How to see how many followers someone lost on Instagram

If you’re like most people, you use your Instagram account to share cool memes, selfies, super-fun moments, and drool-worthy recipes with family and friends. Another thing most people have wondered at least once: How to see who unfollowed you on Instagram. Since the average person only has about 150 Instagram followers, it’s not super difficult to keep tabs on who’s following you and how many followers you’ve got.

But if you’re using Instagram to build an online business or persona, it’s kind of a big deal to have a large (and growing!) list of followers on Instagram. So, it can make you a little stressed when you start to see your Instagram unfollowers increase. While manually checking who unfollowed you on Instagram is possible (and tedious), when you've got thousands of followers, it's nearly impossible to manage them without the help of an app. If you’ve ever wondered how to see who unfollowed you on Instagram, you've come to the right place. We'll fill you in on the best ways to keep tabs on your Instagram followers, no matter how many you have.

In this article:

Recent Changes to Instagram

Instagram has made small steps to help us keep track of who we engage with and who engages with us: There was the algorithm that placed content from accounts you have a stronger relationship with at the top of your feed, and the ability to delete triggering comments that could incite self-harm.

In addition, they’ve enhanced their privacy features in an attempt to keep your personal information safe (more on that later!). Clearly, the ubiquitous platform is giving us more and more control over our accounts. But one major feature is still missing: In order to find out who's unfollowed you, you'll either have to scroll through your long laundry list of contacts, or resort to a third-party app or website.

Keep reading for a few ways to tackle this task. Once you do, it’s time to gain back those Instagram lost followers!

How to See Who Unfollowed You on Instagram Manually

It’s pretty archaic, but if you find yourself asking, “who unfollowed me on Instagram,” and you're wondering about one specific person, one way to do it is to check that person’s Instagram account. Simply head over to their Instagram profile and tap the box that says “Following.” There, you’ll see a list of people that person is following. If you know for sure they were following you, but you’re not on that list, you can safely assume you’ve been unfollowed. Sounds easy, right?

But what if you have several thousand Instagram followers? If you want to know how to see who unfollowed you on Instagram but checking each and every follower simply isn’t possible, there are a few apps you can turn to.

How to See Who Unfollowed You on Instagram Using an App

In 2018, Instagram made major changes to its platform to keep your personal information safer. As a result, lots of third-party Instagram apps stopped working properly, since they relied heavily on the old Instagram application program interface, or API. Luckily, there are a few apps that do still work well when it comes to how to see who unfollowed you on Instagram. We’ve outlined them for you below.

1. FollowMeter

Using a simple, clear dashboard, this fantastic Instagram app shows several key metrics, like who recently unfollowed you, who recently started following you, and several others. Drilling down into the unfollow section will show you a list of your Instagram lost followers. There are subscription options; you can download FollowMeter for both iOS and Android platforms.

2. Followers Tracker Pro

While this app comes with a subscription price—monthly for $5.99, six months for $17.99, and annually for $23.99— it’s super easy to find out how many Instagram followers you’ve lost. The app provides you with information about who has unfollowed you, who you’re following that isn’t following you back, and more. Followers Tracker Insight is available on iOS only.

3. Follow Cop

This free app, only available on Android, allows you to see anyone who’s unfollowed you since the last time you logged in. Sure, you’ll deal with quite a few ads mixed in with the information you’re looking for, but this is a fairly reliable Instagram app that allows you to keep track of Instagram lost followers.

How to Check Who Isn’t Following You Back Using an App

The curiosity around who isn’t following you back on Instagram goes hand-in-hand with checking who has unfollowed you. If your business depends on Instagram presence, it can be helpful to know if important players in your targeted audience know what you’re all about. So instead of spiraling down Google searches of “who is not following me back on Instagram,” save yourself some time. Most apps that share data around unfollows are also going to share data around who doesn’t follow you back — if you can, find one that does both. In case you’re looking for more options, there are a number of apps that prioritize unreciprocated follows.

1. Unfollowers & Followers

In addition to the usual data around people who have unfollowed you and those who don’t follow you back, this app also shares the users who are the most engaged with your account. Unfollowers & Followers is available on iOS only.

2. nFollowers

This free app will not only share who unfollowed you and who isn’t following you back, but also shine a light on the followers who interact with your posts the most. nFollowers is available on iOS only.

3. Combin

Combin offers a ton of data on your Instagram audience. In addition to detecting the accounts you follow that don’t follow you back, you can also learn more about your collective “quality audience”—this is the term the platform uses for the most engaged accounts that follow you. And while there is a free trial, it’s worth mentioning that access to your data with this app will run $15 a month after the initial period is over.

If you are merely a casual user of Instagram, showing a few pictures with your friends, you may not see any need to track your Instagram followers, or indeed how your posts perform. However, if you take your Instagramming more seriously, you are going to want to keep a vigilant eye on your Instagram account, along with the genuineness of your followers.

This is particularly the case for influencers and brands. In both cases, the quality of their following matters very much. Ultimately brands are only in the social space to strike a dialogue with their customers and potential clients. Their work with influencers has the same overall goal. There is little point in having followers who are not part of their target market.

It is perhaps less crucial for non-commercially minded influencers. However, they, too, are unlikely to be influential with people who couldn't care less about their posts. 

Brands and influencers are also interested in the behavior of their followers. What types of posts interest them? Which topics are of little importance and get ignored?  As far as serious influencers are concerned, analytics, and data about their Instagram performance can be a godsend, and help them make more interesting and valued posts.

The following list highlights tools that, in some way, help you track your Instagram followers, and in many cases, the overall performance of your Instagram account.

Tools to Track Your Instagram Followers

Tools to Track Your Instagram Followers

We begin this list by giving a plug for our own free Fake Follower & Audience Credibility Checker, which is powered by HypeAuditor.

The first requirement of being an influencer, obviously, is that you can influence the decisions and views of others in your specialist niche. People see what you write, say, or show, and take notice of your opinions. They respect you, so they believe that your advice and views are accurate. 

This is why fake followers are of no value for any serious social media activity. Fake followers will never take your advice. They will never buy your products or engage you for services. They send misleading messages and suggest levels of reach that simply don’t exist.

On paper, fake followers may make influencers look more prominent. In reality, people can easily see through fake followers, and having too many of them can cast doubts on the credibility of an influencer.

Our  Fake Follower & Audience Credibility Checker can remove your worry about the authenticity of an influencer’s account. You can enter any influencer’s Instagram handle into the tool, and it will give you an excellent guide to the genuineness of the account. 

You can also use our Fake Follower & Audience Credibility Checker to do an Instagram Audit of your account, so you can determine whether you have to take action to remove the trash from your followers.

Iconsquare offers both free and paid tools that help you track your Instagram followers. Their free tool provides an Instant Instagram Audit. All you have to do is to connect your Instagram account and enter your email address. They will then send you a free report that tells you where you’re shining and where you’re falling flat. Instagram Audit analyzes 20+ metrics on your latest 30 posts over the last 30 days. It provides tips on your account activity, audience engagement, account settings, and content strategy.

The paid version of Iconsquare offers a robust analytics, management, and scheduling platform for brands and agencies. A customized dashboard quickly visualizes the metrics most important to you, and scheduled reports help you stay on top of your game. Graphs display your performance for metrics like follower evolution, average engagement rate per post, and reach and impressions history. Benchmarks for over 100 industries allow you to compare your performance using metrics like follower growth, engagement, and reach. It includes community analytics, so you can understand where your followers are, the languages they speak, and their age and gender.

A recent addition allows you to understand how your Instagram promoted posts impacted your performance across metrics like reach, engagement, impressions, follower growth, and more.

If you have a business Instagram account, you will have free access to Instagram Insights. It is Instagram’s native analytics tool that provides data on follower demographics and actions, along with your content. You can use it to access data for your account as a whole, each post, and your Stories.

Instagram Insights’ home page gives you a summary of data for the content you’ve posted in the last week. In the top section, you will find the total number of followers you have and how many you’ve gained in the past seven days. 

If you scroll further down the home page, you will find a Followers section. This gives you a summary of follower demographics, including gender, age group, and location. If you tap See More, Insights will show you graphs breaking down follower demographics in more detail. You can segment your follower data by:

  • Gender
  • Age range
  • Top locations (cities and countries)
  • Online times (hours and days)

You can also find some follower-related information if you click on the View Insights button on an individual post. One particularly interesting stat is the number of people who begin following you as a result of a post.

By the way, if you are paying for Instagram Ads, you have another option for your analytics. You can view metrics relating to your Instagram ad in Ads Manager. While this won’t tell you much about your followers as such, it does tell you about your ads Performance, Demographics, and Placement. The results that Ads Manager shows depend on the objective you set for your campaign.

Social Bakers is primarily a social media management platform that you can use to manage all your marketing tasks together easier. It includes an Analytics & Benchmark section that covers everything from benchmarking, content, and performance to influencers and paid campaigns. You can use it to get the full information you need to understand your performance. It allows you to benchmark your organic, paid, video, and influencer performance metrics against industry averages or competitors.

Although not as advanced as the paid tool, Socialbakers offers a free Instagram Analytics Tool for personal and business profiles. It allows you to discover your most popular Instagram posts, track your success, and learn what gets your audience double-tapping. It shows your most popular photos, filters, and hashtags, although it only offers limited information about your followers.

Union Metrics offers a free Instagram account checkup. It is of limited use to understanding your followers over time, although it provides some insights into how your account is performing currently.

The Union Metrics paid plans provide more information to marketers. The $49/mo Social Manager plan allows you to analyze engagement and measure the performance of your social accounts. With the $99/mo Social Marketer plan, you can monitor relevant conversations and generate audience insights with in-depth reporting. At the top end, you have the $199/mo Marketing Team package that offers all the analysis, monitoring, and reporting you need for comprehensive social marketing.

You can use Union Metrics to monitor all your social profiles to learn precisely how your content performs. It will show you what content works across social media – and what doesn’t, and when your audience is most receptive to find the best time to post. 

Social Blade provides a wealth of stats on public Instagram media accounts. They pull data explicitly from your public profile, so you won’t find anything if you have made your account Private – but if you are a business or influencer, it makes no sense to have a Private account.

For future projections, you do need to provide them with at least two points, so you need to scan your account multiple times over time if you want to build a set of useful data. 

Social Blade also shows quite a few interesting charts about the top Instagram accounts, such as the Top 50 (and 100) Followed Instagram Users. They do emphasize that they are using the new Instagram API, so they can only get data on Instagram business/creator accounts.

https://socialrank.com/assets/video/tut1.mp4

You can use SocialRank to discover detailed audience metrics for Instagram, as well as Twitter. You can segment your audience by using various sorting and filtering options. You can create custom lists, export the data to PDF, and run campaigns. 

You can sort your audience by Most Valuable (your most influential profiles), Most Engaged (determined by the frequency of engagement), Best Followers (a combination of Most Valuable and Most Engaged), Most Followed, Alphabetized and Chronological (Newest and Oldest). You can also filter and pinpoint your audience by filters ranging from bio keyword, word/hashtag search, and geographic location, to verified number of followers, activity, and more.

Squarelovin offers a free in-depth analytics tool that gives you access to metrics on your recent posts and growth, a monthly analysis, and a history of your posts broken down into year, month, day, and hour. It provides you with more insights on your communities’ preferences and interests, and what drives engagement. Squarelovin even shows you your best and worst times to post.

Owlmetrics provides real-time actionable analytics for your Instagram account. It tracks all the critical data from your Instagram account and presents it in an easy-to-read dashboard. 

It goes into considerable detail in places, including information like your most engaging photo and video filters and top tags by interactions. You can use it to establish the best time to post for your followers.

Owlmetrics provides you with daily data regarding your post engagement rates, top posts by engagement rate, and the best-performing types of posts. 

It shows you where your followers spend the most time through click rates. It shows you your total clicks, average clicks per post, and your clicks change rate. It even drills down to clicks by language, clicks by browser, clicks that are referred from another source, and clicks by location.

Owlmetrics shows you your total followers and the growth of total followers, as well as the followers you’ve gained and lost. It lists your top gained followers and top lost followers.

One of the more useful features of Owlmetrics is its competitor tracking, giving you a detailed overview of the Instagram insights for competitors, which it updates in real-time.