If you want to go a bit deeper than Instagram’s own analytics offering, this list is for you.

Why do you need to analyze Instagram?

If you’re not sure you need an Instagram analytics tool, let us give you a few reasons why you do.

First, Instagram is hugely popular. There are many potential customers and people on the receiving end of your brand’s message.

Second, with so many people posting so often, Instagram offers you insights into trends from all over the world. It gives us an insight into humanity in the very moment, something incredibly valuable in such a fast-paced world.

Third, without a decent tool, all of this data and information will go untapped and unordered. There’s only so much you can glean from logging into the app itself. Without an analytical tool to collect the data you need, order it properly, and visualize it, you’ll never be able to squeeze Instagram for everything it’s got. And that’s a lot. 

Now that you’re convinced. Let’s look at the tools.

The best Instagram analytics tools

1. Instagram Insights

Why not start with the built-in analytics?Insights is the Instagram analytics tool you’ll find inside the app itself. It’s not massively in-depth, but it’s still useful to get a quick snapshot of your performance. It lets you look at the impressions and engagements you’ve recently gotten, while you can compare your posts using a number of metrics to see your best posts quickly.

This latter option is particularly handy as you’ll want different types of posts to do different things. There are limitations though, you can only look at posts going back two years.

Here are some of the major metrics you can sort by (there are a bunch more):

  • Reach
  • Engagement
  • Likes
  • Profile visits
  • Calls
  • Comments
  • Shares
  • Website clicks
  • Product opens

You can also get some audience demographics, such as top cities and countries, age ranges, and gender. There’s the basic info on when your followers are active too.

Obviously, with being completely free, this is a decent place to go when you need some quick numbers. But it’s lacking if you want to compare performance over longer periods of time.

2. Brandwatch Consumer Research

Brandwatch Consumer Research is a social listening product that can be turned into a powerful Instagram insights tool. You can use it to collect data on the following:

  • Specific hashtags
  • Owned business accounts
  • Non-owned business accounts

This means you can track and analyze any posts, including the hashtags you specify. Using the Consumer Research dashboard and chart components you’ll be able to identify new trends, important influencers, and find out what content works in your industry.

The platforms channels set up will give you detailed insights into your own account, while tracking non-owned business accounts adds the final part of the whole picture. This means you can easily benchmark yourself against competitors and compare your performance and posts directly.

You are now able to get to know your audience better by how they interact with and on Instagram. Additionally, you can have a better overview of what your competitors are doing and which areas you should focus on.

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3. Quintly

Quintly is a dashboard tool that covers several social networks. It comes with a standard dashboard that can be customized with widgets to suit your needs and track the metrics that matter to you.

The tool provides Instagram analytics for followers of your profile and that of your competitors, with detailed follower statistics. You can analyze your Instagram content, the interactions generated from your photos and videos, plus details on filter usage.

Quintly also covers Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube. There is a free tool for Facebook analytics and a 14-day free trial. Paid plans then start from €129/month.

4. Socialbakers

Socialbakers offer a free Instagram analytics tool. You can create your own dashboards, and while there are lots of areas to look at, the time period is fairly restricted with the free version.

You can see your top posts, most used hashtags, and tagged accounts, plus general stats on your number of posts and followers. You can see impressions, reach, and interactions too.

The fact that you can build your own dashboards is a big plus and the UI is easy to navigate and simple to use. It’s not massively in-depth, but it’s good for top-level insight and analysis.

Socialbakers costs $20 per month per profile, but you can hook up accounts from loads of different platforms including YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

5. Squarelovin

Squarelovin is an admirably in-depth tool for a free analytics platform. It displays metrics on recent posts and growth, a monthly analysis, and a history of your posts broken down into year, month, day, and hour.

There are tabs that show engagement with your photos, both average and top posts, and an optimization tab that shows your best and worst times to post.

You can also manage your Instagram account from within the platform, creating albums, and liking and commenting on other posts.

6. Union Metrics

Union Metrics offers a free account checkup covering the last month. The report is generated using a few algorithms from their paid analytics platform.

While the report isn’t exactly comprehensive, it does a few things well.

The focus is on picking out a few metrics and posts to compare them with your average, helping you identify any patterns and themes. You can refresh the report every 24 hours, allowing you to check how newer posts perform against the average.

The report also shows how many people have interacted with you and your top fans.

The times you have posted over the last month are shown on a graph, and the best day and time to post is displayed, including details of how much more engagement that time receives compared to your average.

Hashtags are given the same treatment, plotted on a scatter graph to compare the most likes and comments per post.

7. Iconosquare

Iconosquare offers a 14-day free trial of their complete platform. This allows access to the analytics and some other useful and interesting features.

There is an extensive range of analyses on offer, which starts with an overview of activity in the last seven days or the last month.

A tab for content shows the distribution, density, tag, filter usage, and geolocation. The engagement tab shows growth history, the source of engagement, and the most popular media.

The optimization tab covers posting times, average media lifespan, tag impact, and a breakdown of filter impact. Finally, for analysis, there is a community tab, showing details about your followers and followings.

In addition to the analysis, there are ‘snapshots’; shareable images based on your Instagram data. You can view your media, likes, followers, and manage comments.

There’s also a feature that lets you create a profile cover from your latest 50 photos, and a widget to showcase your Instagram photos on your own website.

Their free audit tool, as screenshotted below, will also give you some quick tips on how to improve your Instagram account.

That’s a wrap!

Are you ready to monitor closely your Instagram analytics and adjust your social media strategy accordingly? Or do you want to track more than just Instagram analytics? Then take a look at the full list of social media analytics tools.

Contact us if you need a piece of advice on how our tools can help you improve your ROI.