Instagram carousels reach 142% more people than single-image posts and get 819% more saves

Content formats

Metric (average per post)	Single-image post	Carousel	Carousel vs single-image (%)
Reach	4,778.92	11,572.79	142.16%
Likes	183.81	754.83	310.66%
Comments	10.52	17.57	67.01%
Shares	34.01	38.59	13.52%
Saved	9.36	86.07	819.44%
Views	11,433.67	27,797.37	143.12%
Engagement	1.99%	3.08%	54.63%
Posts/Week	1.36	0.86	-37.11%

Instagram single-image vs carousel post performance comparison (2026)

Reader Note:: Averages per post across all account sizes and industries: reach 11,572.79 against 4,778.92, saves 86.07 against 9.36. Carousels are published about 37% less often than single-image posts, so the two groups of posts are not the same posts chosen at random - whoever made a carousel decided to.
Evidence:: Observed behaviour
Vendor interest:: Moderate — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
Sample:: 24,364,803 Instagram posts from 375,118 accounts worldwide, covering January and February 2025 and January and February 2026 — a two-month window, not a full year. Accounts with zero publications were excluded, as were posts with zero impressions or zero interactions, so every average in the study is computed over posts that got at least one interaction. Accounts were segmented by follower size into Huge (1M+), Big (100K-1M), Medium (10K-100K), Small (2K-10K) and Tiny (0-2K). Outliers were not removed. Growth has a non-obvious definition: an account counts as having grown only if it crossed into a higher follower tier, so an account that went from 3K to 9K followers is not counted as having grown, and the study's own methodology notes that crossing Tiny to Small takes far fewer new followers than crossing Medium to Big — growth rates are therefore not comparable across tiers.

Good for

Comparing yourself against a similar segment, and choosing what to test next.

Saying that one thing caused another, or predicting what you would get.
This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
The two groups were not split at random — they picked their own side. The difference may have been there before anything was measured.
This is an aggregated or average number that covers very different cases. Real results in a particular segment may differ.

Instagram users respond first to brand’s short videos, then creator-style content

Share of social users most likely to interact with each brand content type on Instagram
Content type	Share of users likely to interact (%)
Short-form video (<60 seconds)	52%
User-generated content	25%
Influencer content	23%
Live video	22%
Static images / Long-form video	19%

Short videos dominate brand engagement on TikTok

Share of social users most likely to interact with brand content types on TikTok
Content type	Share of social users likely to interact (%)
Short-form video (<60 seconds)	60%
Long-form video	32%
User-generated content	30%
Influencer content	28%
GIFs / memes	15%

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