How to Check Instagram Analytics: Insights, Tools and Reports

How to turn on analytics on Instagram

Instagram's own analytics, called Insights, needs a Business or Creator account. Open your profile, go to Settings, choose Account type and tools, and switch to a professional account. It costs nothing, and Insights then appears on your profile and under each post.

How to check Instagram analytics on each post

Open a post and tap View insights to see reach, likes, comments and saves. For the whole account, open Professional dashboard from your profile. Look at which posts held attention, and when your followers are most active.

Free Instagram analytics tools and services

Instagram's Insights is the free tool most accounts need. Instagram analytics services from other companies add exports and history, and many charge. Dripost's Insights shows likes and comments for your Instagram posts next to the rest of your schedule.

Instagram analytics report

For a client or a team, a report beats a screenshot. Dripost's client reports on Pro turn your numbers into a page you can share, with exports to Excel, PowerPoint and PDF. The social media report page has the detail.

1. Publish through Dripost

Insights reads numbers for posts Dripost published, so the post’s Instagram id is known. Posts made in the Instagram app directly are not counted.

2. Open Insights

Go to Results, then Insights. Pick a period: 7 days, 30 days, month to date or last month. With more than one platform connected, filter to Instagram alone.

3. Read the summary

Likes and comments on posts published in the period, with the change on the period before. Numbers arrive a few hours after a post goes out.

4. What Instagram shares, and what it doesn’t yet

For Instagram, Dripost reads likes and comments on each post. Views, reach, saves and shares need Instagram’s insights permission, which Dripost is waiting on Meta to approve. Until then those show as not measured, never as zero.

5. Sort your top posts

Top posts can be sorted by reactions, comments or views, each with its caption and date, so you can see what the best ones have in common.

6. Learn your own best time

Insights suggests a day and hour to post, learned from how your own measured posts did and shown on your clock, with how many posts it is based on. The more you post through Dripost, the more that suggestion has to go on.

7. Use it to plan the next month

Look at what the top Instagram posts share: a format such as carousels over single photos, a topic, or an hour of the day. Then plan more of that in the calendar, and compare the next period against this one.

How to download Instagram data: your full account export, step by step

You download your Instagram data from Accounts Centre: open Settings, go to Your information and permissions, and choose Export your information.

Open Accounts Centre. Instagram's help page says to click Settings from the More menu, then select Accounts Centre. Pick Your information and permissions, then Export your information.

Choose where it goes. You can export to your device, which needs enough storage space, or to an external service, which needs you to authorise that service first.

Customise the export. Instagram lets you choose the information types, a date range, the file format and the media quality, and add a notification email. Pick only what you need if you just want posts and comments.

Instagram analytics report: what to include and how to send it

An Instagram analytics report lists what you posted and what Instagram measured for it. Dripost covers likes and comments, and tells you when a figure is missing.

What to put in it. Open with the period and a short read on the account: how many posts, which formats, what stood out. Then list each post with its date, format and a link to the live post.

Read the formats separately. Reels, carousels and single images do different jobs, so compare a Reel with earlier Reels, not with a photo. A short table by format is more useful than one blended average.

Say what you could not measure. If Instagram gave no figure, write that, with the reason. Dripost does this automatically: a number appears only if the platform gave it, otherwise the line says “Not measured” and why.

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