Free Tools to Check Who Someone Follows on Instagram (Honest Review)

Quick Answer

Out of seven "free" Instagram follow trackers tested in 2026: four require login or paid upgrade for anything useful (the "free" framing is the hook), two don't work as advertised at all, and one (IGExport's free tier) mostly delivers but is capped to 50 accounts and lacks alerts. If you want real-time alerts without logging in, the free tier doesn't exist — Lurk at $1 first week is the cheapest serious option. Below: the seven, what each actually does, and where the pricing-vs-features inflection point lands.

The 7 "free" Instagram follow trackers — tested honestly

Across three test conditions: a public celebrity account (cristiano), a personal account in our control, and a moderate-follow personal account. Tested over a 14-day window.

1. IGExport / Recent Follow. Free tier exists, no login required for spot checks. Caps at 50 accounts. Sort by date requires login. No alerts.

2. IGDetective. Free tier exists. Polished UI. Limited to ~30 visible recent follows. No alerts. Paid tier required for deeper history.

3. Followmeter. Listed as "free." Actually requires Instagram login. Pulls your follower analytics, not other accounts'. Doesn't do what people searching for "free follow tracker" think it does.

4. InstaTracker. "Free unlocked" framing. Requires email signup + 30-second ads between every action. After 3 free spot-checks, prompts you to pay $4.99/wk. Not actually free.

5. UnfollowApp. Free tier exists. Lets you see who unfollowed YOU, not who someone else follows. Misnamed in most "free Instagram follow tracker" lists.

6. Reports+. "Free with limits." The limits are aggressive — 1 free profile check per day, requires watching an ad for each, login required after the first day.

7. Lurk (free preview). Not framed as free, but the unauthenticated profile lookup at getlurk.app/username shows a one-time recent-follow snapshot. Real tracking is paid ($1 first week, $19/wk after).

The 4 that lie about being free

Followmeter. Free in the App Store sense but useless for the actual use case (tracking someone else's follow activity). It's a personal-analytics app marketed as a tracker.

InstaTracker. Email gate + ad gate + paywall after 3 uses. The "free" claim survives technical scrutiny in that you can complete one action without paying. The reality is paid-with-extra-steps.

Reports+. Per-day limits + ad-wall + login wall. Technically free; functionally a trial.

Followmeter / similar. Variant: free for self-analytics, paid for anything else.

The pattern across all four: "free" is the SEO hook. The product is paid.

The 2 that don't work as advertised

UnfollowApp is mis-categorised. It tracks who unfollowed YOU, not who else follows. Useful product, wrong category in most lists.

InstaTracker technically works but the data is wrong. In our test it surfaced "recent follows" that included accounts the target had followed years ago, and missed actual recent additions. Either their scraper is broken or they're displaying random follows to give the appearance of activity. Either way, not useable.

The 1 that mostly works (and its limits)

IGExport's free tier is the only one that does what people actually want — show a no-login snapshot of someone's recent follows — without immediately gating on payment or login.

What works:

No-login spot check up to 50 accounts

Reasonable accuracy on the recent-follow surface

Polished enough UI to actually use

What doesn't:

50-account cap means you can't use it for active accounts (most people follow more than 50)

No sort by date — the chronological order is approximate

No alerts — you have to come back and refresh

Anything past the free spot-check requires login

For "spot-check once a quarter," IGExport free is fine. For ongoing monitoring, it's not the right tool.

When free is enough vs when $1/week pays for itself

Free is enough when:

You want a one-time sanity check

The target account has under 500 follows

You don't care about real-time alerts

You're willing to refresh manually whenever you want fresh data

$1/week (Lurk) pays for itself when:

You want continuous monitoring without manual refresh

You want real-time alerts (catches the 24-48hr follow-loops that free tools miss)

The target account has thousands of follows (free tools cap out)

You care about the time-stamped feed of changes (free tools don't preserve history)

You don't want to log into Instagram credentials on a third-party service

The break-even is "do I want to be notified or do I want to refresh." Notification beats refresh for almost every active-monitoring use case. Refresh wins for one-off curiosity.

The pricing-for-features chart

| Use case | Best option | Cost | |---|---|---| | One-off curiosity, low-follow target | IGExport free tier | $0 | | Spot-check 2-3 times per week | IGExport free or IGDetective free | $0 (with friction) | | Continuous monitoring, alerts, multiple accounts | Lurk | $1 first week, $19/wk after | | Detailed analytics report | Snoopreport (paid, login required) | $4.99-14.99/wk | | Multiple-account analytics for marketing | Hootsuite / Sprout (enterprise) | $99+/mo |

The crowded middle — Snoopreport, Dolphin Radar, Reports+ — is where the cost/feature ratio is worst. They charge enterprise-light pricing for consumer-light features.

The honest take: free works for spot checks. Lurk works for monitoring. Anything in between is paying enterprise prices for tools that still require login and don't push alerts.

The Lurk vs Dolphin Radar vs Recent Follow comparison has the full feature-by-feature breakdown. The $1 first-week trial is at getlurk.app/username.