Engagement Rate Benchmarks by Platform and Follower Size

Engagement rate is one of the most quoted numbers in social media, and one of the most misunderstood. People ask "what is a good engagement rate?" as if there were one answer. In reality, the figure you see depends on the platform, the size of the account, the type of content, who the audience is and — just as importantly — how the number was calculated in the first place.

This guide is a reference for understanding published benchmarks: what they measure, where they come from, and how to read them without drawing the wrong conclusions. If you want to work out your own number first, you can calculate your own engagement rate with our free tool and then come back here to put it in context.

What engagement rate means

Engagement rate expresses how many people interacted with content relative to some measure of audience size. "Interaction" usually means likes and comments, and increasingly includes shares and saves. "Audience size" is most often follower count, but it can also be reach, impressions or views.

A simple, commonly used version looks like this:

• **Engagement rate (by followers) = (likes + comments) ÷ followers × 100**

For example, a post with 180 likes and 20 comments on an account with 10,000 followers has (180 + 20) ÷ 10,000 × 100 = 2% engagement by followers. That formula is useful because it is easy to reproduce from public numbers, but it is only one of several in use.

Why formulas differ between platforms and sources

Before comparing any two benchmarks, check how each was calculated. The main differences are:

• **Which interactions count.** Some studies use likes and comments only. Others add shares, saves, reposts or reactions. Adding more interaction types produces a higher number for the same post.
• **What the denominator is.** Dividing by followers, by reach or by views gives very different results. Engagement by reach is typically higher than engagement by followers, because reach counts only people who actually saw the post.
• **Per post or per account.** Some reports give a median per post; others average across all of an account's posts over a period.
• **Median or mean.** A handful of viral posts can pull an average up sharply. A median is usually a more representative "typical" figure.
• **Who is in the sample.** Brand accounts, influencers and personal accounts behave very differently. A report built on 2,000 brands does not describe a creator with 3,000 followers.
• **When the data was collected.** Platform behaviour changes year to year, so a benchmark from 2018 or 2021 should be read as historical context, not a current target.

TikTok and YouTube are good examples of why this matters. Much of their content is discovered by people who do not follow the account, so view-based measures are often more meaningful there than follower-based ones. Our guide to KPIs that actually matter covers why ratio metrics like these tend to be more useful than raw counts.

What published benchmarks say (with sources)

The figures below are quoted exactly as published, with the source, year and method. They are reference points, not targets, and they are not directly comparable with each other because their methods differ.

Rival IQ — 2025 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report (2024 data)

• **Source:** Rival IQ, *2025 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report*, published February 2025, covering activity during 2024.
• **Sample:** around 2,100 brands across 14 industries (including an Influencers category), analysing more than 4 million posts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X.
• **Method:** engagement is measurable interaction (likes, comments, shares and reactions) divided by total follower count, reported as a median per post.
• **Instagram:** Rival IQ reports an overall median Instagram engagement rate of **0.36% per post** across all industries.
• **Trend:** the report found engagement rates fell year over year on every platform it tracked — Facebook down 36%, Instagram down 16%, TikTok down 34% and X down 48%.
• **Platform comparison:** TikTok still recorded the highest engagement of the four platforms, although it also declined.
• **Format:** on Instagram, carousels outperformed Reels on engagement in that year's data.

The key thing to remember is who this describes: established brand accounts, often with large followings. A median of 0.36% for brands is not a statement about what a small creator account "should" achieve.

HypeAuditor — Instagram engagement by follower tier (2018)

• **Source:** HypeAuditor, "Micro- vs Mega-influencers' Instagram Engagement Rates Compared", published June 2018.
• **Sample:** more than 36,000 Instagram influencer accounts checked in HypeAuditor.
• **Method:** likes and comments relative to follower count, grouped into six tiers from under 1K followers up to over 1M.
• **Finding:** the more followers an account had, the lower its engagement rate tended to be. HypeAuditor's own framing is that a single average engagement rate is "extremely misleading" without separating accounts by size.

This study is now several years old, so its specific percentages should not be treated as current benchmarks. Its value today is the pattern and the methodology — splitting accounts by follower tier before comparing.

Later & Fohr and HypeAuditor — Instagram vs TikTok by tier (2021)

• **Source:** reported by Business Insider in April 2021, summarising two studies — one from Later and Fohr (3.5 million Instagram posts, December 2020 to March 2021) and one from HypeAuditor.
• **Finding:** on Instagram, nano and micro influencers had higher engagement rates than celebrity accounts. On TikTok the pattern was reported to be the opposite, with the biggest creators engaging their audiences strongly.

This is a useful reminder that the "smaller accounts engage more" rule is not universal — it depends on how each platform distributes content.

Where reliable data is thin

We have not quoted specific follower-tier percentages for YouTube or Facebook creators, or current tier-by-tier figures for TikTok, because we could not find a recent, clearly documented source we were comfortable citing. You will find many such numbers online, often without a stated sample, year or formula. Treat any benchmark that does not tell you those three things with caution.

How follower size affects engagement rate

Several studies, including the HypeAuditor data above, point to the same general pattern on Instagram: engagement rate by followers tends to fall as follower count rises. There are practical reasons this happens:

• **Closer communities.** Smaller accounts are often followed by friends, peers or a tightly defined niche, who are more likely to interact.
• **Follower accumulation.** Large accounts collect followers over many years; some become inactive or lose interest, but still count in the denominator.
• **Distribution limits.** Not every follower sees every post. As the follower base grows, the share who see any given post can shrink.
• **Broader audiences.** Big accounts often attract a wider, more casual audience that watches but rarely comments.

The 2021 TikTok finding shows the pattern can differ by platform. Where content is distributed mainly by recommendation rather than by follow graph, large creators may keep engaging audiences at high rates. That is one reason cross-platform comparisons should be made cautiously.

Quick reference: reading a benchmark

Instead of a table of numbers that do not share a method, use this checklist whenever you meet a benchmark:

• **Platform:** Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook each surface content differently. Compare within a platform, not across them.
• **Account type:** brand, creator or personal account? Brand medians (like Rival IQ's) usually sit lower than creator figures.
• **Follower tier:** compare accounts of similar size. A 5K-follower account and a 500K-follower account are not playing the same game.
• **Formula:** which interactions, and divided by followers, reach or views?
• **Statistic:** median or average, per post or per account?
• **Date:** is the data from the last year or two? Platform behaviour shifts quickly, as the 2024 declines in Rival IQ's data show.

If a benchmark fails several of these checks, use it only as loose background.

Practical interpretation: using benchmarks well

Benchmarks are most useful as a sanity check, not a scorecard. A few practical guidelines:

• **Your own trend beats an industry number.** Tracking your rate month over month, using the same formula each time, tells you far more than comparing against a report built on different accounts.
• **Content type changes the result.** Carousels, Reels, Stories, Shorts and long-form videos invite different behaviour. Compare formats against themselves.
• **Audience fit matters.** A smaller, well-matched audience that saves and shares can be more valuable than a large one that scrolls past.
• **Measurement method must stay consistent.** If you switch from engagement by followers to engagement by reach, your number will jump without anything having changed.
• **Look beyond likes.** Saves, shares, replies and completion rate are often better signals of genuine interest than likes alone.

If you are working on Instagram specifically, our guide on how to grow Instagram followers covers the content and profile habits that tend to support healthier engagement over time.

Engagement rate and growth services

It is worth being clear about how growth services relate to engagement rate. Adding followers increases the denominator of a follower-based formula, so a larger follower count does not by itself raise engagement rate — it can lower it if the new audience does not interact. Services such as our Instagram growth and TikTok growth options affect visible counts; they do not guarantee reach, engagement or algorithmic distribution. If you use them, keep measuring engagement with a consistent formula and judge your content on the interactions it earns.

Conclusion

There is no single "good" engagement rate. Published benchmarks such as Rival IQ's 2025 report describe specific groups of accounts, measured in specific ways, at a specific time. Follower size, platform, content type, audience and formula all move the number. Use sourced benchmarks as context, compare like with like, and put most of your attention on your own trend over time.