Engagement rate: how to work it out, and what’s normal

Engagement rate is meant to answer a simple question: of the people a creator reaches, how many care enough to react? It’s the first filter in every influencer database, the first line of every media kit and the number most brands use to sort a shortlist.

It’s also the least standard number in influencer marketing. Ask three tools for the same creator’s engagement rate and you’ll get three answers, sometimes several points apart. None of them is wrong. They’re measuring different things, and you need to know which before you compare creators or quote a benchmark.

The formulas people use

Every version has the same shape: interactions on top, an audience number underneath, times 100. What goes in each half is where they differ.

By followers

(likes + comments) ÷ followers × 100, per post or across recent posts. This is the classic formula, and the only one you can work out from a public profile without any tools. It’s also the one most benchmarks use, which is why it hasn’t gone away. Its weakness: followers aren’t the audience any more. On TikTok and Reels, most views come from people who don’t follow the creator, so dividing by followers can make a creator look far better or worse than they are.

By reach

interactions ÷ accounts reached × 100. The most honest version, because it only counts people who actually saw the post. The catch is that reach is private: only the creator can see it, in their own insights. You’ll get it from a creator’s screenshots or a platform that creators connect their accounts to, never from a public profile.

By views or impressions

interactions ÷ views × 100. The standard for TikTok and YouTube, and increasingly for Instagram Reels. Views are public on video, so tools can calculate it for anyone. Views measure plays, not unique people, and each platform counts them its own way. Impressions, the older equivalent for static posts, are only visible to the account owner.

Per post, averaged or median

You can work out engagement rate for a single post, or across a creator’s recent posts. Across posts there are two choices. The average adds up all the interactions and divides; one viral post drags it up for months. The median takes the middle post, which tells you what a typical post does. If you’re paying for one post, the median is what you should expect.

What counts as an interaction

Likes and comments, almost always. Shares and saves, sometimes: TikTok shows them on every video, but on Instagram, as HypeAuditor points out, they’re only fully visible to the account owner. Modash’s Instagram figure counts likes alone. Before you compare two figures, check whether both count the same interactions.

A worked example

Here’s one made-up creator with 40,000 followers and six recent Reels, one of which took off. Same data, four formulas:

from statistics import median

followers = 40_000
likes    = [820, 1_050, 640, 4_900, 910, 760]   # last six posts
comments = [30, 45, 22, 310, 38, 25]
views    = [12_000, 15_500, 9_800, 88_000, 14_200, 11_000]

interactions = [l + c for l, c in zip(likes, comments)]

by_followers_mean   = sum(interactions) / len(interactions) / followers  # 3.98%
by_followers_median = median(interactions) / followers                   # 2.25%
median_likes_only   = median(likes) / followers                          # 2.16%
by_views            = sum(interactions) / sum(views)                     # 6.35%

That’s 2.16% to 6.35% for the same six posts. The average by followers is nearly double the median because of the one viral post. The views-based figure is higher again, because the six Reels averaged about 25,000 views, fewer than the creator has followers, and dividing by a smaller number gives a bigger rate.

None of these is the “real” engagement rate. The median is what we’d use to price a post; the views figure is what we’d use to compare this creator against TikTok or YouTube creators; the average is what you’ll find in a lot of media kits.

Why the tools disagree

Beyond the choice of formula, a few things make published engagement rates hard to compare.

• Hidden likes. Since 2021, Instagram has let anyone hide like counts on their posts. When a creator does, tools can’t see the main input. Modash says plainly that it can’t calculate an accurate rate for creators who hide likes.
• Different formulas for each platform. Modash uses median likes ÷ followers on Instagram, median likes, comments, shares and saves ÷ views on TikTok, and median likes and comments ÷ views on YouTube. HypeAuditor works out Instagram engagement as likes and comments ÷ views across a creator’s latest 30 posts, falling back to followers when there aren’t enough recent Reels. Neither is wrong, but a 2% from one isn’t a 2% from the other.
• Different windows. HypeAuditor looks at a creator’s latest 30 posts; Modash at roughly the last two to three months of content. A creator who posted a viral video six weeks ago can look very different from one tool to the next.
• Stale data. Databases calculate engagement from their own copy of a creator’s posts. Modash says its recent posts and engagement refresh about twice a month. Most vendors don’t publish a cadence.
• Creators and brands aren’t the same. Benchmarks built from brand accounts run far lower than those built from creators. Don’t judge a creator against a brand benchmark, or the other way round.

What’s normal, by follower count

Broadly, the more followers a creator has, the lower their engagement rate. Beyond that, the numbers depend on who’s counting. Here are the published benchmarks we’d use, with what each one measures.

Modash: Instagram creators by size

Modash publishes the clearest table we’ve found, on its engagement rate calculator page. Modash says it’s built from 84M+ profiles in its database, and the page works out engagement as median likes divided by followers. Modash doesn’t date the data; this is the table as published when we checked in October 2026.

Two things stand out. The drop between small and mid-sized creators is steep: a creator with 3,000 followers needs about six times the rate of one with 30,000 to count as average. And the very largest accounts edge back up slightly, so the curve isn’t a straight line. Because the table counts likes only, these numbers run lower than figures that add comments.

HypeAuditor: the Instagram average

HypeAuditor’s State of Influencer Marketing 2025 report puts the average Instagram engagement rate in 2024 at 1.59%, down from 1.85% in 2023. It’s one figure across all creator sizes, so it tells you the direction of travel more than what to expect from a particular creator. HypeAuditor also benchmarks each creator against others of the same size in its reports, using 150 follower-count tiers on TikTok, rather than publishing one table.

Rival IQ: brand accounts, for contrast

Rival IQ’s 2025 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report studies 2,100 companies across 14 industries, dividing all interactions by followers. It puts the median engagement rate per post at 0.36% on Instagram and 1.73% per video on TikTok. Those are brands, not creators, and they’re far below the creator figures above. That gap is the point: a creator at 0.5% might look weak against a creator benchmark and strong against a brand one.

For TikTok and YouTube, we haven’t found a benchmark by follower count with a published method we’d be happy to quote. Engagement there is usually measured against views, which makes size matter less; compare creators against others in their niche instead.

Using engagement rate to vet creators

Engagement rate is a good first filter and a poor final answer. How we’d use it:

1. Compare within a band. Shortlist creators of a similar size on the same platform, then rank them by engagement. Comparing a 5,000-follower creator with a 500,000-follower one tells you nothing.
2. Use the median, and look at the spread. A creator whose posts all land near the median is a safer buy than one carried by a single hit.
3. Check sponsored posts separately. A creator’s paid posts can land very differently from their organic ones. Modash, for one, reports how a creator’s sponsored posts perform against their usual posts.
4. Be suspicious of outliers. A rate far above creators of the same size can be bought likes or an engagement pod. Read the comments. Our guide to spotting fake followers covers what to look for.
5. Ask for the real numbers. Before you sign, ask the creator for screenshots of reach and engagement from their own insights. Reach-based engagement is the only version a tool can’t give you.

And remember what it doesn’t measure. Engagement is attention, not sales. A creator with a modest rate and an audience that matches your customers can sell more than a creator with a high rate and the wrong audience.

Tools that work it out for you

Most influencer databases in our ranking show engagement rate, and some explain their formula in their help centre. Modash documents its method most clearly. HypeAuditor puts engagement next to its Audience Quality Score, which helps when you’re checking whether a high rate is real. Influship returns engagement rate with every profile, alongside average likes and comments, 30-day growth and posting cadence. Its semantic search takes an engagement-rate floor too, so you can describe the creator you want and rule out weak engagement in the same query.

If you only need the number for a handful of creators, the free calculators most vendors run are fine. If you’re screening hundreds, pick a database whose formula you understand and use it for everything. Our Modash vs HypeAuditor comparison goes further on the two most common choices.

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