How Instagram Followers are Ordered: Everything You Need to Know

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Are the people at the top the ones who view your profile most?

Written by Candace Gasper | Edited by Nicole Levine, MFA

Last Updated: September 25, 2025 Fact Checked

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Instagram Follower Order

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Sorting Your Followers

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FAQ

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Tips

Are you wondering what the order of your Instagram followers or someone else's followers means? While Instagram keeps its algorithm a guarded secret, there are a few clues that indicate why certain people show up at the top of the list. In this article, we dive into the order of followers on Instagram.

Instagram Follower Order Demystified

Instagram sorts your followers based on how often you interact with one another, your location, mutual followers, and how active they are on the platform. If you're looking at someone else's follower list, accounts you both follow appear higher than others.

Section 1 of 3:

How Followers Are Ordered on Instagram

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Instagram does not display followers in alphabetical or chronological order. According to Instagram, there is no one algorithm that impacts how content is ranked on the app, and many factors are considered when it comes to displaying various content in the app. While Instagram doesn't straightforwardly say this, the same factors that determine the order in which posts and reels are shown in your feed (and, likely, your Instagram story order) seem to determine the order of your follower list:^{[1]
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Research source}
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Interactions How often you like, comment, DM, or otherwise engage with each other on the app affects the order of followers on Instagram.
- What it means for your own follower list: Some of the people at the top of your follower list are people you interact with more than others. However, because this isn't the only factor, there will be people you don't interact with a lot near the top of your list.
- What it means for someone else's follower list: The people you interact with often may also show up near the top of someone else's follower list if they follow both of you. This doesn't mean they interact with each other more than others.
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Mutual followers Instagram also takes into account the number of people you have in common.
- What it means for your own follower list: If you have a lot of mutual friends with someone, they may appear higher on your follower list than others. However, other factors may push them down the list.
- What it means for someone else's follower list: If you're looking at someone else's followers, you'll see your mutual friends/followers at the top of their list, even if they don't interact with each other often.
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Activity on Instagram If a person on your following list posts a lot of photos, reels, and/or stories, and also frequently interacts with others on the app, they may show up higher on the follower list than others.
- What it means for your own follower list: Even if you don't interact with someone or look at their posts, they may appear higher up in your follower list just because they're active on the app.
- What it means for someone else's follower list: People who are more active on Instagram in general may appear higher on another person's follower list than others. You will also tend to see verified accounts and users with lots of followers higher up on other people's follower lists.
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Location Instagram also factors in distance based on the user's listed city, location tags, and the Instagram Map.
- What it means for your own follower list: People who live near you may show up higher on the list than people who don't, even if you don't interact often on the app.
- What it means for someone else's follower list: In our testing, we found that people who live near us also show up higher on other people's follower lists, not necessarily people who live near them.
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Recent follows While not publicly documented anywhere, our testing found that Instagram tends to display our own follower list with some of the more recent followers at the top.
- What it means for your own follower list: If someone followed you recently, they'll often show up at the top of your follower list even if you don't interact much.
- What it means for someone else's follower list: Not much, actually. Another person's follower list doesn't display to you the same way they see it, so you can't determine how long ago they followed each other by checking their follower list.

Section 2 of 3:

Sorting Your Followers

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While you can't change the order of your follower list, you can sort the list of people you follow chronologically. The same factors that determine how your follower list is sorted also affect your following list (the people you follow). Unlike the list of people who follow you, you can sort your own following list in order (latest to earliest, or vice-versa). This will only be visible to you; there's no way to view someone else's following list or follower list chronologically.^{[2]
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Research source}
- Open the Instagram app.
- Tap the profile icon at the bottom-right.
- Tap the number of people you follow (above "following").
- Tap Sort by Default to bring up the menu.
- Choose either Date followed: latest or Date followed: earliest.

Section 3 of 3:

FAQ

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How can you see who someone most recently followed on Instagram? Unfortunately, you can't. Instagram doesn't sort other people's following lists, or follower lists, chronologically for you. You can view your own following list (people you follow) in order, but not other people's.
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How can I tell who someone interacts with most on Instagram? This isn't information you'll find in their follower list. The only surefire way is to use context clues. Check their likes and comments to see who they're talking to, and visit the profiles of people you think they're chatting with often to see if your suspicions are confirmed.
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What does it mean if someone is at the top of your follower list? If someone's at the top, it doesn't mean they look at your profile more than other people. Follower order is determined by how often you interact with each other, how many people you have in common, location, how recently you followed one another, and how active and popular that person is on Instagram.
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Can you tell if someone is looking at your Instagram a lot? The best way to find out if someone's stalking your Instagram is to post stories and check the viewers. If someone looks at all your stories (and is often the first to look at them), they're visiting your profile a lot.

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Tips

When you view your own Following list (people you have followed), you will also see categories like "Least interacted with," "Most shown in feed," and "Creators and businesses." Instagram uses data from the past 90 days to generate these categories.^{[3]
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Research source} Based on that knowledge, we can probably assume our following and follower lists are also ordered based on the past 90 days' worth of data.

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