Lurk Stat Drop · Following behaviour · Updated July 3, 2026
How many accounts does an Instagram creator follow, by follower size?
Across 116,719 tracked Instagram accounts, the median account with more than 10 million followers follows just 503 others — actually fewer than the median micro-influencer with 1,000–10,000 followers, who follows 882. As an audience explodes from a few hundred to tens of millions of followers, the number of accounts followed back barely moves, and past the micro tier it falls. Scope: this describes the accounts Lurk has observed — a set skewed toward searched, tracked and frequently-referenced accounts — not a random sample of all of Instagram.
By Lurk · Original research · CC BY 4.0 · Cite this
Instagram's largest accounts behave less like avid browsers and more like broadcasters: as an audience swells into the millions, the list of accounts a creator follows stays strikingly small and selective.
Following barely grows as followers explode
The median nano-account (under 1,000 followers) follows 241 accounts. Following peaks at the micro tier (882), then declines all the way up: mid-tier accounts follow a median of 807, macro 686, mega 622, and celebrity accounts just 503 — even though a celebrity account's median follower count is roughly 86,928× larger than a nano-account's (24,253,005 vs 279). Outbound following is one of the most stable numbers on Instagram; fame does not make people follow more.
| Follower tier | Accounts | Median followers | Median following |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nano · Under 1,000 followers | 73,406 | 279 | 241 |
| Micro · 1,000 – 10,000 | 33,706 | 1,805 | 882 |
| Mid-tier · 10,000 – 100,000 | 5,863 | 21,640 | 807 |
| Macro · 100,000 – 1,000,000 | 2,280 | 240,530 | 686 |
| Mega · 1,000,000 – 10,000,000 | 1,025 | 2,323,454 | 622 |
| Celebrity · 10,000,000+ | 439 | 24,253,005 | 503 |
Following = accounts the profile follows (outbound). Medians are per-tier over profiles with a known follower and following count.
The dataset behind this number
This figure comes from Lurk's live follow-graph — the same anti-flap store that powers the public Follow Index — which currently spans 116,719 Instagram profiles, 2,021,740 mapped follow-relationships, and 1,505 accounts under active tracking. No competitor publishes a distribution like this because no competitor has the underlying dataset.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Instagram profiles in the network | 116,719 |
| Follow-relationships mapped | 2,021,740 |
| Accounts under active tracking | 1,505 |
| Follow-activity events observed | 406,123 |
Methodology & limitations
Data source. Every figure is an aggregate query over Lurk's cached_profiles store, bucketing 116,719 Instagram profiles that have both a known follower count and a known following count into six follower-size tiers, and taking the median (50th percentile) accounts-followed within each tier.
Sampling & scope. This is not a random sample of all of Instagram. It describes the accounts Lurk has observed — a set skewed toward searched, tracked and frequently-referenced accounts. Medians (not means) are reported so a handful of extreme accounts cannot distort the tier figures. Data was captured July 3, 2026.
Every figure on this page is an exact aggregate derived from Lurk’s production follow-graph — the same data behind the public Follow Index — captured July 3, 2026 and frozen in source so it can never silently drift. The sample is 116,719 Instagram profiles with a known follower and following count. No individual account is exposed; all figures are anonymized aggregates.
Frequently asked
How many accounts does the average big Instagram account follow?
In Lurk's data, the median account with over 10 million followers follows just 503 accounts, and the median account with 1–10 million followers follows 622. Following peaks at the micro tier (882) and falls as accounts get bigger.
Do accounts follow more people as they gain followers?
No — the opposite, past a point. Following rises from the nano tier (241) to a peak at the micro tier (882), then declines steadily through mid, macro, mega and celebrity tiers.
Is this the average following count for all Instagram users?
No. It is the median accounts-followed within each follower-size tier, measured across the 116,719 accounts Lurk has observed — not a random sample of every Instagram user.
Cite this
This statistic and its underlying dataset are released free under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Reuse the figure with attribution to Lurk and a link to the permalink:
https://getlurk.app/data-drop/stat/instagram-following-by-follower-size
Lurk. “How many accounts does an Instagram creator follow, by follower size?” July 3, 2026. https://getlurk.app/data-drop/stat/instagram-following-by-follower-size
For the live time-series or a custom cut, see the Follow Index, the flagship State of Instagram Following 2026 report, or the recurring Monthly Data Drop.
Related Lurk research
- Why 1M+ accounts follow almost no one →
- Verified accounts follow twice as many →
- The Lurk Instagram Follow Index (full live dataset) →
- State of Instagram Following 2026 →
Lurk builds this dataset by tracking Instagram following activity for its users. See what Lurk tracks →