Instagram by the Numbers: Stats, Demographics & Fun Facts
URL: https://www.instagram.com/
Founded: October 2010
CEO: Kevin Systrom
Headquarters: Menlo Park, CA
Quick Instagram Statistics
Total Number of Monthly Active Instagram Users:
1.074 billion+ (source)
Last updated: 28/06/21
Total Number of Daily Active Instagram Users:
500 million + (source)
Last updated: 28/06/21
Instagram Stories Daily Active Users:
500 million+ (source)
Last updated: 28/06/21
Number of Businesses on Instagram
200 million+ (source)
Last updated: 28/06/21
Instagram Demographics
- 50.8% of all Instagram users are female while 49.2% are male
- 546 million Instagram users are female, and 528 million are male.
- There are 140 million Instagram users from the U.S.
- 71% of U.S. adults ages 18-29 use Instagram in the United States.
- 87% of users are outside the U.S.
- There are 320 million global Instagram users aged between 18 and 24 years.
- There are 354 million global Instagram users aged between 25 and 34 years.
- 72% of teens use Instagram.
- 73% of U.S. teens say Instagram is the best way for brands to reach them about new products or promotions.
- 130 million Instagram accounts tap on a shopping post to learn more about products every month.
- Instagram users spend an average of 30 minutes per day on the platform in 2021.
- 25% of U.S. teenagers say Instagram is their preferred social media platform.
Number of Instagram monthly active users
| Year | Number of monthly users (In millions) |
| 2013 | 150 |
| 2014 | 300 |
| 2015 | 400 |
| 2016 | 600 |
| 2017 | 800 |
| 2018 | 1000 |
| 2019 | 1000* |
| 2020 | 1000* |
| Q1 2021 | 1074 |
*No official figures reported
Instagram for Business
- An estimated 71% of U.S businesses claim to use Instagram for Business.
- Annual Instagram advertising revenue is projected to be at 18.16 billion USD in 2021.
- 200 million+ Instagrammers visit at least one business profile daily.
- 70% of shopping enthusiasts turn to Instagram for product discovery.
- There are 500,000 active influencers on Instagram.
- 69% of US marketers plan to spend most of their influencer budget on Instagram.
- 1/3 of the most viewed stories are from businesses.
- Influencer marketing takes up more than half of the marketing budget for 17% of marketers.
- User-Generated Content Has a 4.5% Higher Conversion Rate.
- 55.4% of Influencers use Instagram Stories for Sponsored campaigns.
- Instagram’s potential advertising reach is 1.16 billion users
Instagram’s Influencer Statistics
- Christiano Ronaldo is the most followed individual on Instagram with 290 million followers
- 55% of marketers plan to use Instagram for influencer marketing in 2021
- 18% of marketers believe Instagram offers the best influencer marketing ROI.
- 37% of Instagram users interact with influencers
- The most expensive Instagram influencer by average post cost is Dwayne Johnson who charges 1.015 million USD per post.
- 47% of influencer marketing spend goes on micro-influencers, with 23% spent on celebrity influencers
- Marketers can make $5.20 for every $1 invested in influencer marketing
- Global spend on influencer marketing is predicted to be worth $15 billion by 2022
Fun Facts
- The Instagram explore page is viewed by 200 million accounts daily.
- The most liked photo on Instagram is a photo of an egg with 55+ million likes.
- More than 50 billion photos have been uploaded to Instagram so far.
- 1,074 photos are uploaded on Instagram every second.
- 50% of Instagram users use explore page every month.
- Posts With a Location Get 79% more engagement.
- 60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram.
- Photos with faces get 38% more likes.
- Posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement.
- Most-used Giphy sticker in Stories is by Red and Howling
- Women use Instagram 56.5% more than men in the U.S.
- Instagram users engage more on weekdays with Wednesday and Thursday showing most engagement.
- More than half of Instagram Captions & Comments Contain Emojis.
- Instagram videos get over 2 times more engagement than Instagram photos.
- The most popular hashtags on Instagram are #Love, #Instagood, #Photooftheday, #Fashion, and #Beautiful.
- The most popular hashtag on Instagram is #Love, used 1.835+ billion times.
- Pizza is the most Instagrammed food globally, followed by Sushi.
- Nano-influencers(500-5k followers) make an average of $114 per video post on Instagram, compared with $100 for an image post and $43 for a story.
- Power users(30k-500k followers) make an average of $775 for an Instagram video, $507 for an image post and $210 for a story.
- 68% of people come to Instagram to interact with creators.
- IGTV app has 7 million installs worldwide.
- There were 5 million uploaded videos within the first 24 hours after Instagram announced the video feature in 2013.
Instagram Statistics 2021 (Editor’s Choice)
1. Instagram user statistics
There are 1.074 billion active monthly users on Instagram in 2021 (eMarketer, 2020), having crossed the 1 billion mark in 2018. This brings it to the super-league club of other social platforms like Facebook and YouTube that have all crossed the billion mark.
The current Instagram figures show an increase of 73.5 million users than the total numbers in 2020. Although experts had previously expected the platform to hit this milestone in 2024, analysts attribute a big part of this massive growth to the coronavirus pandemic, which drove users to sign up for Instagram.
The 1.074 billion Instagram users in 2021 marks a 22.9% increase in the number of users from 2020.
While Instagram is only a photo-sharing platform once only popular with teens, it has grown to become one of the most popular social media sites in the world.
Most popular social networks worldwide as of January 2021, ranked by the number of active users in millions. Source: Statista
2. Instagram Demographics: Location
As of January 2021, the United States of America and India both tied at the top as the countries with the highest number of Instagram users at 140 million each (Statista, 2021).
Leading countries based on Instagram audience size as of January 2021 (in millions)
Based on these numbers, it is clear that the audience and reach of the platform is growing at a rapid pace in most countries outside the U.S. While the figures for the U.S seem not to change, India recorded approximately 20 million new users between the period of October 2020 and January 2021 (Hootsuite, 2021).
Instagram’s total number of users per country as of October 2020 (Source: Hootsuite/ WeAreSocial)
The other countries with the highest number of social media users besides the U.S and India are:
- Brazil – 99 million Instagram users
- Indonesia – 85 million Instagram users
- Russia – 56 million Instagram users
3. Instagram Demographics: Gender
50.8% of all Instagram users are female, while 49.2% are male (Statista, 2021).
Distribution of Instagram users worldwide as of January 2021, by gender
Unlike other major social media platforms like Twitter that have a very wide gender gap among its users, Instagram appears well-balanced and embraced by both genders equally. More Instagram demographic insights to follow.
4. Instagram Demographics: Age
25–34-year-olds make up the age group with the most Instagram users at 33% (Hootsuite/ WeAreSocial, 2020).
According to the statistics, 18–24-year-olds are the second most populous group in the Instagram usage world.
65+ year-olds make up the least number of Instagram users at only 2.1%.
If we were to break the figures even further, the only age group with more males than females are the two most populous ones (18-24-year-olds and 25-34-year-olds). There are 15.7% males against 13.9% females and 16.6% males against 16.5% females, respectively.
5. Countries with the highest Instagram reach
The country with the highest Instagram reach in 2021 is Kazakhstan, with 78.7% (Statista, 2021).
Countries with the highest Instagram audience reach as of January 2021
Kazakhstan might not be the country with the most Instagram users, but it is the country where Instagram reaches the highest percentage of its population: 78.7% to be precise.
The other countries with the highest Instagram reach in 2021 are:
- Brunei – 70.5%
- Turkey – 68.4%
- Iceland – 66.5%
- Sweden – 66.5%
- Kuwait – 65.7%
6. Instagram app download statistics
Instagram had a total of 503 million downloads in 2020 (Apptopia, 2021).
Besides Facebook, this is one other app that has consistently maintained the top five position, with the number of downloads for the last couple of years. The numbers are quite impressive, even with the entry of other more recent apps like TikTok.
Within the same report, it is reported that Instagram came in the third position in the United States as one of the most downloaded apps of 2020, with 62 million downloads. Only TikTok and Zoom were ahead with 89 million and 81 million new downloads, respectively.
When broken down even further, Instagram maintained its popularity as the fourth most downloaded apps on both the App Store and Play Store. Here were the results as broken down by Sensor Tower.
7. How much time do users spend on Instagram?
Instagram users spent an average of 30 minutes per day on the platform in 2020 (eMarketer, 2020).
This marks an increase of about four minutes from 2019. If this figure doesn’t stun you, this is a 13.8% jump from the previous year!
Do you think you also fall under the same category?
How much time do you spend on Instagram every day?
According to Facebook (Instagram’s parent company), you can see the average amount of time you spent on Instagram within the last 7 days. Time spent on Instagram starts when you open the app and ends when you close it or switch to using another app on your device.
Here’s a quick and easy way to find out how much time you spend on Instagram:
8. Businesses on Instagram statistics
As Instagram becomes increasingly more popular, an estimated 71% of U.S businesses claim to use Instagram for Business (Mention, 2018). That’s approximately 7 out of 10 businesses that use Instagram to help boost their online visibility and connect with their audiences.
There are more than 200 million business accounts on Instagram globally that users visit every day (Instagram, 2021). This is quite possible, as 90% of Instagram users follow at least one brand.
With a good presence on Instagram, businesses can cater to their clients’ needs much easier, as 2 out of 3 Instagram users believe the platform enables interaction with brands (Instagram, 2021).
What’s more?
With the ability to make it easy for users to shop directly from the app, approximately 130 million Instagram users tap on shopping posts to learn more about the product every month.
Another noteworthy statistic is that 36.2% of B2B decision-makers use Instagram to research new products or services (Hootsuite/ WeAreSocial, 2020). These figures clearly indicate the power of Instagram as a crucial business tool in this digital era.
9. Instagram engagement rates
The average engagement rate for an Instagram post by a business account is 0.96% (Hootsuite/ WeAreSocial, 2020).
These figures imply that for every 100 Instagram followers, you should expect at least engagement from one account. Engagement is currently the highest for image posts at 1.03%, followed by carousel posts at 0.86%. Videos receive the third-highest engagements on Instagram at 0.75%.
Although the current stats indicate low engagement rates, this wasn’t the case for a good part of 2019 and 2020.
Engagements on Instagram would indicate a rising trend in 2019, starting at 2% average engagement for carousels and even reaching an all-time high of 3% in 2020 thanks to the introduction of videos on the platform.
The average engagement rates would take a downhill, thereafter, with carousels averaging at 1.6%.
Image credits: Social Insider
10. Instagram Stories statistics
According to Instagram, over 500 million accounts use Instagram Stories every day (Instagram, 2021).
58% of Instagram users claim to have become more interested in a brand/product after seeing it in Stories. A further 50% of them say they have visited a website to buy a product/service as a result of seeing it in Stories.
Furthermore, 45% of Instagram users prefer to use Stories to become aware of new trends and happenings.
We shouldn’t also forget that brand stories have an 86% completion rate, according to Conviva Social Insights. Sports Stories have the highest completion rate of 90%, while entertainment-themed accounts indicated a 7% increase from 2019 to 88%.
These figures clearly indicate that as a business with an online presence on Instagram, it would be crucial to include Instagram Stories as a part of your content marketing strategies.