Instagram competitor analysis: the numbers that matter

Instagram competitor analysis means reading a rival's public profile to learn how often they post, which formats earn engagement, which creators they work with and what they pay to promote. Everything you need is public or close to it. The work is turning it into three or four numbers and a short list of things worth copying.

This guide is the Instagram-specific version. For what to track across every platform, start with how to monitor competitor social media.

What Instagram competitor analysis can see

Open their profile, tap the three dots, and choose About this account. Instagram shows the date the account joined and the number of times its username has changed, and "for certain accounts" where it is based, accounts with shared followers, whether it is verified and its active ads (Instagram's help page). On desktop today, big brand accounts show the join date, country, shared followers and verification; the active ads row did not appear there.

On the profile itself:

Three quirks change how you count.

Pinned posts come first. Up to three posts can be pinned to the top of the grid (pinning help), so the first tiles are often months old.

Collabs appear on both profiles. A collab post can have up to five collaborators and shows on every accepted collaborator's profile (Collabs help). A big brand's grid can include posts owned by its sub-brands or by creators. Check who owns a post before you count it as theirs.

Owners can hide like and view counts per post (Instagram's help page). If a competitor does, fall back on comments and Reel views.

Step 1: cadence by format

Count everything they posted in the last 30 days, by format: Reels, carousels and single images. Carousels can hold up to 20 photos and videos, and videos inside a carousel are not counted as Reels (carousel help), so classify by what the post is, not what it contains.

You end up with something like "4 Reels, 3 carousels, 1 image a week". Do it again next month. A change in the mix is a strategy change; a jump in volume is a budget change.

Step 2: calculate engagement rate from public numbers

There are two versions, and you need both.

Engagement by followers = (likes + comments) ÷ followers × 100, for each post.

Engagement by views = (likes + comments) ÷ views × 100, for Reels only.

Use the median across posts rather than the average, because one viral Reel will distort an average for months.

A worked example

Say a made-up skincare brand, Dew Theory, has 38,400 followers. Its last twelve posts:

Now the arithmetic.

• Reels, median: the middle two of six totals are 322 and 665, so the median is 493.5. Divided by 38,400, that is 1.3%.
• Reels, average: 5,748 ÷ 6 = 958, or 2.5%. The gap between 1.3% and 2.5% is one creator collab doing the heavy lifting. Take R5 out and the average falls to 1.4%.
• Carousels, median: the middle two of 866, 662, 968 and 1,121 are 866 and 968, so 917. That is 2.4%, and all four sit close together.
• Images: about 0.8%.
• Reels by views: the median Reel gets 16,450 views. R5 converted 2.6% of its views into likes and comments; R4 converted 2.7%. The collab won on reach, not on how much people cared.

The reading: Dew Theory's carousels are reliably their best format, its own Reels are average, and its one big Reel came from a creator. If you compete with them, a consistent carousel habit is the proven play, and their Reel numbers are less of a threat than the headline views suggest. The same median method works on TikTok, with TikTok's own engagement formula, in the TikTok competitor analysis guide.

Step 3: read the hooks

Take their five best posts by engagement and note what happens first.

For Reels: the opening line spoken or written on screen in the first seconds. Is it a problem ("Your SPF is pilling because..."), a result, a list, or a face talking?

For carousels: the first slide. Most winning carousels promise something specific on slide one and pay it off by the last.

For captions: the first line, because that is all most people see before "more".

Write each hook in your own words in a sheet. After three competitors, the formats that repeat are the ones the audience in your niche rewards.

Step 4: map their creators and collabs

Count three things for the last 90 days:

• Collab posts, and with whom. A brand that collaborates monthly with the same three creators has an ambassador programme.
• "Paid partnership" labels. Branded content shows "Paid partnership with" and the partner's name (branded content help).
• Branded content in the Ad Library. Branded content from 17 August 2023 onwards can be searched in the Meta Ad Library by Page or Instagram profile (Meta's Ad Library help).

Creators who appear on two competitors' grids in the same quarter are worth knowing about. So is a competitor that suddenly stops working with one.

Step 5: check what they pay to promote

Their Instagram ads are in the Meta Ad Library. Search the brand, set the platform filter to Instagram, and choose a country. The library includes every active ad, whatever the country. In the EU and the UK, ads are also archived for a year after their last impression, with reach by age and gender.

Organic posts show what they want to say. Ads show which message they believed in enough to fund. The Instagram ad library guide goes through the filters step by step.

One blind spot: trial reels are shown to non-followers first and stay off the profile unless the owner shares them to everyone (Instagram's announcement). What you see on the grid is what survived their testing.

What to copy, and what not to

Copy formats and topics that work for two or more competitors. Repeated success across accounts is a signal about the audience, not about one team's luck.

Copy the cadence of the account you most want to beat, if you can sustain it. Inconsistency costs more than a slightly lower volume.

Do not copy a single viral Reel. Every account has one, and it rarely repeats.

Do not copy creator collabs without the budget to keep them going. One paid collab followed by silence teaches the audience nothing.

Do not chase follower counts. A competitor with twice your followers and half your engagement rate is not winning.

Tools, if the spreadsheet gets old

Prices below were read from each vendor's own pricing page on 4 October 2026.

Metricool's free plan analyses up to 5 competitor profiles with 30 days of analytics; paid plans start at $20 a month billed annually. Socialinsider (from $99 a month, or $82.50 billed yearly) and Rival IQ (from $239 a month) are built for benchmarking engagement across many accounts and networks. The social media competitor analysis tools roundup compares them.

Ours, Figo, so judge accordingly. Figo records each competitor's new Instagram and Facebook posts once a week and their Meta ads from the Ad Library, next to their Google and TikTok ads, website changes, pricing and reviews, in one Monday briefing from $49 a month for three competitors. It does not calculate engagement rates or benchmark you against them, so if that is the job, use one of the tools above or the method on this page.