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Vendor reportMetricool, 2026

Instagram Reels got 29.9% fewer views and 41.9% less reach than TikTok videos

Channel validation

Metric (average)TikTokInstagramInstagram vs TikTok (%)
Posts/Week2.541.57-38.19%
Views32,895.0723,074.09-29.86%
Reach25,653.6514,918.51-41.85%
Interactions1,207.461,035.48-14.24%

TikTok vs Instagram by format: Video/Reel — average performance, 2026

Reader Note:
Averages per post over the same January-February window, measured across the accounts in Metricool's own panel that publish on both platforms.
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.
  • This is an aggregated or average number that covers very different cases. Real results in a particular segment may differ.
Channel validationTrend

20% of Gen Z and 17% of Millennials discover new brands through influencer endorsements, vs 12% of Gen X and 5% of Boomers

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GWI, 2026

20% of Gen Z and 17% of Millennials discover new brands through influencer endorsements, vs 12% of Gen X and 5% of Boomers

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