Vendor reportMetricool, 2026
Instagram posts that ask a question get more comments: 55.7 on average vs 40.7 without a question
Content formats
Effect of including a question on Instagram post comments (2026)
| Post type | Average comments per post |
|---|---|
| No question | 40.73 |
| Question | 55.68 |
- Reader Note:
- Averages per post across all account sizes and industries. Posts containing a question were not chosen at random - the people who write them tend to be the people already trying to get replies.
- 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.
Not for
- 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.




