How to See Someone's Recent Instagram Follows (2026 Methods)

Quick Answer

You can't see someone's recent Instagram follows inside the Instagram app — that feature was killed in 2019. Three workarounds exist in 2026: manually scrolling their Following list (slow, unreliable), free login-required scrapers (privacy-risky, capped, no alerts), or a notification-based tracker like Lurk that pings you the moment they follow somebody new. The third method is the only one that catches activity in real time without you having to check their profile.

The fastest path: track them once with Lurk, walk away, get a push notification when their follow list changes.

Why Instagram killed the Following Activity tab in 2019

For years, Instagram's heart-shaped Activity tab had two columns: "You" (likes and follows on your stuff) and "Following" (a real-time feed of what the people you followed were doing — including who they were following). It was the original receipts machine.

Instagram removed the Following tab in October 2019 and folded the rest of the Activity surface into the Notifications icon. The official reason was "people didn't know it existed and we want to simplify." The unspoken reason was that the feed was generating a lot of relationship damage and Instagram didn't want the liability.

Every "how to see recent follows" question on the internet since 2019 is people looking for the workaround. There are three that actually work.

Method 1: Manually scrolling their Following list

The most obvious approach — open their profile, tap "Following," scroll. In theory the most recently added accounts are at the top.

In practice, this is the worst method.

What works: It's free and requires nothing but their public profile being visible.

What doesn't:

The list is not strictly chronological. Instagram sorts the visible 200 by relevance to your graph, not theirs. The "newest follow" can be 14 positions down or invisible entirely if you and they don't share many connections.

You have to remember the previous state. If you saw their list yesterday and want to know what changed today, you need to have memorised yesterday's list. Nobody does this.

It exposes you instantly. Repeated profile views show up in their Recently Active / story-watcher list if they have a story up. Opening their Following 14 times in a day is the digital equivalent of standing outside their house with binoculars.

Useful for a single sanity check. Useless for actual monitoring.

Method 2: The third-party app approach

A handful of products scrape the public follower graph and surface "recently added." They split into two camps: login-required (you give them your Instagram credentials, which Instagram's ToS prohibits and which is a real security risk) and no-login (they read public data only, no credentials needed).

Side-by-side:

| Tool | Login required | Real-time alerts | Free tier | Mobile push | |---|---|---|---|---| | Lurk | No | Yes (within ~60 min) | $1 first week | iOS + Android + web | | Dolphin Radar | Yes | No (daily batch) | Free trial then paid | iOS only | | Recent Follow / IGExport | Yes (for sort) | No | Capped at 50 accounts | No | | Snoopreport | Yes | No (weekly PDF) | No free tier | No app | | FollowSpy | Yes | No | Limited free | Weak |

The login-required tools have two problems: you have to hand over Instagram credentials (Instagram's ToS prohibits this and accounts get suspended for it), and Instagram detects automated scraping from logged-in sessions aggressively. The no-login approach reads only what an anonymous browser visiting the public profile would see — which is exactly the data anyone can read for free anyway.

The deeper review of these tools — including which "free" ones are actually free — is in our honest review of free Instagram follow trackers.

Method 3: Notification-based tracking (what Lurk does)

The third method is the one Method 1 and Method 2 both approximate badly: instead of pulling the follow list on a schedule (yours or theirs), the tool watches the list continuously and pushes you a notification when the list changes.

This is the only method that catches the 24–48 hour windows where actual relationship-relevant activity happens. Sudden bursts of follows after a fight, late-night follow sprees, accounts added then unfollowed before anyone noticed — none of that survives a daily or weekly batch. It does survive notification-time tracking.

The mechanics:

You enter their public Instagram handle. No login. No password. Nothing on their account changes.

Lurk takes a snapshot of their current follow list.

Lurk re-checks the list at short intervals (under an hour on paid plans).

The first time the list differs, you get a push notification: "@username just followed @newaccount."

You can pull up a timestamped feed of every change.

For tracking without ever logging in, this is the only method that works end-to-end.

Privacy and legality — is this snooping?

Reasonable question. The short version: looking at someone's public Instagram profile is no different from looking at a billboard. Everything Lurk sees is what any anonymous person visiting their profile in a logged-out browser tab would see. There's no hacking, no credential phishing, no breach of any account.

What's not legal: trying to access private accounts (locked profiles, private stories, DMs). Lurk doesn't and can't do that — if the target account is private, you see nothing, same as you would in any browser.

The line between "monitoring public info" and "stalking" is partly legal (public vs private data) and partly behavioural (what you do with it). Watching a stranger's public follow list isn't illegal anywhere we know of. Acting on what you find in a way that harasses someone is — but that's true of any information, not just this.

If you're tracking your own teenager, your own employee on a work account, or someone you have a legitimate reason to monitor (your own partner who knows you have access, an account you co-manage), there's no ambiguity. If you're tracking an ex who blocked you, stop — that's where the question stops being "is this legal" and starts being "is this healthy."

The fastest method and why

If you read everything above and just want the recommendation: Lurk, weekly plan, $1 first week.

Why:

No login means no risk to your own account or theirs.

Real-time push means you actually catch the activity instead of finding it three days later in a digest.

Cross-platform (iOS + Android + web from a single subscription).

Unlimited public accounts — track an ex, a partner, three competitors, your favourite creators, whoever.

$1 first week is a real trial. Cancel before week two and you owe nothing.

If you want to see how Lurk stacks against the alternatives in detail, the Lurk vs Dolphin Radar vs Recent Follow comparison is the next read. If you want to know whether it's worth $1/week to you specifically, we wrote a longer review.

Bottom line

Instagram took the receipts away in 2019. The receipts are still gettable in 2026 — you just need a tool that watches for you instead of you watching for it. Manually scrolling their Following list is the slow, public, exposing way. A notification-based tracker is the fast, private, anonymous way.

Lurk does the second one for $1 first week. Try it now — enter any public Instagram handle and you'll have your first snapshot in under 30 seconds.