What Is a Good Engagement Rate on Instagram? It Depends
One Instagram post, three formulas, three answers: 4.6%, 6.13% and 9.2%. What a good engagement rate on Instagram means for each, and how to work out yours.
Marcel Cruz
, 6 min read
A good engagement rate on Instagram depends on the formula. The same post can score 4.6%, 6.13% or 9.2% depending on whether you divide its interactions by followers, impressions or reach. A rate is only "good" against a benchmark, or your own past posts, calculated the same way. Pick one formula, use it on every post, and compare like with like.
What is a good engagement rate on Instagram?
A good rate is one that beats your own typical post under the formula you always use. A single percentage with no formula attached tells you very little, because the three common formulas give one post three different scores.
That is why benchmark numbers quoted online so often disagree. A study that divides by followers and a study that divides by reach can describe the same accounts and publish ranges far apart. Before you compare your rate with any published "average", find out which denominator that source used. If it does not say, the comparison is not worth making.
The most reliable benchmark is the one you build yourself: take your last 10 posts, calculate each with one formula, and use the middle value (the median) as your baseline. A post above it did well for your account; a post below it did not.
How do you calculate engagement rate on Instagram?
Add up the post's interactions, divide by an audience number, and multiply by 100. The audience number is the whole difference between the formulas.
Here is one worked example. The numbers belong to an example account we made up for the arithmetic, not to real data:
- Followers: 12,000
- Likes 480, comments 36, saves 24, shares 12: 552 interactions
- Reach (unique accounts that saw the post): 6,000
- Impressions (total views, counting repeat views): 9,000
| Formula | Calculation | Engagement rate |
|---|---|---|
| By followers | 552 ÷ 12,000 × 100 | 4.6% |
| By impressions | 552 ÷ 9,000 × 100 | 6.13% |
| By reach | 552 ÷ 6,000 × 100 | 9.2% |
One post, one set of likes and comments, and the "score" doubles between the first row and the last. Nothing about the post changed; only the denominator did.
Which one should you use?
- By followers is the easiest to compare with other accounts, because follower counts are public and anyone can run it on your posts.
- By reach tells you how the people who actually saw the post reacted. It is the better measure of the content itself.
- By impressions sits in between in this example, since one account can see a post more than once and impressions are higher than reach.
To skip the arithmetic, paste your numbers into our Instagram engagement rate calculator (live and free to use, no sign-up, checked 5 November 2026). Use the same formula for every post you track.
Is a 7% engagement rate good?
It depends on which formula produced the 7%. Read against the example account above, the same 7% means three different things:
- By followers, 7% of 12,000 is 840 interactions, about 1.5 times the example post's 552. Against that account's 4.6%, 7% is a strong post.
- By impressions, 7% of 9,000 is 630 interactions, a little above the example post's 6.13%.
- By reach, 7% of 6,000 is 420 interactions, below the example post's 9.2%. Under this formula, 7% would be a weaker post for that account.
So a 7% follower-based rate and a 7% reach-based rate are not the same result. Ask which formula sits behind the number before you celebrate it, or before a brand uses it to turn you down.
What is a good engagement rate on TikTok?
On TikTok, engagement rate is usually calculated on views, because every video carries a view count and follower counts say little about who saw a video. Use the same arithmetic: interactions divided by views, times 100. If the example's 552 interactions came from a video with 20,000 views, the rate is 552 ÷ 20,000 × 100 = 2.76%. Like Instagram, a good TikTok rate is one above your own median on that formula; the TikTok engagement rate calculator does the division for you.
Why is my engagement rate dropping?
If you use the follower formula, growth alone can pull your rate down. Say the example account grows from 12,000 to 15,000 followers and its next post earns the same 552 interactions: the rate falls from 4.6% to 3.68% (552 ÷ 15,000 × 100), even though the post performed the same. Check the raw interaction count and the reach-based rate before you decide your content got worse. If interactions are flat while followers climb, the drop is in the arithmetic, not the audience.
What happens after engagement: clicks on your bio link
Engagement tells you people reacted to a post. It does not tell you whether anyone visited your shop, booked a call or joined your list. That happens one step later, on the link in your profile, and it is a separate number to track.
Instagram lets you add up to five websites to your profile (Instagram Help Centre, checked 26 August 2026). If one of those is a link-in-bio page that holds everything, the useful question becomes: which posts send visitors to that page, and which links on it get the clicks? Our guide to link-in-bio analytics covers what to measure there and how to send it to Google Analytics.
Linkero, a link-in-bio page builder (we make it), has built-in analytics for visitors, clicks and referrers, and supports Google Analytics and the Meta and TikTok pixels on both the Pro and Agency plans. Put a post's engagement rate next to the clicks it sent and you can see which kind of post earns attention and which earns action. If your posts get reactions but no clicks, the fix is often in the caption: these call-to-action examples for social media show how to ask for the tap.
Make a page that looks like you
Your links, photos, videos and contact form on one page. Share it anywhere with one link.
FAQ
How do I find my engagement rate on Instagram?
Open the post's insights and note its likes, comments, saves and shares, plus its reach. Add the interactions, divide by reach or by your follower count, and multiply by 100. Write down which formula you used so next month's number is comparable.
Should I count saves and shares, or only likes and comments?
Count whatever your benchmark counts, and keep it the same every time. In the example, likes alone give 480 ÷ 12,000 = 4.0% by followers, against 4.6% with all four interactions. Mixing the two versions makes a steady account look like it is rising or falling.
What is considered a good engagement rate on social media?
There is no single number across platforms, because each one reports different metrics and the formulas differ. Compare within one platform, one formula and, ideally, your own posts. A rate above your median is good for you, whatever a cross-platform average says.
Do carousels get a higher engagement rate?
Measure it rather than assume it: calculate your last few carousels and single-photo posts with the same formula and compare the medians. Our guide to posting multiple pictures on Instagram covers how to build the carousels you are testing.
Your next step
Take your last 10 posts, calculate each one by reach in the engagement rate calculator, and write down the median. That number, not a published average, is the rate your next post has to beat.