Straight answer: Yes, average engagement rates on Instagram have been falling for three years running and 2026 is no exception, but the drop is not evenly spread across every account, and for a lot of businesses it has less to do with the algorithm and more to do with what they’ve been posting. I’ve watched this happen inside client accounts with real numbers, not vibes, and the pattern is more useful than the panic.
What the numbers show
Rival IQ’s last social media benchmark report put average Instagram engagement across industries at 0.43%, down from around 0.60% two years earlier. Later’s own State of Social research found a similar slide, with reels engagement rates settling lower than everyone expected once the initial reels boost wore off. Socialinsider’s brand data shows carousels holding up better than single images, which nobody wants to hear because carousels take longer to make.
None of these numbers are shocking on their own. A drop from 0.60% to 0.43% sounds tiny until you remember it’s applied against millions of accounts and it compounds year on year. If you posted the same content in 2023 and 2026, you would statistically expect roughly a third fewer likes and comments for the same reach, before you even account for follower growth diluting your rate further.
The account this happened to
A client of mine, Priya, runs a small jewellery brand with 18,400 followers. In January her average post got around 640 likes and 22,000 reach. By September the same type of post was getting 210 likes and reach had fallen to 9,000. On paper that looks like a disaster, and she came to me convinced Instagram had “switched her off.”
Except her DM inquiries were up. Her website traffic from Instagram was up 19%. Her sales for the quarter were up 34% on the same period the year before. What had changed was that Instagram was showing her posts to fewer followers and more strangers, and the strangers who liked what they saw were clicking through and buying instead of double tapping and scrolling on. Engagement rate went down. Revenue went up. Those two things are not the same metric and treating them as interchangeable is where most of the panic comes from.
Why the average is really falling
Meta has said openly, in earnings calls and creator updates, that it is showing users more content from accounts they don’t follow. That is by design, not a glitch. It means reach is spread thinner across a bigger pool of possible content, so the maths of “likes divided by reach” tightens for everyone, even accounts posting exactly what they always did.
Here’s the part most posts on this topic skip past. A lot of the drop isn’t the algorithm at all, it’s the content. Feeds are full of the same seven-second trending audio, the same caption structure, the same AI-written hook that a thousand other accounts pasted in that week. When ten accounts in your niche post visually identical carousels with barely reworded captions, people scroll past all of them, and the algorithm reads that as low quality and shows the next one to fewer people too. The platform didn’t punish you first. Your audience got bored first, and the algorithm just noticed second.
I’ve also seen technical issues get blamed for what is really a content problem, or vice versa. If your reels aren’t playing for people, that’s worth ruling out before you touch your content strategy, because a loading fault will tank your numbers regardless of how good the video is. It’s a five minute check and it removes one variable before you start second guessing your creative.
Six checks to run before you blame the algorithm
- Pull your last 90 days of reach and impressions from Insights and compare them to the same 90 days last year, not last month, because seasonality skews everything.
- Separate your formats. Average reels engagement against reels only, carousels against carousels only. Blending them hides which format is carrying you.
- Check your saves and shares, not just likes. Meta has weighted these more heavily for over two years, so a post with fewer likes but more saves can still be reaching new people.
- Look at follower growth rate against engagement rate together. If followers went up 20% and engagement rate dropped 15%, your raw engagement numbers might be flat or up, the rate just looks worse because the denominator grew.
- Check whether your captions and hooks are close to identical to five other accounts in your niche this month. If they are, that’s your answer before you go looking anywhere else.
- Check your hashtag habits. Hashtags carry far less weight for reach than they did in 2020, and where you place them barely matters anymore, so if you’re still spending time perfecting exactly where hashtags go on a post, that’s fifteen minutes you could put into a better hook instead.
What still works, based on what I’ve watched hold steady
Accounts that post fewer, better things are doing better than accounts posting daily filler. That sounds obvious written down but it’s the opposite of what most small business owners were told for years. One client dropped from six posts a week to three and her reach per post went up because each one had more thought behind it and Instagram’s own systems reward completion and saves over sheer volume.
Original faces, original voices, and specific claims still outperform generic ones. “Five tips for better skin” gets scrolled past. “I stopped using retinol for three weeks and my skin got worse before it got better, here’s what happened” gets watched to the end. That specificity is the whole game now, and it’s why AI-written captions that sound like everyone else’s AI-written captions are quietly dragging accounts down, not because AI is bad but because unedited AI output all sounds the same.
If you’re trying to work out where AI helps your Instagram output versus where it’s just adding to the noise, it’s worth reading what AI marketing means if you’re not a specialist before you hand your captions over to a tool and hope for the best. The businesses I see doing well use AI for research and drafts, then rewrite the last 20% in their own voice before it goes anywhere near the app.
Where this fits in the bigger picture
Engagement rate on one platform is a symptom, not a strategy. If you’re rebuilding a marketing plan around a single number on a single app, you’re already exposed the next time Meta changes how it ranks content, which it will, because it always has. I’ve written before about how AI is changing marketing strategy and where it doesn’t touch it at all, and Instagram engagement is a good example of the “doesn’t touch it” side. No tool fixes boring content. It just makes boring content faster to produce.
If you’re weighing up whether to bring in outside help to work out what’s happening across your channels rather than guessing from Insights screenshots, an AI consultant for small business can run that audit and tell you, with your own numbers, whether the problem is the platform, the format, or the content itself.
One last thing worth saying plainly. If your engagement has dropped and your sales, inquiries, or bookings have not, stop worrying about the engagement. The vanity metric moved. The business metric didn’t. That’s the outcome that pays your bills, not the like count.
For a ready-made set, try the free Facebook hashtag generator; it keeps to the 3 to 5 tags that work.
Frequently asked questions
Is Instagram engagement down for everyone or just certain niches?
It’s down on average across nearly every industry tracked in the major benchmark reports, but the size of the drop varies a lot. Retail and beauty accounts have felt it hardest because those feeds are the most saturated with near-identical content, while niche B2B and local service accounts have seen smaller drops because there’s simply less competing content in their specific space.
Does a lower engagement rate mean Instagram is punishing my account?
Not usually. Meta has said openly that it now shows more content from accounts people don’t follow, which spreads reach thinner for everyone and lowers average engagement rates as a side effect of that design choice, not as a penalty against your specific account.
Should I post more often to fix low engagement?
No, and in several accounts I’ve watched, the opposite worked better. Posting three well made pieces a week and getting saves and shares on each one outperformed six rushed posts, because Instagram’s ranking rewards completion, saves and shares more than sheer volume.
What matters more than engagement rate right now?
Saves, shares, and whether the traffic or inquiries coming from Instagram are converting into actual sales or bookings. A falling engagement rate alongside rising sales means the metric moved, not the business, and the business number is the one that matters.
