What Is a Good Instagram Growth Rate? (2026 Benchmarks by Account Size)

A good Instagram growth rate is one above the published average for accounts your size, held for three months or more: on 2025 data that means more than about 1.7% a month at 1,000 to 5,000 followers, sliding to more than about 0.9% a month between 100,000 and 1 million. Those thresholds are the monthly equivalents of Socialinsider's yearly averages for brand pages, 22% down to 11.25%; no stable public study reports a monthly benchmark for creator accounts by size, so read them as a reference line and not a verdict.

Figures checked October 2026 against Socialinsider's 2026 Instagram benchmarks (February 2026), Metricool's 2026 Instagram statistics (June 2026), Dash Social's 2026 benchmarks (first-half 2026 edition) and its Social Media Trends Report, Issue 2 (September 2026). Instagram's Help Center defines the Growth insight but publishes no benchmark for it.

The findings in five lines

• The data is yearly, not monthly. Socialinsider's brand pages averaged 22% growth across 2025 at 1,000 to 5,000 followers and 11.25% at 100,000 to 1 million.
• As a monthly rate that is small. Compounded, those averages are about 1.7% and 0.9% a month (our arithmetic).
• Growth roughly halved in a year. The same two tiers averaged 38% and 27% in 2024.
• Most accounts stay in their size tier. Metricool found 8.93% of accounts moved up a tier in a year: about 10% under 10,000 followers, 1.34% between 100,000 and 1 million.
• Niche moves it too. Dash Social's brand handles grew 1.3% a month in media and entertainment and 0.6% to 0.7% in two consumer categories.

This page restates published data so you can grade your own account. It belongs to the Instagram Growth Playbook, which covers what to do about the number. For the sister benchmark, see what is a good engagement rate on Instagram.

How to calculate your Instagram growth rate

Growth rate is the net followers you gained in a period, divided by the followers you started with, times 100. Socialinsider defines its benchmark the same way: followers gained divided by followers you started with, multiplied by 100.

An illustrative example: you start the month on 4,000 followers and end it on 4,120. That is 120 net new followers, and 120 ÷ 4,000 × 100 is 3% for the month. Twelve months at that pace is 42.6% for the year, not 36%, because each month builds on the last.

That compounding is why a yearly benchmark cannot be divided by twelve. To turn a yearly rate into a monthly one, take the twelfth root: (1 + yearly rate)^1/12 − 1. The table runs it the other way, so you can see what a monthly rate means over a year.

Three rules keep the number honest:

• Use net followers. Instagram's Growth insight counts followers gained or lost, and the rate uses the difference.
• Keep your own log. Any public account can open insights, follower trends appear once you have at least 100 followers, and timeframes only reach back 90 days. Note your follower count on the same day each month.
• Match the window. Compare a monthly rate with a monthly benchmark and a yearly one with a yearly benchmark, converting first.

Our Instagram analytics hub shows where each of these screens sits and what the other metrics mean.

What is the average Instagram follower growth rate?

For brand accounts, about 1% a month. Socialinsider's yearly averages for 2025 run from 11.25% to 22% depending on size, and Dash Social's monthly averages for large brand handles run from 0.6% to 1.3% depending on industry. Nobody publishes an average for solo creators.

Socialinsider's 2026 page labels these columns by calendar year without naming the window. Its 2025 edition prints the same chart with the label "YoY growth rate", and the 38% it reports there for the smallest tier is the 2024 figure on the new page, so we read every figure as growth across one year.

Method: where these numbers come from

We did not collect this data. In October 2026 we read each source, recorded its sample, date and definition, and restated the figures unchanged. Two things on this page are ours and are labelled that way: the monthly equivalents, which are arithmetic on Socialinsider's yearly figures, and the verdicts, which come from running creator accounts.

Three things were left out on purpose:

• Buffer's live benchmark page. It prints an average monthly growth figure, but the number shown has differed widely between snapshots this year, so it is not a stable reference.
• Growth ladders. Tables of the "under 1% is slow, over 5% is excellent" kind appear on many calculator pages. We could not trace one to a dataset.
• One Metricool figure. Its press release says 21% of accounts under 10,000 followers grew, without defining the measure. We use the per-tier figures from its statistics page.

Instagram growth rate benchmarks by account size

The bigger the account, the lower the percentage, in every source. Socialinsider's summary is that "the smaller your account, the faster you're likely to grow", and that growth levels out "as retention and churn balance things out".

The first two number columns are Socialinsider's. The monthly column is our arithmetic, and the last column is a rule of thumb, not a published threshold: an account compounding at twice its tier's average is doing something the typical brand page is not.

Metricool measures size a different way: the share of accounts that crossed into the next follower tier between early 2025 and early 2026.

Read plainly, about one account in ten under 10,000 followers changed tier in a year, one in thirty between 10,000 and 100,000, and one in seventy-five above that. Part of the fall is the width of the tiers, since crossing from 10,000 to 100,000 takes a tenfold increase. The direction still matches Socialinsider's.

Under 1,000 followers there is no benchmark: Socialinsider and Dash Social both start at 1,000. Percentages also misbehave on small numbers, since 30 new followers on a base of 150 is 20%. Until you pass 1,000, count net new followers per week, and use our guide to your first 1,000 followers for what moves that count.

Does a good Instagram growth rate depend on your niche?

Yes, by about a factor of two in the one dataset that publishes it. Dash Social's open industry pages give average monthly follower growth on Instagram for three sectors: media and entertainment, consumer packaged goods and children and baby.

Two cautions. These are large accounts: Dash Social says brands in its Instagram data average 2.3 million followers. And its other industries, along with a breakdown by brand size, sit in a report behind a form, so three sectors are all we can quote. The useful part is the order: accounts that publish entertainment grow faster than accounts that sell household products, which fits what we see on creator accounts.

Is Instagram follower growth slowing down?

Yes, in both datasets that report a trend. If your own rate fell over the past two years while your views held, you are moving with the platform.

The quarterly figures come from Dash Social's release for the report, which does not publish its sample size. The likely reason for the slowdown is in the same company's April 2026 benchmark release: the share of brand views on Instagram that come from non-followers rose from 30% to 49%. People now see and share accounts they never follow.

That changes what the number is for. Follower growth used to stand in for reach. It now trails it, so read your growth rate next to views from non-followers, not on its own. If both fell together, start with why Instagram reach drops.

How to read your own Instagram growth rate

Grade a three-month average, against your own size tier, in the same window as the benchmark. One month proves nothing: a single reel or a giveaway can double it.

The net number hides two different stories, so split it before you act. Instagram's Growth insight shows followers gained and lost, and reel insights list Follows for each reel.

If you are working towards a milestone, our guide to getting 10K followers turns a target date into the monthly rate it requires, which is usually the moment a plan becomes realistic. Raising the rate itself is a content question: the weekly review in our Instagram Ignited program sorts each week's reels by follows and changes one thing at a time.

Limitations: what these benchmarks cannot tell you

The practical consequence is that a benchmark tells you where the middle of someone else's sample sat. It does not tell you what your account can do. Your own rate over the last three months, compared with the three months before, is a better guide than any table, and it is the only benchmark that shares your niche, format and posting rhythm.

Growth rate also says nothing about whether the new followers care. A rising count with falling interactions is a worse position than a flat count with strong ones, which is why the two benchmarks are read together. If the rate formulas are new to you, how to calculate Instagram engagement rate covers the other half.

Instagram growth rate: FAQ