Engagement Rate Benchmarks 2026: Every Figure With Its Source

Every published engagement rate figure, with its source

This is the complete set. Nine figures from four publishers, grouped by platform. The denominator column is the one to read first, because two figures with different denominators are not measuring the same thing and cannot be placed on the same scale.

Read down the denominator column and the shape of the published landscape becomes clear. Eight of the nine figures divide by followers. One divides by impressions. None divides by reach or by views. That is not an accident of this page's research, it is the state of what has been published, and it is why a reach-based or view-based rate cannot be benchmarked against anything from outside your own account.

Source: Quid 2026 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report, published 5 March 2026 · Socialinsider Social Media Benchmarks, published 16 January 2026 · Socialinsider LinkedIn Benchmarks, published 16 March 2026

How each publisher built its number

A benchmark is only as good as its method, and methods here differ enough to explain most of the disagreement between the figures above. This table holds what each publisher states about its own work, in its own terms.

What to notice in that table

Quid reports medians and Socialinsider reports averages. On engagement data, which has a long upper tail, an average sits above a median, and that alone explains why Socialinsider's Instagram figure of 0.48% is higher than Quid's 0.30%. Neither is wrong and they should not be averaged together.

Quid counts interactions broadly, including likes, comments, favorites, reposts, shares, reactions and video interactions. Socialinsider counts likes and comments on Instagram, adds shares and saves on TikTok, counts reactions, comments and shares on Facebook and counts likes and retweets on X. A wider numerator raises the rate for an identical post, so part of the gap between publishers is counting rules rather than audience behaviour.

Metricool has the largest sample of any source here, more than 24 million posts from more than 375,000 accounts, and does not state what it divides by. That is why its figure appears in its own section below rather than in the table above. A large sample does not compensate for an unstated denominator, because without the denominator the number cannot be interpreted at all.

Both Quid and Socialinsider build their samples from brands and company accounts. Neither is a study of individual creators. Creators generally see higher engagement than company pages of a similar size, so these figures are a conservative reference point when you are assessing a creator rather than a brand.

Source: Quid 2026 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report, published 5 March 2026 · Socialinsider Social Media Benchmarks, published 16 January 2026 · Socialinsider LinkedIn Benchmarks, published 16 March 2026 · Metricool 2026 Instagram study, published 18 June 2026 · HypeAuditor Instagram engagement rate benchmarks, created 30 April 2025, last updated 7 August 2026

LinkedIn, and the figure that is not comparable

Socialinsider publishes a LinkedIn benchmark separately from its other platforms, on a different denominator. Its overall 2026 average is 5.20%, drawn from 1.3 million LinkedIn business posts across 16,645 business pages between January 2024 and December 2025, published 16 March 2026. The formula divides engagement by impressions and multiplies by 100.

That 5.20% is roughly eleven times Socialinsider's own Instagram average of 0.48%. LinkedIn audiences are not eleven times more responsive than Instagram audiences. Impressions are a much smaller number than a follower count for most pages, and dividing by a smaller number produces a larger percentage. Putting these two figures in the same chart is the most common error made with published engagement data.

The format breakdown below is useful on its own terms, because every row shares the same denominator and so the rows can be compared with each other.

Native documents, the carousel-style PDF posts, moved from 6.10% to 7.00% and lead the set. Links sit at the bottom at 3.25%, which is consistent with the long-standing pattern of posts that send people off the platform performing worse than posts that keep them on it.

One caution about this source. Its summary states that engagement grew across all formats, while its own table shows multi image falling from 6.60% to 6.45% and polls falling from 4.40% to 4.20%. The table values are reproduced above because they are the specific figures, and the discrepancy is recorded here rather than resolved, since there is no way to tell from outside which of the two the publisher intended.

Source: Socialinsider LinkedIn Benchmarks, published 16 March 2026

The figure with no stated formula

Metricool's 2026 Instagram study, published 18 June 2026, analysed more than 24 million posts from more than 375,000 accounts worldwide. It reports Instagram engagement at 3.54%, down from 3.79% the year before, a year-over-year change of 6.61%.

That is the largest sample of any source on this page and the figure is widely quoted. It is also roughly twelve times Quid's Instagram median of 0.30% and roughly seven times Socialinsider's average of 0.48%, and the publisher does not state which interactions it counts or what it divides them by.

It is reported here because it is real, published, dated and verifiable at source. It is kept out of the main table because a figure without a denominator cannot be placed on a scale with figures that have one. You can quote it as Metricool's 2026 Instagram engagement figure. You cannot quote it as evidence that Instagram engagement is around 3.5%, because that claim depends on a denominator nobody has published.

The year-over-year change is more usable than the level. A fall of 6.61% within one consistent methodology is a meaningful trend, whatever the methodology happens to be, because the same rule was applied at both ends. Trends survive unstated denominators in a way that levels do not.

Source: Metricool 2026 Instagram study, published 18 June 2026

Engagement rate by follower tier, and why it is missing

Engagement rate by follower tier is the most requested engagement benchmark and the worst served. Every source that examines the question agrees on the direction, which is that engagement falls as follower count rises. Almost none of them publishes usable numbers.

One named publisher does. HypeAuditor's bands appear below, from a page created 30 April 2025 and last updated 7 August 2026. They are reproduced for reference and should not be used to grade a rate, for three reasons given under the table.

First, the publisher describes these as rough benchmarks itself, which is a reasonable thing to say and a reason not to treat them as precise. Second, no sample size and no collection window are stated, so there is no way to judge how much data sits behind each band. Third, and most seriously, HypeAuditor's stated primary formula divides likes and comments by views, with a fallback to followers for accounts without enough Reels. A single band can therefore contain accounts measured two different ways, which makes the bands unusable for grading a rate whose denominator you know.

The same page offers a worked example of 50,000 followers, 1,500 likes and 100 comments producing 3.2%. The arithmetic is 1,600 divided by 50,000, so the example is follower-based while the page names views as its primary denominator. A publisher whose own worked example does not follow its own stated formula is telling you something about how firmly the bands are grounded.

The tier boundaries are also idiosyncratic. Nano runs from 1,000 to 5,000 and micro from 5,000 to 50,000, where most rate cards use 1,000 to 10,000 and 10,000 to 100,000. Macro and mega are combined, so no separate mega band exists. Even with a consistent denominator, these tiers would not map onto the tiers most briefs are written against.

One source excluded, and why

Research for this page found exactly one source publishing engagement rate by tier with medians, quartiles, per-platform formulas, a stated sample and a stated collection window. It was excluded, and saying so openly matters more than quietly leaving it out.

The reason is provenance. The publishing domain was registered on 29 September 2025 and the parent company's domain on 7 April 2025, which places a longitudinal study of hundreds of thousands of accounts within about a year of the organisation existing on the public record. No raw dataset, no methodology document, no named author and no postal address are published. Most tellingly, its Instagram tier table, which is the part other sites quote most often, lists its sample as multi-source with no account count, while every other platform in the same report carries a specific number.

None of that proves the figures are wrong. It does mean they cannot be verified, and an unverifiable number with a precise decimal point is more dangerous than an acknowledged gap, because it looks like evidence. Excluding it is the direct reason this page carries no tier table of its own.

Source: HypeAuditor Instagram engagement rate benchmarks, created 30 April 2025, last updated 7 August 2026

What nobody has published

These are the gaps in published engagement data as of October 2026. Each one is a question people ask constantly and no credible source answers. If you find a page that answers them with confident numbers, the numbers almost certainly have no traceable origin.

• No source in this set publishes engagement rate by follower tier with a stated sample size and a single denominator, so this page carries no tier thresholds of its own.
• Quid's per-industry medians appear only inside images in its report, so no industry table is reproduced here.
• No credible source publishes a view-denominated YouTube engagement rate. The YouTube figure here is divided by subscribers.
• No source in this set publishes engagement rate by niche or content category as numbers.
• Instagram Stories and Reels have no separately published benchmark in any source read for this page.

How these gaps get filled elsewhere

The gap between what people want and what exists is filled by circulation. A figure appears on a page with no source, gets picked up by a second page that credits the first, then by a third that credits the second. After a few rounds the number has multiple apparent sources and no origin. Tier bands are the clearest example, and you will find the same four or five ranges repeated across dozens of sites with no study behind any of them.

A quick test defeats most of it. Take any engagement benchmark you are about to rely on and look for four things, which are the publisher, the publication date, the sample size and the denominator. If all four are present you have a benchmark. If any is missing you have a number, and a number is not the same thing.

The same test applied to this page gives nine figures that pass and a list of gaps that would need inventing to close. That ratio is roughly what honest reporting of this subject looks like in 2026.

Source: Quid 2026 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report, published 5 March 2026 · Socialinsider Social Media Benchmarks, published 16 January 2026 · HypeAuditor Instagram engagement rate benchmarks, created 30 April 2025, last updated 7 August 2026

Using these figures without misleading anybody

Benchmarks get misused in a small number of predictable ways. These are the rules that prevent all of them, and they cost nothing to follow.

• Quote the denominator with the figure. Instagram at 0.30% means nothing without on followers attached, and with it the figure becomes checkable.
• Never average two publishers. Quid's 0.30% median and Socialinsider's 0.48% average cannot be combined into 0.39%, because that figure appears nowhere and is built from two different statistics over two different windows.
• Keep LinkedIn out of cross-platform charts. Its 5.20% is impressions-based. Putting it beside follower-based figures produces a chart that is wrong in its central claim.
• Compare medians with medians. If your own figure is an average across your posts, Socialinsider's average is the closer comparison and Quid's median is the stricter one.
• Date the comparison. Instagram fell from 0.36% to 0.30% in Quid's data and from 0.50% to 0.48% in Socialinsider's. These figures move, and a 2026 benchmark will not be a 2027 one.
• Say when you are outside the data. If you are assessing a creator by niche or by tier, there is no published benchmark. Saying so is better than reaching for one that does not exist.

A note on brands against creators

The single most important caveat on this page is that the two strongest sources measure brands rather than creators. Quid samples 150 companies at random from each of 18 industries. Socialinsider analyses a representative sample of international brands. If you are using these figures to assess an individual creator, you are comparing them against a population that posts differently and is followed for different reasons.

Creators typically engage better than company pages of the same size, so a creator above these figures is doing what you would expect rather than something remarkable, and a creator below them is a genuine question. Knowing which direction the bias runs is most of what you need to use the numbers sensibly.

Where to go next

To work out a rate from raw numbers on each of these published formulas, use the engagement rate calculator. To position a rate you already have against the figures above, with the publisher and date attached, use the engagement rate grader. To turn a published rate into a cost, the Instagram CPE calculator and the TikTok CPE calculator divide a fee by the engagements each figure above implies at a given follower count, which is the only way to price response against published data when no cost per engagement benchmark exists. All of them link back here, because these figures are what they rely on.

Source: Quid 2026 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report, published 5 March 2026 · Socialinsider Social Media Benchmarks, published 16 January 2026 · Socialinsider LinkedIn Benchmarks, published 16 March 2026

Related free tools

• Engagement Rate Calculator
• Engagement Rate Grader
• Instagram Engagement Rate Calculator
• TikTok Engagement Rate Calculator
• YouTube Engagement Rate Calculator
• X Engagement Rate Calculator
• All free tools