Questions and answers

What the numbers on a card mean

These define the figures on your dashboard, the comparison, the report and the exports. Every page links back here from its footer.

Median est. engagement

(likes + comments + reposts) / followers, as a median across the posts in this time frame. An estimate: Instagram does not release reach for accounts you do not own, so followers stands in for audience size. A median rather than a mean so one viral or boosted post cannot drag it.

Interactions per post

The same median counted rather than divided, so it is the part that is not an estimate. Likes, comments and reposts only, not Instagram's own interaction total, which adds saves and shares and exists only for your own posts.

Avg reposts

Mean reposts per post over this time frame. Redistribution rather than in-feed reaction, and it moves independently of likes.

Reel views

Public plays, video only, so photos read n/a. A cross-surface total that may include paid or cross-posted views, so it is not reach and is not the same measure as Views on your own account.

(N all surfaces)

Shown beside a like or comment count when the post also ran somewhere other than Instagram, such as Facebook or a boosted placement. The engagement rate uses the Instagram figure, because its denominator is Instagram followers.

0.5x typical

How this reel's views compare with a typical reel from the same account over the same time frame.

n/a

Instagram did not return that figure for that post. It is not a zero.

Why is engagement called an estimate?

Because the denominator is a stand-in. A real engagement rate divides interactions by the number of people who saw the post, and Instagram only releases that (reach) for posts on your own account. For any account you do not own, Socialens divides by followers instead, which is the closest public figure there is.

Followers and reach are not the same thing, and the gap between them differs per account, so the rate is comparable between posts on one account and should be read carefully between accounts. The interaction count beside it is the same median counted rather than divided, so that part is not an estimate at all.

Why can't I see reach, impressions, saves or shares for a competitor?

Those come from the Instagram Insights API, which only answers for media on the account that authorised the connection. Asking for them on someone else's post returns a permission error, not a number.

Socialens will not fill that gap with a guess. An invented reach figure would look exactly like a real one, and a column that cannot be filled honestly is left out rather than estimated. Your own posts do carry reach, saves, shares and views, from Insights, on Your account.

Why a median, not an average?

Because paid delivery is invisible on an account you do not own. Instagram does not mark which posts were boosted, so a promoted post cannot be excluded from the sample. One boosted post is enough to pull a mean well above anything the account achieves organically.

A median survives that: it describes the typical post rather than the total, so an outlier moves it very little. That is also why reel views are shown against what is typical for the same account, rather than as a raw ranking.

Why don't hashtag results say who posted?

Instagram's hashtag search does not return the author. It returns the post, its caption and its like and comment counts, and no username on any of them. This is a limit of the API rather than a setting, so no filter or upgrade can add it.

That is why hashtag search and the per-account hashtag view are separate features answering different questions. Hashtag search samples the whole platform and cannot be narrowed to one account. Opening a tag from an account's card on the dashboard reads that account's own cached captions instead, so it says how that one account uses the tag, and it costs nothing.

Why only 30 hashtag searches every 7 days?

That is Instagram's cap, not ours. The platform allows 30 unique hashtags per connected account per rolling 7-day window, counted by Instagram rather than by Socialens.

Because the budget is small, nothing spends it by accident. Opening a hashtag page you have not searched shows what the search would cost and waits for you to ask. A tag already inside the window is free to reopen until it ages out, and the hashtag chips on account cards never spend a slot, because they read captions already fetched.

Why does a time frame sometimes cover fewer posts than I picked?

Instagram returns an account's posts newest first, and Socialens pages back a limited distance, up to about 200 posts per account. For an account that posts often, that can stop short of the start of a long window.

When it does, the card says so: every surface states the real coverage, the post count and the first and last post date behind the numbers, rather than letting the window label imply data that was never returned.

Which accounts can I track?

Public Instagram Business or Creator accounts. Personal and private accounts are not available through the API at all, so they cannot be researched even if you can see them while logged in to Instagram.

Your own account has the same requirement before it can be connected. See what you need to connect.

Why do I sign in with Facebook instead of a password?

Because you already need a Facebook account to connect an Instagram professional account, so a separate password would only be one more thing to lose. Socialens has no passwords to set, reset or leak.

If you lose access to the Facebook account you signed up with, support can move your workspace to a different one. There is no self-serve path for that, because moving an account to a new identity is exactly what an attacker would want to do.

Why does a figure read n/a instead of 0?

Because they mean different things. A zero says Instagram reported none. An n/a says Instagram returned no figure at all for that post, which happens routinely: a photo has no view count, and some fields are missing on older posts. Showing 0 in that case would report an absence as a measurement.

How do I cancel?

Through Lemon Squeezy, who handle the billing. Socialens never cancels a subscription itself, so the billing portal link on your dashboard, or the receipt email from your purchase, is the way to do it.

Deleting your workspace inside Socialens removes your data here, which is a separate thing from stopping the payment. See data deletion.