Instagram competitor analysis: a method and the tools for it

November 8, 2026

Competitor analysis on Instagram is not about copying. It is about learning, from public data, which formats, topics and cadence work in your category, so you can spend your own effort where it pays off. Here is a method you can run in an afternoon.

Step 1: pick the right set

Choose 5 to 8 accounts in three groups:

• Direct rivals: sell what you sell, to the same people.
• Aspirational: one or two leaders a size or two above you.
• Peers by size: similar follower counts, so the numbers compare fairly.

Instagram's own suggestions help here. The accounts it shows as similar to a rival are often the rest of your category; see our similar accounts guide.

Step 2: collect the same window for everyone

For each account, pull the profile and the last 30 posts or 90 days, whichever is shorter. Record the date you pulled. Public counts keep moving, and a post from yesterday has not finished growing, so exclude posts younger than 3 days from averages.

Step 3: compare on a scorecard

Medians matter. One viral reel can triple an average. In our 10-brand benchmark the top decile and the median told very different stories.

Step 4: read the winners

Sort each rival's posts by reach multiple and open the top five and bottom five. For each, note:

• Format and length.
• The topic in one line.
• The first line of the caption and the first spoken sentence. Transcripts make this fast; see reel hooks.
• Whether a creator, an employee or the brand voice is on camera.

Patterns show up quickly: one rival's founder videos outperform everything, another's product photos sink.

Step 5: read the comments

Pull comments on each rival's top three posts. Look for repeated questions, complaints about the product, and requests. A question that keeps coming up under a rival's post, and that nobody answers, is content you can make. Our comments guide has a method.

Step 6: write down three bets

End with three specific things to try for a month, for example "two founder reels a week" or "answer the shipping question in a reel". Then rerun the scorecard on yourself.

Tools that track competitors for you

If you want this on a dashboard instead of a spreadsheet, several apps include competitor tracking. Metricool's free plan covers 5 competitor profiles and paid plans up to 100 source. Later includes competitor benchmarking on its Scale plan for up to 20 competitors source. Hootsuite benchmarks 5 competitors on Standard and up to 20 on Professional source. Iconosquare lists 5 competitors per profile source.

These apps are the better choice if your team wants charts with no code. An API is the better choice when you need your own metrics, many accounts, or the same analysis across TikTok and YouTube too.

A quick script for the scorecard

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

for handle in ["brand_a", "brand_b", "brand_c"]:
    prof = requests.get(f"{API}/v1/instagram/profile", params={"handle": handle}, headers=H).json()["data"]
    reels = requests.get(f"{API}/v1/instagram/user/reels", params={"handle": handle}, headers=H).json()["data"]["items"]
    plays = [r["plays"] for r in reels if r["plays"]]
    med = statistics.median(plays) if plays else 0
    hits = sum(1 for x in plays if x > 2 * med)
    print(handle, prof["followers"], med, round(med / prof["followers"], 2), hits)

Doing it with ScrapeIO

The scorecard needs the instagram profile API and the instagram user reels API, about two credits per rival per run. Add the instagram comments API for step 5. With an AI agent, the competitor-social-audit skill runs the whole method across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.

Sources

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

• https://metricool.com/pricing/
• https://later.com/pricing/
• https://www.hootsuite.com/plans
• https://www.iconosquare.com/plans-and-pricing