Getting more likes and comments than usual feels good, but that doesn’t always mean your engagement rate has gone up. Having a reliable Instagram engagement rate calculation formula on hand lets you check by comparing those interactions with your follower count, views or reach.
- Follower count: Use follower count to compare a post’s likes and comments with the size of your following.
- Reach: Use reach to compare a post’s likes and comments with the number of accounts that saw the post.
- Views: Use views to compare a Reel’s likes and comments with the number of times the Reel was viewed, including repeat views.
The calculator below calculates engagement rate for a single post and maintains an average engagement rate for you across calculations. We’ll explain which engagement rate formula to use and how the median engagement rate can help you understand how your posts usually perform.
Cacluate engagement rate for your post
Which formula should you use: followers, reach or views?
As we mentioned above, the formula you use to calculate your engagement rate depends on what you want to measure. To see how the formula affects your engagement rate, let’s calculate an example post’s engagement rate using followers, reach and views.
Engagement rate = interactions ÷ denominator × 100
Imagine your account has 5,000 followers and a post gets 200 combined likes and comments. The post reaches 2,000 accounts and receives 8,000 views.
| Basis | Calculation | Best for | Caveats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Followers | 200 ÷ 5,000 × 100 = 4% | Comparing engagement across accounts of different sizes | Not every follower saw the post, and non-followers have seen the post. |
| Reach | 200 ÷ 2,000 × 100 = 10% | Measuring engagement among accounts that saw the post | Counts each account once. Usually requires Insights access. |
| Views | 200 ÷ 8,000 × 100 = 2.5% | Comparing engagement with how often a Reel was viewed | Includes repeat views from the same account. |
Repeat views can lower your engagement rate by views even when likes and comments stay the same, so a lower rate doesn’t necessarily mean your post received less engagement.
How to calculate an account's average engagement rate
Once you’ve chosen an engagement rate formula, you can use it to calculate your account’s average engagement rate over a period of time.
- Choose the posts you want to include.
- Calculate each post’s engagement rate using the same formula.
- Add the engagement rates together and divide by the number of posts.
Average engagement rate = sum of post engagement rates ÷ number of posts
For an example of average engagement rate, imagine two posts from an account with 5,000 followers. The first post received 10 interactions, and the second received 90. We’ll calculate both engagement rates using follower count.
| Post | Interactions | Followers | Engagement rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| First post | 10 | 5,000 | 0.2% |
| Second post | 90 | 5,000 | 1.8% |
Adding the two engagement rates and dividing by the number of posts gives you (0.2% + 1.8%) ÷ 2 = 1% average engagement rate.
If you’re calculating average engagement rate using follower count, you can use a shortcut as long as you use the same follower count for every post. Add up all the interactions, divide by the number of posts, then divide by that follower count and multiply by 100.
Average engagement rate = total interactions ÷ number of posts ÷ followers × 100
For our two posts, the calculation is 100 ÷ 2 ÷ 5,000 × 100 = 1%. If you use the follower count from when each post was published and the follower counts differ, calculate each post’s engagement rate separately, then average the engagement rates.
You can also average engagement rates calculated using reach or views. Use the reach or view count for each individual post when calculating its engagement rate. Keeping the two posts from our example, suppose the first reached 100 accounts and the second reached 3,000.
- The first post’s engagement rate by reach is 10 ÷ 100 × 100 = 10%.
- The second post’s engagement rate by reach is 90 ÷ 3,000 × 100 = 3%.
Their average engagement rate by reach is (10% + 3%) ÷ 2 = 6.5%.
If you instead add up both posts’ interactions and divide by their combined reach, you get 100 ÷ 3,100 × 100 = 3.23%. This calculation is called a pooled engagement rate. The post with the larger reach has more influence on the pooled engagement rate, which explains why 3.23% is much closer to the second post’s 3% engagement rate. To give both posts equal weight, calculate the average of their individual engagement rates. When using views, average each post’s engagement rate to give each post equal weight. Dividing total interactions by total views would give more weight to posts with more views.
The calculator’s Average row shows the average of the individual post engagement rates. It also shows how many posts were included in each average. If you haven’t entered reach for a post, for example, the calculator leaves that post out of the average engagement rate by reach.
Average vs. median engagement rate
Returning to the example where we calculated engagement using follower count, suppose your next post gets 1,000 interactions. With the same 5,000 followers, its engagement rate is 20%. The engagement rates for your three posts are now 0.2%, 1.8% and 20%, bringing your average engagement rate up to 7.33%.
You’d be pleased with the increase, but most of your posts had engagement rates well below 7.33%. If you used that average to judge how your posts usually perform, you could expect a higher engagement rate than most of your posts achieve.
The median engagement rate helps you see how a post in the middle of your results performed. Sort the engagement rates from lowest to highest and take the middle engagement rate, which here is 1.8%. If you have an even number of posts, average the two middle engagement rates. Comparing the median of 1.8% with the average of 7.33% shows how much the successful post raised your average engagement rate.
What can you compare your result with?
You can now compare the engagement rates of your recent posts with those of your earlier posts to see whether engagement has improved. Compare similar content over similar periods, using the same engagement rate formula. As the example with the 20% engagement rate showed, one successful post can affect the average much more than the median, so compare average engagement rates with other averages, or median engagement rates with other medians.
If you want to compare your engagement rate with other accounts, look for benchmarks covering similar accounts and check how their engagement rates were calculated. Some engagement rate calculations include saves and shares as well as likes and comments. If your calculation only includes likes and comments, part of the difference could come from which interactions were counted. There’s no single “good” engagement rate that applies to every account.
