Metricool (2026) — Instagram Post Format Performance Study

Summary:

This report looks at what is working on Instagram now. It compares post formats, posting habits, and content choices to see what tends to get more views and interactions.

It was published by Metricool, a social media management and analytics company. Metricool sells tools for planning, scheduling, and measuring social posts, so it has a clear commercial interest in this topic.

The goal is to show how Instagram changed from 2025 to 2026 and help brands decide what to post, how often to post, and when to post.

Metricool says it analyzed 24.4 million Instagram posts from 375,118 accounts worldwide.

It compared January and February in 2025 with the same months in 2026. The data is mostly shown as averages per post. Accounts were grouped by follower size so very large accounts would not distort smaller ones. The report excluded accounts with no posts, and it also excluded individual posts with zero impressions or zero interactions. Best posting times came from Instagram's API.

The main findings are that brands posted more on Instagram, and average views and interactions also rose.

• Reels were the strongest format overall: they got the most interaction, their engagement rate grew, shares rose sharply, and watch time roughly doubled.
• Carousels also stood out, beating single-image posts across every main metric and driving far more saves.
• Single-image posts fell behind, especially for bigger accounts.
• Stories held up better than they may seem: reach dipped a little, but replies nearly doubled and exits fell, which suggests stronger attention from the people who do watch.

The report also says smaller accounts are more likely than bigger ones to move up to a higher follower tier, hashtags are linked with lower views and interactions, questions in captions are linked with more comments, comment-or-save CTAs are linked with more comments and saves, mentions help smaller accounts more than larger ones, most post performance happens in the first three days, and the best posting window was 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on average.

There are a few catches.

The findings are observational, not a controlled test, so many of the claims are correlations rather than proof of cause and effect.

The report also excludes posts with zero impressions or zero interactions, which may make average performance look stronger than a full population view.

It covers only two months in each year, so seasonality may affect results.