What changed in Instagram insights
Two changes reshaped Instagram insights. First, Views replaced impressions and plays: Instagram made it the main number in the app in late 2024, and retired impressions and plays for good on April 21, 2025, including for the tools that read your stats. Then in April 2026 Instagram redesigned insights with new tabs for engagement and audience, and added three new measures: share rate, skip rate and views over time.
If a guide still talks about impressions, or doesn't mention skip rate, it was written before these changes.
Where to find Instagram insights
The redesigned view covers individual posts and Reels. Collab posts, trial Reels, cross-posted and boosted content weren't included in it when it launched.
- In the app: insights are available on professional accounts (Business or Creator). Open your profile and tap your professional dashboard or Insights.
- For one post or Reel: open it and tap View insights under it.
- On a computer: Meta Business Suite shows Instagram insights for accounts linked to it.
What each Instagram metric means
- Views: how many times your content was shown or played, counting repeats. It replaced impressions and plays, and is usually a bigger number than impressions were.
- Reach: how many different accounts saw it at least once.
- Interactions: likes, comments, shares and saves together.
- Shares and saves: the strongest signals that something was useful. A share is someone recommending you.
- Share rate: the share of viewers who passed the content on.
- Skip rate: how many viewers swiped away from a Reel almost straight away. A high skip rate means the first seconds aren't holding people.
- Views over time: how views built up over days and weeks, so you can see content that keeps getting found after the first day.
- Follows: new followers that came from a specific post or Reel.
Which numbers to actually watch
For an engagement rate that stays comparable after the switch to views, divide interactions by reach. The engagement rate calculator does it for you, and the Facebook Page insights guide covers the same change on Facebook.
- Skip rate, for every Reel. It's the clearest feedback on your hook. Compare your Reels with each other, not with someone else's account.
- Shares and saves over likes. Likes are cheap; shares and saves say the content earned a place.
- Reach over views when you want to know how many people you're getting to, since views count the same person twice.
- Views over time for evergreen posts: the ones still climbing after a week are the topics to make more of.
Instagram next to your other networks
Disclosure: PersonaXpand is our product. Its analytics reads Instagram's current metrics, views, reach, saves and shares, and shows them next to Facebook, X, YouTube, LinkedIn, Threads and Bluesky. It also looks at when your own posts did best and suggests posting times from that, rather than a chart averaged over millions of strangers.