Instagram analytics tools compared: native, SaaS and API

November 8, 2026

Instagram analytics tools fall into three groups: Instagram's own Insights, social media management apps with analytics built in, and APIs you build on. The right one depends on whose account you measure and how far back you need to look.

Instagram Insights (built in)

Free for professional accounts. It shows reach, views, saves, shares and audience data for your own content. Two limits matter. Through the API, user metrics are stored for up to 90 days, and some metrics are not available on accounts with fewer than 100 followers source. Looking back further than 90 days in the app is offered to eligible public accounts on certain Meta One plans source.

Good at: private metrics no one else can see. Weak at: other accounts, long history, and exports.

SaaS analytics apps

These connect to your account through Meta's API, store history over time, and add reports and competitor tracking.

Tool	Starting price	Free option	Competitor tracking
Metricool	Starter from $20 to $25 a month, depending on billing	Free plan: 1 brand, 30 days of analytics	5 competitors free, up to 100 on paid plans
Iconosquare	Starter from €9 a month billed yearly	Free plan for up to 2 profiles; 14-day trial	Listed as 5 competitors per profile
Later	Starter $18.75 a month billed yearly	14-day trial	Scale plan only, up to 20 competitors
Sprout Social	$79 per seat a month billed yearly ($99 monthly)	30-day trial	Listed under the Professional plan ($299)
Hootsuite	Standard from $99	14-day trial	5 on Standard, up to 20 on Professional

Sources: Metricool, Iconosquare, Later, Sprout Social, Hootsuite. Later lists Instagram analytics history of 3 months on Starter, 1 year on Growth and 2 years on Scale.

Pick Metricool or Iconosquare for a low-cost start with a free plan. Pick Later if scheduling is your main job. Pick Sprout or Hootsuite for teams that also need an inbox, approvals and listening.

Building your own with an API

If you need numbers for accounts you do not own, or a custom metric, an API and a spreadsheet go a long way. You give up private metrics like reach, and gain any public account, any history you choose to store, and your own formulas.

The metrics that matter, all computable from public data:

Metric	Formula	Why
Engagement rate per post	(likes + comments) / followers	Compares photos and reels on one scale
Engagement per play	(likes + comments) / plays	How well a reel lands with those who saw it
Reach multiple	plays / followers	Above 1 means the reel reached beyond the audience
Median plays, last 30 reels	median(plays)	Resists one viral outlier
Posting rate	posts in last 28 days / 4	Posts per week
Follower growth	followers today minus followers 7 days ago	Needs a daily snapshot

Store one row per account per day, and one row per post per pull. After a month you have the history most tools charge for. A spreadsheet is fine up to a few dozen accounts; past that, a small database table with handle, fetched_at and the metrics keeps queries simple.

import os, requests, statistics
API = "https://scrapeio.com"
H = {"x-api-key": os.environ["SCRAPEIO_API_KEY"]}

p = requests.get(f"{API}/v1/instagram/profile", params={"handle": "natgeo"}, headers=H).json()["data"]
reels = requests.get(f"{API}/v1/instagram/user/reels", params={"handle": "natgeo"}, headers=H).json()["data"]["items"]
plays = [r["plays"] for r in reels if r["plays"]]
print(p["followers"], statistics.median(plays), statistics.median(plays) / p["followers"])

Doing it with ScrapeIO

Use the instagram profile API for daily follower snapshots and the instagram user posts API for every post type with plays, likes and comments. Two calls per account per day is about 60 credits a month, and the same code works on TikTok and YouTube because the field names match.

Sources

Checked on 8 November 2026 from each vendor's own pages. Prices and limits change; follow the links before you decide.

100 free credits, no card. Credits never expire.

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