will start to seek methods to optimize your account1 to better suit your business needs.  

The first thing that comes to mind here is, of course, measuring your profile’s performance, drawing conclusions, and making adjustments to your strategy.

This is obviously the right thing to do on every social media platform, although many marketers focus too much on their content’s performance.

They overlook a statistic that might be even more important. That’s right – I’m talking about Instagram follower count history

Instagram follower growth rate indicates how fast your followers count grows and may have a positive or negative value, depending on the new follows vs. unfollows ratio.

In other words – measuring it gives you clear information if your follower base is growing or shrinking. But how do you calculate your Instagram follower stats

The Instagram follower growth rate is based on a simple equation. To make it work, you’ll need the following data:

  • The number of followers at the beginning of the chosen time period
  • The number of new followers gained throughout the analyzed period
    (new follows minus unfollows)

Once you have those written down, perform this simple calculation:

Instagram follower growth rate formula.

Example: Suppose you gained 100 new followers in a month. If you started out with 1000 followers, the equation would look like this: 

Follower Growth Rate = 100/1000 ∗ 100% = 10%

That means that your follower growth on Instagram was 10% – which would be a very good result!

Why is Instagram follower growth a vital metric to track?

Instagram follower growth rate tells you if your content is reaching new people and grabbing their attention.

You probably wonder, how is keeping track of this metric going to help?

Looking into your fan base statistics will provide you with insights that can:
  • Help you assess your content strategy 
  • Inspire adjustments to your communications 
  • Show you if your business is growing at a satisfactory rate 
  • Add another dimension to your competitive analysis

Now that you know how tracking Instagram follower growth can support your social media management efforts, let us have a look at how to actually do it! 

Instagram Follower Tracker

Set a completely custom time range for your Instagram follower count history in NapoleonCat. Track your own profiles and your competitors, too! Try it for free:

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Try NapoleonCat free for 14 days. No credit card required.

Using native Instagram analytics tools for tracking followers

Instagram provides a built-in analytics tool called Instagram Insights. Instagram Insights is available for all Instagram accounts that are connected to a Facebook Page.

You can access it by clicking the three lines in the upper-right corner of your screen. Then go to the ‘Insights’ tab and start exploring your profile’s statistics.

Tap the three lines in the top-right corner of your screen and choose ‘Insights’ in the dropdown menu.

Instagram Insights – Overview

The Overview is the main tab within Instagram Insights. You’ll be able to access the main metrics from the last 7, 14, 30, or 90 days:

Instagram Insights – Overview

Instagram’s free tool organizes data into three categories that you can access inside the Overview tab:

  • Accounts Reached (Reach tab)
  • Content Interactions (Interactions tab)
  • Total Followers (Audience tab)

Each one of them gives you an insight into a different performance category. Let us go quickly through these functionalities one by one. 

Instagram Insights – Reach

The reach tab is where you will find some basic information about your content’s reach. You’ll see the number of impressions, profile visits, website taps, and call-to-action button taps.

Instagram Insights – Reach

Inside the reach tab, you can also check your top posts and Stories. If you click on “See All”, you’ll find all of your posts from the last 2 years.

Instagram Insights – Interactions

Inside the Interactions tab, you’ll be able to check some very basic metrics from the last 7, 14, 30, or 90 days:

Instagram Insights – Interactions

Below these metrics, you’ll also be able to access Top Posts, Top Stories, and Top IGTV videos (same as inside the Reach tab).

Instagram Insights – Audience

The audience tab pertains to user demographic data on your account. Keep in mind that this section only analyzes your own followers count.  

Later in the article, we’ll show you how to easily analyze other Instagram accounts.

Anyhow, you can check your Instagram followers count history (how many users followed and unfollowed you on a specific day). However, this ‘history’ is limited to only the last 7, 14, 30, or 90 days:

Instagram follower count history – Instagram Insights

So why can’t we just use the last tab of Instagram Insights as it contains the most valuable information and can work as an Instagram follower tracker app?

Well, that’s because only having a full overview of your account’s performance will let you draw the right conclusions.

It is not the sole metrics that matter, but the ability to find links and interconnections between them and your actions.

If you manage to combine this tactic with other tricks for boosting Instagram follower growth, success is almost guaranteed.

Is Instagram Insights good enough? 

The free Instagram tool for analytics is for sure a handy feature. Although, one might argue that it is pretty basic and doesn’t offer any sophisticated functionalities.

Let’s have a quick look at the pros and cons of the Instagram native solution.

Pros: 

  • Built into Instagram app = easy access
  • Free of charge
  • Covers the basic metrics, good for a start
  • Let’s you track the results of your everyday activities

Cons: 

  • Difficult to establish a broader view of your metrics
  • You can’t set your own custom time period for the analysis
  • You can track Instagram follower growth but only for your own account 
  • It doesn’t track your business across other platforms
  • Analysis has to be performed manually 
  • No automated reporting features

Instagram Insights are definitely worthwhile for beginners, but this solution might not meet the needs of dynamically growing companies.

Upping your social media game might require using external social media management tools that’ll help your business flourish. And we’ve got just the thing.

Track Your Instagram Follower Count Over Time

Measure your marketing results on Instagram and other platforms. Set a custom time range for your analysis. Track competitors and improve performance using one simple tool. Generate Instagram reports in seconds. Try it for free:

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Try NapoleonCat free for 14 days. No credit card required.

Instagram follower growth tracker

If you’re serious about using Instagram as a business management tool, then you definitely want to use its potential to the fullest. To achieve that, you must not leave anything to chance. 

Using the best tools available is one of the cornerstones of success in any environment. And this also applies to Instagram analytics. Where Instagram Insights fall short, other tools can deliver.

NapoleonCat’s Analytics tool is a great tool you should try out, especially if you manage multiple accounts and use more than one social media platform for your business.

Amongst its many features, it can also serve as an Instagram follower tracker.

Once you access our Analytics module, you’ll see tabs that pertain to specific metrics. Go to Summary or Followers to check how the number of your followers changed:

Instagram followers count history in NapoleonCat

With NapoleonCat’s Analytics, you can analyze the performance of your own Instagram accounts and other social profiles, e.g., your competitors.

NapoleonCat’s Instagram follower tracker feature

You may be wondering “How many Instagram followers did I have on a certain date?”. We’ve got you covered.

As opposed to Instagram Insights, NapoleonCat’s follower tracker is not limited to e.g., only 7 or 30 days back, and you can easily set a completely custom time range for your follower growth analysis to find more historical data from the moment you connect your account to NapoleonCat.

Once you set the time frame for your Instagram follower count analysis, simply click on any given Instagram followers graph, e.g., Followers daily, and you’ll see how many followers you had on a given day.

NapoleonCat’s Instagram follower tracker feature.

Reminder: After you connect your Instagram accounts to NapoleonCat, please wait up to 24 hours for the tool to fully sync your Instagram analytics data.

You can also check your daily Instagram follower change:

Daily Instagram followers change.

NapoleonCat lets you track your follower growth on multiple social networks: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Having all of this in one place will save you a lot of time and effort as you won’t need to jump between platforms to check your follower stats.

Another handy function is the automated reporting that’ll keep you as well as your team, business partners, clients, and stakeholders updated about all your key metrics.

Below you can check how quickly you can create an Instagram analytics report (a sample report is at the end of the video):

Obviously, NapoleonCat gives you all the functions of Instagram Insights, and more. Measuring your social media reach and engagement, identifying top posts and the best times to post, or learning about your audience demographics – all of this is found in one easy-to-use tool.

To see our full Analytics feature in action, you can also check out this video.

Instagram follower tracker for other Instagram accounts

One of the biggest drawbacks of Instagram’s built-in analytics tool is the inability to compare yourself with your competitors, including their follower growth rate.

This might be especially frustrating when they’re far ahead, and you just can’t figure out what they do better.

NapoleonCat’s comparative sets enable you to easily compare multiple accounts side by side and peep your competitors’ strategies, so it is much easier to catch up and outrun others.

PS. Even if your competitors hide their like counts on IG, you’ll still be able to see their likes in NapoleonCat 😉

Set up comparative sets to compare your own and your competitors’ IG follower growth rate 

Track Instagram Follower Growth Over Time

Set a completely custom time range for your IG follower count analytics in NapoleonCat. Track your own profiles and your competitors, too! Generate IG reports in seconds. Try it for free:

Company email

Try NapoleonCat free for 14 days. No credit card required.

Don’t use mass follow and mass unfollow apps – here’s why

You may have also heard about Instagram follower bots to boost your follower count – a seemingly quick way to gain new followers, which has grown especially popular in some circles of influencer marketing.

These bots basically follow and unfollow users, making your profile seem like a ghost account. The bots’ targeting system is based on hashtags, which can bring somewhat less valuable traffic to your account.

But that’s not the reason why we strictly don’t recommend them. Using such Instagram bots is a direct violation of Instagram’s terms of service and can get your account shadowbanned. You can read more about the dangers of using Instagram bots here.

Wrap up

Summing up, getting your analytics right is just as important as putting in the effort to produce quality content. Tracking your Instagram follower growth and other metrics is crucial to managing your Instagram profiles, making educated future projections, and maintaining good results. 

If you’re just starting your business adventure with Instagram, get to know the native tool first. Once you get comfortable with different metrics, don’t be afraid to try some third-party solutions.

This is what will give you a significant advantage over countless competitors who weren’t bold enough to invest in this type of solution. Good luck!

Instagram follower count – FAQs

As a bonus, we’re adding the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about Instagram follower count.

How to check your Instagram follower count

To check your current Instagram followers count, you only need to click on your profile picture in the bottom-right corner. Your follower count will be displayed at the top of your screen.

How to check your Instagram follower count history

The quickest way to analyze your Instagram follower count history is by accessing the free Instagram Insights tool.

  • Change your personal account into a business profile.
  • Go to your Instagram profile page.
  • Click on the three lines in the upper-right corner.
  • Click on Insights
  • Click on Total followers
  • And that’s it!

The follower count history in Instagram Insights is limited to the last 90 days. If you want to see more historical data, you can try out NapoleonCat’s 14-day free trial (no credit card required during registration).

Why would you need an Instagram follower count tracker?

The main purpose of an Instagram follower trend tracker is to help you analyze your performance on Instagram and improve your strategy going forward.

Besides, Instagram follower count is one of the most fundamental metrics your boss or client will want to see on a report.

You can schedule recurring Instagram reports in NapoleonCat that will include follower count history – both for your own accounts as well as your competitors’ IG profiles:

Instagram follower count history – NapoleonCat report

Typical Instagram follower trackers vs. NapoleonCat

Most of the typical Instagram follower trackers may badly influence your social media presence. They need your IG password to work, and due to past updates in Instagram’s API, these apps might not even be reliable or safe.

With NapoleonCat, you can track your Instagram follower growth without compromising your security. You also get up-to-date information in real time. This is why NapoleonCat is a better choice than your typical Instagram follower tracker. And of course, it offers many more functionalities to manage social media on a broader scale

For more Instagram knowledge, check out our other articles:

  • How to Analyze Competitors on Instagram
  • How to See Instagram Likes in 2023
  • A Complete Guide to Instagram Follower Demographics
  • What’s New on Instagram in 2023: New Features and Updates
  • 27 Instagram Hacks You Need to Try in 2023
  • Auto-Comments on Instagram: When and How Should You Use Them?
  • How I Used Hashtags to Grow my Instagram Organic Reach 20x
  • How to Get More Comments on Instagram

  1. Blueprint Of A Successful Instagram Account for Small Businesses

How to Track Instagram Follower Growth in 2022

Let’s face it: follower count has long stopped being the first metric to pay attention to on Instagram. Today, it’s largely considered as a number to boost your ego rather than something that significantly affects Instagram marketing.

And yet it shouldn’t be so easily dismissed. Organic follower growth indicates that people are interested in your content and what you have to offer. It’s one of the first signs that your content plan and marketing strategy are working. Therefore, the need to track Instagram follower growth remains relevant to this day.

Why do you need to track Instagram follower growth?

Let’s make it quite clear straight away: organic follower growth is the only metric that’s worth talking about.

Any inauthentic methods of boosting your follower count sure will make you feel good but that’s all they can do. Fake followers aren’t interested in what you have to say. They don’t generate leads and/or conversions. This is why before starting to monitor your metrics, you should make sure that your followers are real people genuinely interested in your content, products, or services.

But as far as the authentic audience is concerned, steady follower growth (or lack thereof) is one of the first signs to show how effective your content plan and/or marketing strategy is. That’s why you need to use all available free Instagram analytics to make decisions. In fact, there are a few important reasons why you should monitor this metric carefully.

  • It helps you to evaluate the consistency and effectiveness of your content plan
  • It tells you when you should introduce changes in your strategy
  • It indicates if your online presence and brand awareness grow at a healthy rate
  • It helps to evaluate your competitive performance and marketability.

How to check Instagram follower growth

There are two ways to access your follower analytics

  1. Instagram Insights, the platform’s own analytics tool,
  2. Online analytics paltforms and tools (for example, trendHERO).

How to check follower growth on Instagram

Instagram Insights is easily accessible to any users with Business accounts. You can convert your profile to Business by choosing the option in your profile settings. Just keep in mind that you’ll only see profile statistics dated after the switch. What’s more, if you switch back to a regular personal account, all information on your profile statistics will be deleted.

You can view your profile analytics at any time by choosing Instagram Insights in the profile menu.

In the Overview section you’ll find information: account reached, account engaged, total followers. The last one is the one you need to check to track your follower growth.

As you can see, Instagram’s analytics tool tells you how many people started following you during the last week and how many unfollowed you over that period.

The information is quite basic and might not be enough to evaluate your profile performance. So if you want to see a bigger picture, you can use trendHERO tracking for free.

Once your Instagram report is ready, you get access to detailed Instagram profile analytics, including the Instagram follower tracker.

How to use trendHERO to track Instagram followers growth over time

While Instagram Insights offers quite basic information on follower count growth, trendHERO takes it a step further. There is a great deal trendHERO can offer in terms of follower growth tracking. You need a section named Tracking.

The feature allows tracking growth dynamics and any changes in statistics in real time. An informative graph illustrates how your follower count grows over time:

By default, the system will show a profile growth rate over a month but you can change the tracking period by subscribing to a paid plan.

The graph consists of two parts. The one above shows follower growth dynamics over a certain period of time. The one below shows all changes on a daily basis. The blue and red columns indicate the positive and negative growth respectively.

By hovering a cursor over a graph you can see the ratio between the total number of followers and the change in follower count on a certain day. For example, this graph shows that on January 20 an Instagram profile had 1.74M followers and lost 394.5 followers on that day:

Another helpful graph in this section shows how profile mentions affect follower growth dynamics:

This metric can be extremely useful for marketers who want to monitor the effectiveness of their promo campaigns. You can easily monitor any mentions of the profile you are tracking. Besides, it’s a great way to check how effective their previous collaborations with brands were.

Hover a cursor over a graph and you’ll see how many mentions there were exactly on that day and who exactly mentioned the tracked profile:

But trendHERO Tracking also offers another tool to track the efficiency of your ads which expands on the previously mentioned data. Here you can see how specific sponsor mentions affect follower growth:

The red line shows the day when the sponsor profile was tagged in a post. The numbers indicate how many mentions were used on a specific day. Similarly to the previous graph, you can use this one to see which profiles were tagged and how they impacted the follower growth:

So, with trendHERO Tracking you get:

  • Daily followers growth
  • Daily followings growth
  • Engagement rate dynamics
  • Best time for posting
  • Ad efficiency

You can track one account (your or competitors) completely free of charge.

try it for FREE


trendHERO tracking allows seeing the bigger picture and expands on the previously available profile statistics.

As soon as the trendHERO AI generates a report, the first thing you can see a profile summary that, among other things, shows follower growth dynamic over the last year:

By scrolling down a bit, you’ll find the Following and Followers section that shows growth in followers and followings over the year. You can also get information on how many people started following this profile during the last 4 weeks:

It’s important to pay attention to any great spikes in follower growth. Sure, sometimes profiles get a large number of followers in short periods of time thanks to contests, giveaways, or advertising. But in the vast majority of cases, these spikes in follower count are caused by the arrival of a bunch of fake followers. It always makes sense to check what exactly happened on the profile you are checking on the day of the spike.

For example, this graph doesn’t show any spikes in follower growth. In fact, it hasn’t been growing a great deal at all. Over the period from January 2020 to December 2020, it only got about 3. 000 followers:

Unlike this other profile that got 47.000 followers in just 4 months (October 2020 to January 2021). Most likely, due to advertising:

Tips&Tricks

Organic follower growth on Instagram is a time and energy-consuming process. It’s not exactly surprising that many people prefer to take the path of least resistance.

Meaning they get fake followers by buying bots or utilizing mass following methods. However, at the end of the day, it’s the hard way that really pays off and brings the best results. As is the case with everything else.

If you want your profile to grow, there are two main rules to follow:

  1. Your account has to be active and to be updated on a regular basis.
    Publish posts, upload Stories, interact with your followers as much as possible. Your profile must be well-organized and whatever you post, must sparkle interest.
  2. Let your viewers and followers define the way your profile evolves.
    If they are not interested in reading about a certain topic, they most likely won’t enjoy it popping up in your posts and Stories. You have to understand where they are coming from, what they want, and what they expect from you. If you plan to grow and evolve, you simply can’t avoid making corrections. Talk to your followers, listen to them, open up to them.

And here’s what you’d want to do to help your follower count grow organically:

  1. Don’t forget to remind them about yourself.
    Add a link to your Instagram profile on other social media. “But why?”, you might ask. After all, your subscribers know about your social media profiles without any reminders. You are not wrong, of course. But don’t forget that all your subs can’t possibly be aware of every update and post you ever publish on your social media profiles. Besides, the link you post might attract a new follower. Or a hundred of them.
  2. Embed your Instagram feed widget on your website.
    When used and integrated correctly, it can be a nice little window to your profile and an invitation to new followers. Just make sure that it’s not annoying and in-your-face, or prevents people from viewing and/or reading your website content.
    The great thing is that there are many link tracking services that show stats on how many users used your widget to view your Instagram profile. In other words, you’ll be able to see just how useful it is.
  3. Follow Instagram algorithms changes.
    You know that Instagram don’t show your post to all your followers. Instagram chronological feed was taken from us to increase the time users spend on this social media platform. Now it’s back, but not default.
    Instagram shows content based on their own algorithms, and that’s why you need to know social media trends. If they want you to create Reels, you need to do it.
  4. Add a link to your Instagram profile in your email signature.
    This might be especially handy in newsletters. Let all your mail recipients know you have an active Instagram profile.
  5. Use your YouTube and/or TikTok channel to let them know about your Instagram profile.
    Video streaming services are massively popular. Using them to tell your subscribers about your Instagram profile is always a great idea. It’s probably due to the fact that visual and audio information is easier to digest. So if you have a YouTube or Twitch channel, or a TikTok account, it’s time to put them to good use. And if you don’t, it’s probably time to launch them.

Check Instagram stats with trendHERO

Partnering with bloggers and influencers who don’t know their audience and aren’t interested in its growth will most likely end in flushing your marketing budget down the drain. You have to make sure they are interested in keeping their followers engaged and happy.

And as far as your own profile concerned, you need to see if your content strategy is working as well as you expected.

trendHERO is the service that helps you to do that. Whether you want to monitor your own follower growth or check someone else’s profile, it will provide you with dynamic data that makes all the difference.

trendHERO does an in-depth analysis of any available Instagram profiles, generates detailed reports on profile statistics, and offers a reliable IG profile database. It’s all the important features both for marketers and bloggers in one online analytics service.

Now you know several methods how to see follower growth on Instagram.

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Conclusion

Complete statistics on follower growth can provide you with the full picture of your Instagram profile. Any change in engagement affects follower growth and lets you know when to change your strategy and when to follow the intended course.

Remember that the new Instagram algorithms react to your interaction with your followers. Your relationship with your audience takes the center stage and boosts your follower count.

While Instagram does offer its own analytics tools, it’s hard to do an in-depth profile audit using Instagram Insights only. There are just too few metrics to track and they are too basic. So to make sure that your profile grows steadily or that you don’t waste your marketing budget on the wrong influencers, use trendHERO.

How to see non-reciprocal or closed Instagram followers

Can I see non-reciprocal Instagram followers or other people's friends? How to see the number of subscribers in a private profile? Read about all this below.

Inexpensive promotion Instagram:

Subscribers - live and active

Likes - on photos and posts

Views - on video and IGTV

Comments - real with a guarantee

How to see followers on Instagram if it is closed - 9 ways0017

Usually every user has friends in social networks. But many people do not even consider Instagram a social network. Because it's not customary to make friends there. Instagrammers follow each other. And what is interesting: it is not at all necessary that if you subscribe to someone, he will do the same in return. The subscription has little to do with virtual friendship. Subscribers simply follow new user posts that have piqued their interest. And you don't need to get consent for this. And how to see other people's followers on Instagram, you should not think for a long time. Open your profile and take a look. First you will see their number. And by clicking on the "Subscribers" button, you will open the entire list. And you will be asked to subscribe to these people too.

But all this will only work in an open profile. If the user decides to close his account, the attitude towards subscriptions will also change. Secretive Instagrammers have the right to decide for themselves who is allowed to subscribe to their updates, and who should not be included in the circle of the elite. They approve or reject the one who knocks on them. To collect 1000 and 10000 real and live instagram followers go to https://doctorsmm.com/kupit-podpischikov-v-instagrame/.


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