How to Get More Likes on Instagram in 2026: What Actually Works

Most people who ask me how to get more likes on Instagram are really asking why their likes dropped. The views look fine, sometimes better than last year, but the heart count under each post keeps shrinking. They assume they did something wrong: the wrong hashtags, the wrong posting hour, a shadowban.

Usually none of that is the problem. The way Instagram shows content changed, and the way likes behave changed with it. Once you understand who actually likes your posts and why, the fix gets much less mysterious — and much less about tricks.

This guide covers what Instagram has published about likes, why the like count can fall while views rise, the one metric I track instead of raw likes, and the habits that consistently earn more of them. I'll also be clear about which popular tips aren't backed by anything Instagram has said.

The short answer: to get more likes on Instagram, focus on the people who already follow you, because Instagram's head has said likes matter more for content from accounts you follow. Make the first frame or first seconds worth stopping for, post in the format your audience actually engages with, stay consistent about what your account is for, and judge posts by likes per reach instead of the raw like count. Skip "double tap if you agree" prompts — Instagram lists engagement bait among the things that can limit distribution.

Why Your Instagram Likes Dropped Even When Views Went Up

This is the question I hear most, so it's worth starting here.

More of your reach now comes from people who don't follow you. Instagram recommends content to people based on what they're likely to enjoy, not only on who they follow. A Reel can reach thousands of strangers. Strangers watch, and most of them scroll on. A follower who knows you is far more likely to tap the heart than someone seeing your account for the first time.

So views and likes measure different audiences. If a post reaches 1,000 followers and 100 of them like it, that's a 10% like rate. If the next post reaches 1,000 followers plus 4,000 non-followers who like at 2%, you get 180 likes from 5,000 views — more likes in total, but a like rate that looks like it collapsed. Nothing about the post got worse. The mix of viewers changed. (These are illustrative numbers, not a benchmark.)

People like less than they used to. Creators across niches have been describing the same pattern — steady or rising views, noticeably fewer likes — for a while now. Instagram has also moved views to the center of how it reports performance, which makes the gap more visible.

Your content drifted away from what your followers came for. This one is on us. When an account chases whatever format is trending, the people who followed it for something specific stop recognizing it — and stop liking it.

The first three are structural. The fourth is the one you control most, and it's where most of this guide focuses.

What Instagram Has Actually Said About Likes

There's a lot of confident advice about likes and "the algorithm." Here is what comes from Instagram itself.

In its official explanation of how ranking works, Instagram lists how likely you are to like a post among the actions Feed tries to predict, and names liking among the most important predictions for Reels too. Likes are part of ranking on both surfaces. That part is confirmed.

In January 2025, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, named watch time, likes and sends as the three signals that matter most for ranking. He added a detail most guides skip: likes are slightly more important for content from accounts you're connected to, while sends matter slightly more for reaching people who don't follow you. He also suggested tracking likes per reach rather than likes alone.

Instagram's creator FAQ fills in the rest. Recommendations consider how much engagement per viewer a piece of content has received and how likely each viewer is to engage. Engagement on each surface — Feed, Reels, Explore — matters most for that surface. And content that people broadly dislike, including clickbait and engagement bait, can be limited in recommendations.

Put together, that points to one practical conclusion: likes are mostly a relationship signal. They grow when the people who already know you keep finding your posts worth a tap. If you want the full picture of how ranking works surface by surface, I cover it in how the Instagram algorithm works.

Measure Likes Per Reach, Not Likes

If I could change one habit for every account I look at, it would be this one. Stop comparing raw like counts between posts.

Raw likes mostly tell you how many people saw the post. Likes per reach tells you how many of the people who saw it cared. To calculate it, open the post's Insights, take the likes, divide by accounts reached, and multiply by 100 for a percentage.

Three things make this more useful:

• Compare posts against your own average, not against another account. Like rates vary enormously by niche, format and audience, and published averages rarely match your situation.

• Split by format. Compare Reels with Reels and carousels with carousels. A Reel that travels to non-followers will almost always have a lower like rate than a carousel seen mostly by followers.

• Check where the reach came from. Insights shows how much of a post's reach came from followers versus non-followers. A low like rate on a post with mostly non-follower reach isn't a failure — it's what discovery looks like.

For the full walk-through of which Insights numbers to trust, see my Instagram analytics guide.

Win the People Who Already Follow You

If likes weigh more among connected accounts, then your followers are where more likes come from. That changes the strategy more than any caption trick.

Be predictable about what you're for

People follow an account for a reason: a kind of advice, a style, a sense of humor, a product they want. The posts that get the most likes from followers are almost always the ones that deliver exactly that reason, done well. The posts that get ignored are usually the experiments that could have come from any account.

That doesn't mean never experimenting. It means knowing which posts are for your followers and which are for reach, and not expecting the second kind to be liked the same way.

Build formats people come back for

A recurring series — the same segment every week, the same structure, a recognizable first frame — trains followers to stop when they see it. Recognition is underrated. When someone knows what a post is going to give them before they've read a word, the like comes easily.

Keep the relationship warm between posts

Instagram's ranking explanation names your history of interacting with someone as an important Feed signal, and closeness as a key signal for Stories. Replying to comments, answering DMs and using Stories between posts all build that history. If you want more on turning single comments into conversations, I wrote a separate guide on getting more comments on Instagram.

Make the First Second Worth a Double Tap

Nobody likes a post they scrolled past. The first frame decides whether the rest of the post gets a chance.

• For Reels, Instagram's own creator guidance is to make the first three seconds engaging so people don't move on. Show the result, the surprise, or the question immediately. Don't spend the opening on a logo or a slow build.

• For carousels, the first slide is the whole pitch. It needs a clear promise — what the viewer gets by swiping — not a decorative cover.

• For single images, clarity beats complexity. One subject, readable at phone size, with a reason to look twice.

• Upload at the highest quality you can. Instagram's creator FAQ says people tend to engage more with high visual quality content. A blurry, cropped, or watermarked post starts with a handicap.

A useful test I use: if the first frame were the only thing people saw, would they know why this post exists? If not, fix the first frame before touching anything else.

Choose the Format for the Job

Different formats earn likes from different people, so the right format depends on what the post is for.

• Reels are Instagram's best tool for reaching people who don't follow you. Expect more views and a lower like rate. Judge them on watch time and sends as much as likes. For the viewing side, see my guide on getting more views on Instagram Reels.

• Carousels are usually seen more by people who already know you, and they reward the swipe. Tutorials, comparisons, before-and-afters and short stories work well here.

• Single photos still work when the image itself is the point — a product, a moment, a result — and when your followers are used to seeing them from you.

Since engagement on each surface matters most for that surface, don't judge a carousel by Reels numbers or the reverse. Pick a job for each post and measure it against that job.

Write Captions That Earn the Like — Don't Ask for It

"Double tap if you agree" still shows up in a lot of guides. Instagram's creator FAQ lists engagement bait among the content that can be limited in recommendations, and asking for a specific reaction is exactly that. You may squeeze out a few extra hearts from loyal followers while making the post less likely to be shown to anyone else.

What helps instead:

• Give context the visual can't. The story behind the photo, the mistake that led to the tip, the reason the product exists. People like posts they understand.

• Keep the first line strong. Only the first line or two show before "more." Make them worth reading on their own.

• Use a few relevant hashtags, not a wall of them. Instagram says relevant hashtags can help content reach people interested in that topic, and irrelevant ones can reduce engagement and distribution.

Post When Your Followers Are Actually There

Timing matters less than most guides suggest, but it isn't irrelevant — especially if likes come mostly from followers.

Your Insights show when your followers are most active. Post in or just before those windows, and test a few slots over several weeks rather than trusting a universal "best time" chart. Those charts average millions of accounts that aren't yours.

What I'd drop is the idea that a post lives or dies in its first hour. Instagram hasn't published anything saying that, and for Reels its own guidance talks about engaging with comments over the first week. A slow start isn't a verdict.

Should You Hide Like Counts?

Instagram lets you hide like counts on your own posts and reels, and also hide counts on posts you see from others. When Instagram introduced the option, it said its testing found that not seeing like counts helped some people and annoyed others, so it made it a choice.

Instagram hasn't said that hiding likes changes how a post is distributed, so I wouldn't treat it as a growth tactic either way. Where it can help is psychological: some creators post more consistently and experiment more freely when they aren't staring at a public number. You still see your own likes in Insights either way.

What Doesn't Work Anymore

Like-for-like groups. Groups where members agree to like each other's posts produce likes from people who have no interest in your content. That inflates the count while telling you nothing about what your real audience wants, and it trains nobody who matters to come back.

Auto-likers and apps that ask for your login. Instagram announced back in 2018 that it would remove inauthentic likes, follows and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to boost their popularity, notify those accounts, and ask them to change their password. Any tool that needs your Instagram password to "grow" your account is putting that account at risk.

Follow/unfollow and mass-liking other accounts. It's slow, it attracts people who were only following you back, and it looks exactly like the automated behavior Instagram has spent years trying to remove.

Chasing trends that don't fit. A trend can bring views. If it has nothing to do with why people follow you, it rarely brings likes from the audience you actually need.

What I've Learned From Watching Likes Across Accounts

Working on Risendo means I see a lot of Instagram accounts at the moment their owners feel stuck. The complaint is nearly always the same — "my likes are dying" — and the cause is rarely what they expect.

The most common pattern I see is an account whose reach improved and whose like rate fell at the same time. The owner reads it as failure. When we split reach into followers and non-followers, the follower like rate is usually fine; the average fell because more strangers were watching. That's good news disguised as bad news, and the right response is to keep the Reels coming for reach while making sure the posts for existing followers stay recognizably theirs.

The second pattern is drift. An account built on one clear thing starts posting a bit of everything, and the posts that used to reliably get liked get rarer. The fastest improvements I've seen came not from new tactics, but from going back to the one thing followers originally came for and doing it better.

The third is over-reading single posts. One quiet post means very little. A trend in likes per reach across ten posts of the same format means a lot.

Can You Buy Instagram Likes?

You can. The honest framing matters more than the yes.

Purchased likes raise a number. They can make a new or launch post look less empty, which some brands and creators decide is worth paying for. They can't make your followers care, they won't improve your first frame, and they won't tell you anything about what your audience wants. If you judge posts by likes per reach, bought likes also muddy the one metric that tells you what's working.

If you decide to use them anyway, keep the criteria narrow. Never give any provider your Instagram password — as Instagram's own 2018 announcement shows, login-based growth apps are exactly what it targets. Delivery should be gradual rather than a sudden spike, and the terms — timing, what happens if delivery is incomplete — should be clear before you pay. Our page to buy Instagram likes sets out packages and terms up front, including that no password is required.

Use them alongside posts your followers would like anyway. Not instead of them.

The Part That Actually Compounds

Likes used to be the scoreboard. Now they're closer to a thermometer for how your existing audience feels about you — useful, but only if you read them in context.

So if you want to get more likes on Instagram without chasing tricks, start with three changes this month: track likes per reach instead of raw likes, fix the first frame of every post before anything else, and make sure most of what you publish is recognizably the thing people followed you for. Reach will come and go with the algorithm. An audience that reliably likes what you post is the part that keeps building.