Instagram is making it easier for businesses and creators to understand how they stack up against their competition with a new feature that’s currently rolling out to professional accounts.

Instagram has introduced “Competitive Insights” within the Professional Dashboard, giving business and creator accounts a fresh way to benchmark their performance. This new tool allows you to select up to 10 accounts and compare key metrics side-by-side, helping you understand where you stand in your niche.

Instagram’s newest competitive insights update was first spotted by Sarah Roizman, who works as an Instagram Growth Strategy Expert. She shared a thread on how users can now compare their account performance to similar other profiles, based on metrics/factors like follower growth, posting frequency, Reels, and even ads.

The Competitive Insights feature provides comparisons across several important areas:

• Individual post performance from competitor accounts, with an interesting twist: you can view engagement data even if the account has hidden their like counts
• Follower growth trends to see how your audience expansion compares to similar accounts
• Posting frequency broken down by content type, including Reels, feed posts, and even ads

Competitive analysis can offer valuable context for your Instagram performance. Rather than operating in a vacuum, you can now see how your growth and activity levels compare to others in your space. This is particularly useful when reporting results to clients or stakeholders, as it provides industry benchmarks to frame your performance.

However, it’s worth noting that the comparisons are relatively straightforward. The tool focuses primarily on follower growth and posting volume rather than deeper engagement metrics like clicks, shares, or views. While these baseline metrics provide useful context, they don’t tell the complete story of social media success.

If you’re looking to get a complete picture of your Instagram performance, consider calculating your engagement rate alongside these competitive metrics. Understanding how many of your followers actually like, comment, save, or share your posts reveals the true strength of your community connection. Vaizle’s Instagram Engagement Rate Calculator can help you measure this crucial metric in seconds, giving you insights that complement Instagram’s new competitive data.