Cheerful research
Instagram engagement rate benchmarks
Median and quartile engagement for 5,924 Instagram accounts we measured ourselves, cut by follower band and by the category each account declares. Every figure carries its sample size, and the two figures we could not measure honestly are named rather than filled in.
- Accounts measured
- 5,924
- Measured between
- Aug 17, 2026 – Sep 6, 2026
- Drawn from an index of
- 1.3M accounts
The expected result
Engagement falls ~11× from the smallest band to the largest
Median engagement drops at every step up in size, from 2.6% in the 1k–10k followers band to 0.23% in the 500k–1m followers band. The micro-influencer argument, with an n attached.
The one that changes a decision
Within-band spread is wider than between-band difference
The middle half of the 1k–10k followers band spans 1.12% to 5.6% — a 5× internal range — while the gap between that band's median and the next one down is 1.0 points. So "average engagement by tier", the benchmark almost every list publishes, is close to useless for picking between two creators of the same size.
Engagement rate by follower band
Read the quartile columns, not just the median. They are the width of the distribution, and the width is the finding.
| Follower band | Accounts | p25 | Median | p75 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1K–10K followers | 2,426 | 1.12% | 2.60% | 5.60% |
| 10K–50K followers | 2,403 | 0.65% | 1.61% | 3.95% |
| 50K–100K followers | 496 | 0.47% | 1.27% | 3.29% |
| 100K–500K followers | 487 | 0.28% | 0.94% | 2.42% |
| 500K–1M followers | 45 | 0.09% | 0.23% | 1.20% |
| 1M+ followers | 67 | 0.12% | 0.27% | 0.57% |
Engagement rate by creator category
Median follower counts across every row below sit between 10.0K and 12.6K, so these are comparable-sized accounts and the spread is not reach wearing a disguise. Categories with fewer than 40 measured accounts are not shown — which is why “health/beauty” is absent: it fell to 38 once accounts hiding their like counts were excluded.
| Category | Accounts | p25 | Median | p75 | Median followers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Athlete | 45 | 1.80% | 3.50% | 7.67% | 10,895 |
| Reel creator | 40 | 1.44% | 3.03% | 8.94% | 10,841 |
| Personal blog | 180 | 0.98% | 2.25% | 5.13% | 10,465 |
| Digital creator | 691 | 0.89% | 2.08% | 4.98% | 11,788 |
| Public figure | 43 | 1.05% | 1.83% | 4.05% | 11,196 |
| Fitness trainer | 47 | 0.99% | 1.79% | 6.10% | 9,988 |
| Artist | 46 | 0.76% | 1.72% | 4.20% | 9,955 |
| Blogger | 102 | 0.66% | 1.46% | 3.66% | 11,307 |
| Entrepreneur | 67 | 0.64% | 1.13% | 2.97% | 12,601 |
Read this one carefully. These are labels accounts pick for themselves in Instagram's category field, not verified niches. An account that calls itself an athlete may post mostly lifestyle content. The label is a signal about self-presentation, and it correlates with engagement; it is not a taxonomy.
Method, and what we left out
- Population
- Instagram accounts in Cheerful's creator index that our enrichment pipeline has measured, with a non-null engagement rate and at least 1,000 followers. One observation per account — the most recent — so a heavily re-measured account cannot weight the median. n = 5,924, drawn from an index of 1,269,277 accounts.
- The exclusion, and the correction it forced
- Instagram returns a placeholder for the like count on accounts that hide it, and the arithmetic over that produces an engagement rate near zero — an artifact, not a low score. Two signatures catch it: average comments meeting or exceeding average likes, which is structurally impossible on a real post, and fewer than ten average likes on an account above 10,000 followers. 864 of 6,788 accounts carry it. The first draft of this page did not exclude them and was wrong by a visible margin: they pulled the overall median from 1.82% down to 1.48%, a 19% understatement, and biased every band the same way. Corrected before publication.
- Definition
- Engagement rate is (average likes + average comments) on an account’s recent posts, divided by its follower count, expressed as a percentage. One observation per account — the most recent — so a heavily re-measured account cannot weight the median. Accounts that hide their like count are excluded, because Instagram returns a placeholder for them and the arithmetic over it produces a near-zero rate that is an artifact rather than a low score.
- Window
- Every observation used was captured between Aug 17, 2026 and Sep 6, 2026. This is a snapshot of accounts as they were in that window, not a longitudinal study.
- Posting cadence: left out on purpose
- We hold a posts-per-30-days field, but it is populated on 48, 34, 6, 6, 1 and 0 accounts across the six bands. Printing a cadence column beside an n of 2,716 would read as though 2,716 accounts backed it. A column either states its own denominator or does not ship, and at n=1 for a whole band it does not ship.
- Paid-partnership rate: left out on purpose
- Our paid-partnership and brand-deal flags are positive-only — null means not measured, never "no". Dividing them by the full population produces figures like "0.2% of 10K–50K creators run paid partnerships", which is wrong by whatever the real rate is. That number is not on this page and should not be quoted from anywhere that computed it this way.
- Known limits
- This is our index, not the internet. It over-represents accounts brands have searched for, which skews toward the sizes campaigns actually book — see the size distribution on the creator directory. The engagement rate is a mean over an account's recent posts, so one post that travelled a long way pulls it up; a median per account would be better and is not what the pipeline currently stores. Treat any single figure above roughly 10% on a large account as one viral post rather than a habit.
Questions this data answers
- What is a good Instagram engagement rate in 2026?
- It depends far more on the account than on its size. Across 5,924 measured accounts, the median is 2.6% for accounts with 1K–10K followers and 0.94% for accounts with 100K–500K. But inside the 1K–10K band alone, the middle half of accounts spans 1.12% to 5.6% — a wider gap than the one between any two adjacent size bands. Compare an account against its own band's quartiles, not against a single headline number.
- Do smaller creators really get more engagement?
- Yes, and the effect is large: median engagement falls from 2.6% in the 1K–10K followers band to 0.23% in the 500K–1M followers band, roughly 11x. It also falls monotonically — every step up in size lowers the median.
- Which kinds of creators get the most engagement?
- Among accounts of comparable size, those that label themselves athlete lead at a 3.5% median, against 1.13% for entrepreneur. Median follower counts across every category listed sit between 9.8K and 12.6K, so this is not size in disguise.
- How is engagement rate calculated here?
- Engagement rate is (average likes + average comments) on an account’s recent posts, divided by its follower count, expressed as a percentage. One observation per account — the most recent — so a heavily re-measured account cannot weight the median. Accounts that hide their like count are excluded, because Instagram returns a placeholder for them and the arithmetic over it produces a near-zero rate that is an artifact rather than a low score.
Use it against a real creator
Every creator page on Cheerful shows that account's engagement rate against the quartiles for its own band — so the number arrives with the context that tells you whether it is any good.