The short version: Instagram engagement rates vary hugely by industry, from around 0.38% for fashion retail to close to 1% for non-profits, and the platform-wide average has dropped below 0.5% across the board since 2023. The number that matters isn’t the industry average itself, it’s whether you’re above or below the average for accounts your size, in your sector, doing your kind of content.
Once you know your engagement rate, you can estimate what you could earn per Instagram post from it.
What “average engagement rate” means (and why the figure you’ve read is probably wrong)
Engagement rate on Instagram is usually calculated as likes plus comments, divided by followers, times 100. Some tools add saves and shares, some don’t. Some measure per post, some measure across a 30-day rolling average. This matters because two reports can look at the exact same account and hand you completely different numbers.
I’ve had clients come to me with a screenshot from one benchmarking tool saying their account is “underperforming” at 0.6%, while another tool for the same month says they’re “above average” at 1.4%. Both are technically correct. They’re just measuring different things. So before you panic about your industry average, check what the number is counting.
There’s also a size problem nobody flags loudly enough. Accounts with 500 followers routinely post 4% to 8% engagement rates because their audience is small and personal. Accounts with 2 million followers are lucky to hit 0.3%, because reach doesn’t scale with followers, it plateaus and then declines. Blend those two together into one “industry average” and you get a number that describes almost nobody accurately. If you want a more honest read on what counts as good for your size of account specifically, I’ve broken that down separately in what counts as a good engagement rate for small brands, because the industry figure alone won’t tell you if you’re doing well.
The industry breakdown: real 2026 numbers
Based on aggregated data from social analytics platforms tracking tens of thousands of business accounts through 2025 into early 2026, here’s roughly where different industries sit for average engagement rate per post:
- Non-profits and NGOs: 0.90% to 1.00%
- Higher education: 0.75% to 0.90%
- Fitness and wellness studios: 0.65% to 0.80%
- Sports teams and leagues: 0.60% to 0.75%
- Home, furniture and interiors: 0.55% to 0.65%
- Food and beverage brands: 0.50% to 0.60%
- Real estate agencies: 0.45% to 0.55%
- Beauty brands: 0.40% to 0.50%
- Tech and B2B SaaS: 0.35% to 0.45%
- Media and publishing: 0.35% to 0.45%
- Fashion and retail: 0.35% to 0.42%
The platform-wide average across all industries and account sizes sits at around 0.43% per post right now. Compare that to 2019, when the cross-industry average was closer to 0.98%, and you can see why so many business owners feel like Instagram “stopped working.” It didn’t stop working. Reach got harder, video took over the algorithm, and likes stopped being the currency they used to be.
Non-profits and education accounts tend to sit at the top because their audiences have an emotional or identity-based reason to engage, alumni, donors, cause supporters. Fashion and big retail sit at the bottom because their followers are often bargain-hunters or one-time customers with no ongoing relationship to the brand, just a discount code they used once.
The jewellery client who thought she was failing
A few years back I worked with a boutique jewellery brand owner who came to me convinced her Instagram was broken. She’d read somewhere that 3% engagement was “the benchmark” and she was sitting at 1.1%. She was ready to scrap the whole strategy and pour her budget into paid ads instead.
When I pulled the actual industry data for fashion accessories and small retail, the honest average for accounts her size (around 8,000 followers) was closer to 0.4% to 0.6%. Her 1.1% wasn’t failing. It was nearly double the industry standard. What had happened was she’d been comparing herself to a fitness influencer benchmark someone quoted in a random webinar, a completely different industry with completely different audience behaviour.
We didn’t change her content strategy at all that month. We just stopped her chasing a number that had nothing to do with her business. That single correction saved her from wasting money on a paid strategy pivot she didn’t need.
The uncomfortable bit nobody in these benchmark reports wants to say out loud
Here’s the part that gets glossed over in most engagement rate roundups: these industry averages are increasingly meaningless as a management tool, because Instagram itself has quietly shifted what it rewards. Likes and comments, the two metrics that make up almost every published engagement rate formula, are no longer the signals the algorithm cares about most. Saves, shares to DMs, and watch time on Reels now carry more weight in what gets shown to people. So an account can have a mediocre “engagement rate” by the classic formula and still be growing fast, because it’s winning on saves and shares that never show up in the headline number.
I’ve seen accounts with a 0.3% “official” engagement rate that were quietly one of the most-shared accounts in their niche, because every post got saved and sent in DMs rather than liked. The brand owner nearly changed agencies over a number that was measuring the wrong thing entirely. If you’re benchmarking your account purely against an industry average built on likes and comments, you might be optimising for a metric that stopped mattering two algorithm updates ago.
This doesn’t mean ignore engagement rate. It means treat the industry average as a rough compass, not a verdict.
Why the gap between industries exists in the first place
The differences aren’t random. They come down to three things:
- Purchase frequency and emotional stake. People engage more with brands tied to identity (charities, sports teams, gyms) than brands tied to a single transaction (retail, fashion).
- Content format fit. Industries that naturally produce video (fitness, food, beauty tutorials) tend to outperform industries stuck posting static product shots (B2B, real estate listings).
- Audience size distribution. Industries dominated by a handful of massive global accounts (fashion, media) drag the average down, because those huge accounts post to millions of largely passive followers.
An art account posting behind-the-scenes process videos and using strong niche tags will usually beat a big fashion label’s flat product photo, even though “fashion” and “art” often get lumped into similar creative-industry benchmark tables. If you’re in a visual, creative niche, it’s worth reading up on what hashtags help art accounts get found, because discovery, not just engagement rate, is half the battle in these categories.
How to compare your account, step by step
Instead of grabbing a headline “industry average” and panicking or celebrating, do this:
- Pull your last 30 posts and calculate (likes + comments + saves) divided by reach, not followers, if your analytics tool shows reach. Reach-based engagement is a fairer comparison because it accounts for the algorithm hiding your post from most of your list.
- Filter any benchmark report by account size before you compare, not just industry. A 5,000-follower fitness account and a 500,000-follower fitness account should never be judged against the same number.
- Separate Reels from static posts and carousels. Averaging them together hides which format is carrying your account.
- Track your own trend line month over month for three months before you touch your strategy based on a single week’s dip.
- Check posting time against your audience’s active hours, because a well-made post at the wrong time can underperform a mediocre one at the right time. This is where scheduling tools that help you post at the best times earn their keep, since timing alone can shift engagement by a noticeable margin without changing a single piece of creative.
What to do if you’re below your industry average
First, don’t rebuild your entire content plan off one bad month. Second, look at consistency before you look at creativity, because an account that posts three times one week and nothing for two weeks will always underperform a steadier competitor, even with worse content. Being reliably present is a bigger lever than most people expect, and it’s the whole reason I keep pointing clients toward using a scheduling app to stay consistent rather than posting whenever the mood strikes.
Third, if consistency and timing are already sorted and you’re still below your sector’s benchmark, it’s worth building a proper plan rather than guessing post by post. I’ve laid out the full approach in how to build an Instagram engagement strategy that works, which covers the content mix, the response habits, and the testing cadence that moves accounts from below-average to above-average inside a single quarter, not overnight, but reliably.
And be honest with yourself about the industry you’re in. A wellness coach selling one-to-one coaching isn’t really competing with big fitness brand pages, she’s closer to a personal influencer account, where average engagement runs higher because the relationship is more personal. Benchmark against the right peer group or the whole exercise is pointless.
If your question is a different Instagram one, the Instagram guide lists every answer I have written.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good Instagram engagement rate in 2026?
For most industries, anything from 1% to 3% on an account under 10,000 followers is solid, while 0.3% to 0.6% is normal and healthy for larger accounts over 500,000 followers, since reach naturally shrinks as an audience grows. The industry average matters less than your own account’s size-adjusted benchmark.
Which industry has the highest Instagram engagement rate?
Non-profits and higher education accounts consistently sit at the top of most benchmark reports, typically between 0.75% and 1%, because their followers have an emotional or personal connection to the cause or institution, not just a transactional interest.
Which industry has the lowest Instagram engagement rate?
Fashion and large retail brands sit lowest, usually between 0.35% and 0.42%, largely because these industries include enormous global accounts with millions of passive followers who dilute the average, and because much of the audience is one-time or discount-driven rather than loyal.
Why has average Instagram engagement dropped since 2019?
The platform-wide average has fallen from close to 1% in 2019 to around 0.43% in early 2026, mostly because Instagram now prioritises video content and saves or shares over the old likes-and-comments model, and because the app shows any single post to a smaller share of your followers than it used to.
Useful references
For more fixes like this, open one page of Instagram answers and a free engagement calculator.
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