Find Out Who Views Your Instagram

Instagram is a great way to stay connected — with loved ones, friends, favorite celebrities, admired content creators, and popular brands. Whether yours is a personal or business Instagram account, you also have followers who await your latest updates and have a keen interest in your posts. You might be curious to find out who’s been viewing your Instagram profile, and you won’t be alone. 

Just as you sometimes engage in some harmless, recreational online stalking, it’s only natural to wonder about who may also be stalking you. Or, perhaps, you’d like to know if a specific individual has checked you out on Instagram. “Who views my Instagram?” is one of the most commonly Googled questions relating to the widely popular social network; keep reading to find out if it’s possible to see who views your profile and how, and if other users can find out if you’ve been visiting their profile. 

Can you find out who views your Instagram profile?

Instagram users receive notifications when other people like, comment on, and/or share their posts. But there are also those who may visit and take a peek at your profile page without engaging with you in any way; in social media parlance, this is often called “online stalking.” 

Unfortunately, Instagram’s privacy policies include the complete anonymity of simple profile onlookers. You won’t know if any of your followers or even non-followers is viewing your profile, just as other users won’t find out when you view theirs. This is true for all types of accounts: private/personal accounts, public accounts, and business accounts. 

For Instagram business accounts, however, the platform’s analytics tools can reveal the number of profile visits, alongside other relevant statistics; however, the report won’t reveal the usernames of these visitors. 

How to find out who views your Instagram stories

Instagram stories are, well, another story. Anybody who views your story can also be seen, even if they did not interact with your story. You’ll see a list of all the people who saw your story, and you can use this information to determine if you’re reaching the right people — your target audience. 

Instagram stories are “live” for 24 hours from the time of posting, and the story’s list of viewers is updated in real-time. Simply tap on your story, and then tap on the “Viewers” option at the bottom to reveal the people who have viewed your story. You will receive notifications every now and then on the number of people who have so far viewed your story. When you tap on the notification, it will also display the names of your viewers. 

Instagram stories are a great way to increase your visibility and boost engagement; it’s also an effective tool that provides invaluable insights about the types of audience you’re reaching and how many. You have the option to archive your stories so that you can access them again to review your viewers even after the stories have already expired. 

What third-party apps provide insights into Instagram profile views?

Third-party apps that supposedly provide profile viewer insights are a dime a dozen. But keep in mind that Instagram — which was acquired by Facebook in 2012 — has rigorous and robust privacy and security protocols in place to protect its estimated 1 billion users to date. 

You might think there’s no harm in knowing who viewed your profile, but if a business account had a way of finding out the names of all the people who simply visited their profile but weren’t interested enough to interact with their page, and if that business used this data to target these individuals, then it would be similar to apps collecting user data to sell to businesses for targeted marketing. And, in fact, this is exactly what a lot of these so-called profile viewer third-party apps do. 

Be wary of apps that promise to notify you and provide info about people who view your profile. A lot of these apps are not legitimate and trustworthy. But if you’re really eager to try out a profile viewer app, make sure to do sufficient research to find out if an app is reliable and legit before you start using it. Here are two apps with a decent number of favorable reviews that may be worth looking into.    

Follower Insight for Instagram, Android

This app is designed for the Android OS and most reviews have rated it as user-friendly. Its services include providing information on who visits your profile, as well as notifications when users follow, unfollow, or block you on Instagram.  

Visitors Pro App, iOS

For iOS, this app has been well-rated for providing valuable analytics on engagement, i.e., a list of people who frequently interact with posts and stories, so that you can gain more insight about who is interested in your content. 

Remember that most third-party Instagram apps that offer engagement insights can only gather data on people that directly engage with your profile and content. And the user information they aggregate is only limited to people who actually follow you; users who are not following you but may visit your profile can’t be tracked by these apps. 

Final Thoughts

Likes, comments, regrams, follows, and story views are tracked by Instagram and the data associated with these activities are provided to the account owner through real-time notifications and via the platform’s analytics tools. These analytics are used by Instagram to assess an account’s performance; on the account owner’s end, the insights can be used to gauge the success of the page’s content and marketing strategies. 

Instagram has the ability to track profile views, but the platform does not share the information with users as part of its user privacy policies. While you may feel that knowing who views your profile sans any interaction can help you modify your targeting marketing strategy, access to this information is construed as a privacy breach. Simply looking at a profile is not permission to gain access to user information. 

“Online stalking” comes in many forms, and for personal accounts, being made aware of who’s been stalking their profile may help them better fortify their privacy. However, joining any social media platform comes with the knowledge of and agreement to the public availability of some of your profile’s basic information. Fortunately, you can customize your privacy settings to specify what information can be viewed by the public. 

Remember that most third-party apps that supposedly provide insights about profile viewers don’t really have the ability to do so. The most that they can do is collect information on users who engage with your content — and Instagram already does this for you. So far, there are no legitimate third-party apps that have successfully breached Instagram’s security protocols to access information on profile viewers. Practice caution and good judgment before using any third-party app and giving them access to your account information. Do your research to make sure the app is trustworthy and legitimate.