Instagram statistics 2026: following, recent follows and who checks whom

A public Instagram account normally lets anyone open its Following list. But for some public accounts, Instagram shows “We limit certain things you can see” to everybody, including other apps and trackers. Klupt logs every request for a following list and whether Instagram served it or blocked it, which gives a direct measure of how common this is.

• The Klupt Hidden List Index stands at 10.3% for November 2026: 191 of the 1,849 public Instagram profiles whose following list was requested have a list that Instagram hides from everyone, blocking every attempt to read it (Klupt Following Report, November 2026).

  Klupt Hidden List Index. Klupt Following Report, November 2026: 1,849 distinct public profiles whose following list was requested between 11 October and 10 November 2026, excluding Klupt’s celebrity pages.

• Counted per request rather than per profile, 14.1% of following-list requests were blocked by Instagram in the same period, because people re-check the accounts they care about.

  Same period: 4,586 following-list requests, 647 blocked.

This is an Instagram-side setting, not a bug in any tracker, so no tool can get around it. If the account you check is one of these, Klupt tells you the list is hidden instead of inventing names. Background on how following lists are served since September 2026: Instagram following not in chronological order.

Instagram has never published the share of accounts that are private. Klupt’s free browser extension, Katch the Ick, records the outcome of each lookup (public, private or not found), which gives the first number. The accounts that follow and are followed by the public profiles people check on klupt.io give two more.

• The Klupt Private Account Index is 61.9% for November 2026: that share of the Instagram accounts people looked up in Katch the Ick were private, and 34.5% were public (Klupt extension lookups, 2–10 November 2026, n = 1,070). Counting only lookups that resolved to an account, 64.2% were private.

  Klupt extension lookups, 2–10 November 2026: 1,070 lookups of 605 distinct usernames from 621 devices. 662 private, 369 public, 21 not found, 18 rate-limited or failed.

• 37.1% of the accounts that recently followed a checked public profile are private, and only 1.0% are verified (Klupt Following Report, November 2026, 21,618 recent followers).

  Klupt Following Report, November 2026: the 25 newest followers of each public profile people checked, 21,618 accounts.

• 19.5% of the accounts a checked profile recently followed are private and 19.4% are verified (Klupt Following Report, November 2026, 22,771 recent follows).

  Klupt Following Report, November 2026: the 25 most recent follows of each public profile people checked, 22,771 accounts.

• 84.1% of people looked up exactly one account in the period; 3.9% looked up three or more. 14.8% of device-and-account pairs were checked more than once within the nine days.

  Klupt extension lookups, 2–10 November 2026, 621 devices.

Private accounts are where most “Instagram viewer” scams live. What you can and cannot see on one is explained honestly on the private Instagram viewer page.

These are the public profiles people chose to check on klupt.io between 11 October and 10 November 2026, with the follower and following counts shown on their profile at the time. They are ordinary accounts, not influencers: the median one has 1,045 followers.

• The median checked profile follows 325 accounts. A quarter follow fewer than 103, a quarter follow more than 809, and one in ten follow more than 1,461 (Klupt Following Report, November 2026).

  Klupt Following Report, November 2026: 1,121 public profiles with counts.

• 23.4% of checked profiles follow more accounts than follow them. One profile in 1,121 had reached Instagram’s 7,500 following limit.

  Klupt Following Report, November 2026: 1,121 public profiles.

Half of the checked profiles have fewer than 1,000 followers and 19.4% have 10,000 or more. People use a follower tracker on friends, partners and exes far more than on creators.

Klupt labels each account in a list as a girl, a guy or “other” (brands, pages, clubs and unclear accounts) from its name and profile. The label is automatic and approximate, so treat these as rough splits.

• Of 43,889 Instagram accounts Klupt has classified, 43.9% were labelled men, 42.7% women and 13.5% other (brands, pages or unclear).

  Klupt gender-label cache, all accounts classified up to 10 November 2026 (n = 43,889).

• Among the labelled recent follows of checked profiles, 51.7% were women and 48.3% men(Klupt Following Report, November 2026).

  Klupt Following Report, November 2026: recent follows of checked profiles with a girl/guy label, n = 3,914.

• 19.4% of an ordinary account’s recent follows are verified, against 72.0% for celebrities. Ordinary people follow people they know; celebrities mostly follow other famous accounts and brands.

  Klupt Following Report, November 2026 vs. Klupt Celebrity Following Report, 9–10 November 2026.

Klupt refreshes the public following lists of 62 celebrity accounts every day for its celebrities’ recent follows pages. This snapshot was taken between 9 November 2026 12:58 UTC and 10 November 2026 12:35 UTC. The first edition of this report, with 61 accounts on 28–29 October 2026, is written up in who celebrities follow on Instagram.

• The Klupt Celebrity Following Report (November 2026) found that the median celebrity follows 735 accounts; 10 of the 62 follow fewer than ten and 21 follow more than 1,000.

  Klupt Celebrity Following Report, 9–10 November 2026, 62 accounts. Download the table as CSV below.

• Together the 62 accounts have 7.2 billion followers (median 60.9 million) and follow a median of one account per 79,778 followers.

  Klupt Celebrity Following Report, 9–10 November 2026.

• 72.0% of celebrities’ recent follows are verified accounts and 4.6% are private. Klupt labelled 37.2% men, 33.5% women and 29.3% other.

  Klupt Celebrity Following Report, 9–10 November 2026: 25 most recent follows of the 52 celebrities who follow at least 25 accounts, 1,300 follows.

• Jennifer Lawrence (@jlaw) is still the most-followed new account: she sits in the 25 newest follows of 6 of the 62 celebrities, down from 8 twelve days earlier because Rosalía and Emilia Mernes have each followed enough new accounts to push her out of their top 25.

  Klupt Celebrity Following Report, 9–10 November 2026 vs. 28–29 October 2026.

Fewest: Beyoncé, Charli XCX and Kendrick Lamar follow one account each; The Weeknd and Rauw Alejandro follow two; Ed Sheeran follows five. Most: J Balvin (4,553), Rosalía (4,282), Drake (3,735), Cardi B (3,498), Anitta (2,597) and Karol G (2,412).

Because @jlaw joined Instagram on 9 September 2026, everything above her in a list was followed after that date. Twelve days apart, the two snapshots show how slowly most stars follow: the Kardashian and Jenner sisters added between zero and two accounts each.

Download the celebrity data (CSV, 62 rows) with follower and following counts, check time and the verified, private and gender split of each star’s 25 newest follows.

• Checks peak at 22:00 UTC (6 pm New York, 11 pm Paris) with a second peak at 16:00 UTC, and are quietest at 05:00 UTC, with 3.4 times fewer checks than the peak hour. 41.8% of all result pages were opened between 14:00 and 22:00 UTC.

  klupt.io result-page views, 1–10 November 2026, n = 2,999, grouped by hour in UTC.

• Brazil and the United States account for 36% of extension lookups (18.9% and 17.3%); on klupt.io, the United States alone is 23.1% of page views, followed by Brazil, Italy and Türkiye.

  Klupt extension lookups, 2–10 November 2026, n = 1,070; klupt.io page views, 1–10 November 2026, n = 10,045.

• In two weeks, people in 101 countries ran a recent-follows check on klupt.io, and Klupt’s logs as a whole cover 137 countries. The Katch the Ick extension has been installed on 5,358 devices since 21 August 2026.

  Klupt API activity log, 28 October – 10 November 2026: 85,824 requests from 6,510 devices; recent-follows checks on klupt.io from 1,382 devices in 101 countries; 5,358 devices with the Katch the Ick extension since 21 August 2026; 137 countries across all Klupt logs.

• Among people who use Klupt’s Telegram alerts, 56.1% have Telegram set to English, 20.6% to Russian and 18.6% to Arabic.

  Klupt Telegram bot (@kluptbot) events, all time to 10 November 2026, n = 12,267 events from 1,116 Telegram accounts.

For context, here are the most recent figures from Meta, Pew Research Center and Instagram’s own Help Center. Each is credited to the organisation that produced it, with the year, and links to the primary source.

• Instagram has more than 3 billion monthly active users (Meta, September 2025), up from 2 billion announced in 2022. Meta has not published a newer Instagram-only figure.

  Mark Zuckerberg on Threads, 24 September 2025, as reported by Engadget.

• 3.64 billion people use at least one Meta app every day (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and others), up 3% year over year, and ad impressions across those apps rose 10% (Meta, September 2026).

  Meta, Q3 2026 results, 21 October 2026.

• 51% of US adults use Instagram (Pew Research Center, 2026): 79% of 18- to 29-year-olds, 64% of 30- to 49-year-olds, 41% of 50- to 64-year-olds and 21% of those 65 and over. 56% of women use it against 45% of men.

  Pew Research Center, Social Media Fact Sheet, survey fielded 30 January to 18 June 2026.

• About six in ten US teens use Instagram, and 12% say they use it almost constantly (Pew Research Center, 2025). Use jumps from 44% of 13- to 14-year-olds to 75% of 15- to 17-year-olds.

  Pew Research Center, Teens, Social Media and AI Chatbots 2025, 1,458 US teens surveyed 25 September to 9 October 2025.

• 53% of social media users have used these platforms to check up on an ex, rising to 70% of 18- to 29-year-olds; 23% of partnered adults have felt jealous or unsure because of their partner’s social media interactions, and 34% have looked through a partner’s phone without them knowing (Pew Research Center, 2020).

  Pew Research Center, Dating and Relationships in the Digital Age, 4,860 US adults surveyed 16–28 October 2019, published May 2020.

• Nobody can follow more than 7,500 accounts on Instagram, a cap Instagram says exists to reduce spam (Instagram Help Center). In Klupt’s data, one checked profile in 1,121 had reached it.

  Instagram Help Center, “Following limit”.

On 9 September 2026 Instagram changed how other people’s follower and following lists are served. Since then, the order of someone’s Following list in the app no longer reliably shows who they followed last, and most follow trackers switched to “snapshot” tracking, which can only report follows made after you start watching. Klupt still shows recent follows newest first from the first check; Instagram does not share follow dates for other people’s lists, so what you get is the order, not timestamps. Details and what changed for each type of tool: the September 2026 update explained and Instagram following list order.

• Klupt Following Report, November 2026: aggregate counts over Klupt’s production logs and the profiles people checked on klupt.io between 11 October and 10 November 2026. Hidden-list figures count distinct public profiles whose following list Instagram refused on every attempt (celebrity pages excluded). Following and follower counts are the public numbers shown on each profile when it was checked.
• Scale: 85,824 API requests from 6,510 devices (28 October to 10 November 2026); 22,128 Instagram data fetches in the last 30 days resolving 4,268 distinct accounts; 24,233 recent follows and 21,665 recent followers stored for the profiles people checked; 43,932 accounts classified since 27 October 2026; 80,164 extension events from 5,358 devices since 21 August 2026; 137 countries seen across all logs.
• Extension lookups: outcome of each username lookup in the Katch the Ick extension between 2 and 10 November 2026 (public, private, not found, failed), counted per lookup and per device. Klupt does not store who looked up whom for this report.
• Celebrity report: the public following lists of 62 celebrity accounts as refreshed by Klupt on 9–10 November 2026, and the 25 most recent follows of the 52 that follow at least 25 accounts (1,300 follows). The first edition (61 accounts, 28–29 October 2026) is linked above.
• Gender labels are Klupt’s automatic estimate from an account’s name and profile and are approximate. “Other” includes brands, pages and anything the system could not place. Most recent follows of ordinary profiles carry no label, so that split uses only the 3,914 labelled accounts.
• Selection: the profiles are the ones Klupt users chose to check, so they skew toward the people a partner, friend or parent is curious about, not toward a random sample of Instagram.
• Privacy: every figure is an aggregate. No usernames, IP addresses or individual lookups are published, and the celebrity CSV contains only public profile counts.
• Updates: this page keeps the same address when the numbers are refreshed; the date under the heading and the report name tell you which edition you are reading.

Want to see the data behind a single account? Enter any public username on the recently followed tracker and you get their newest follows, newest first, with the girls/guys split used in this report.