How Instagram ranks

Instagram says it has no single algorithm: Feed, Stories, Explore and Reels each use their own, tailored to how people use that part of the app, and rank things differently ¹²³. Stories come from accounts a person follows, Feed mixes those with recommended posts, and Explore and Reels mostly show accounts the person does not follow ⁴⁵⁶. Switch the surface in the panel above to see which signal moves to the top.

Instagram calls its inputs signals and says there are thousands, from when a post was shared to how often a person likes videos ¹. From them it makes roughly a dozen predictions of how a person will interact; in Feed the five it watches most are spending a few seconds on a post, commenting, liking, sharing and tapping the profile photo ². In Reels the top predictions include resharing a reel and watching it all the way through, and in Explore a post's popularity counts much more than in Feed or Stories ³⁴.

Instagram began in 2010 as a single stream of photos in chronological order, and by 2016 people were missing 70% of their Feed posts, which led it to rank Feed ¹². Its 2021 explanation gave one order for Feed and Stories, with information about the post first and your activity third ³⁴. The 2023 update gives Feed its own order with your activity first ⁵. The chart below lines up the two Feed orders so each signal's move is visible.