Where the edge is. Instagram’s limits in 2022

Let's be honest: Any social network with its own advertising cabinet for paid promotion won't be delighted if you've installed a bot to speed up promotion. But a large percentage of Instagram accounts are registered with a very specific goal, which is to get more traffic at minimal cost or even for free.

The social network works brilliantly as a business platform. Over the last couple of years, the number of users has grown by more than 300 times, and 60% of them scroll through the feed every day. Comparing to FB, Instagram images get 23% and videos get 38% more attention. The engagement rate for the average post is 1.2% (only 0.3% for FB). Considering such rates, it's quite easy for business owners and traffic arbitrage specialists to find clients for nail salons, nutritional supplements, courses of personal growth or even a CNC machine rent. If these people find an opportunity to do everything without Instagram's expensive and, frankly speaking, not the most intuitively understandable advertising mechanism, they won't miss the opportunity.

On the other hand, if Instagram starts blocking every suspicious user, it will lose half of its audience. That's why there is quite a lot of space to move. You can use masslooking, masscommenting and similar ways of promotion, paying only for special software, if you comply with certain limits. Instagram allows such activity up to a certain number of actions, but if you cross the line, the account will be blocked. We've put together compromised limits within which mischiefs are allowed to traffic searchers.

Following and unfollowing

It is important to remember that these actions are summed up. There is a limit of 4000 actions. They can be both 4K followings and 3K followings + 1K unfollowings. Plan your unfollowings in advance, but no more than 100 a day. Try to keep the number of accounts you follow different from month to month. Repeated pattern of account behavior looks suspicious to blocking algorithms.

If the account is younger than 1 week:

• No more than 2,000 followings a month;
• No more than 40 followings per hour (up to 100 a day).

If the account is younger than 6 months:

• No more than 4,000 followings a month;
• No more than 60 followings per hour (up to 500 a day).

If the account is older than 6 months:

• No more than 6,000 followings a month;
• No more than 60 followings per hour (up to 800 a day).

Likes

In this case, as it is with followings, both likes and dislikes count. So kinda "Likes, get ready, we're leaving" demarche will cost you money.

If the account is under 1 week old:

• No more than 300 likes a day;
• No more than 25 likes per hour.

If the account is younger than 6 months:

• No more than 600 likes a day;
• No more than 50 likes per hour.

If the account is older than 6 months:

• No more than 900 likes a day;
• No more than 50 per hour.

Commentaries

If the account is younger than 1 week:

• No more than 150 comments a day;
• No more than 30 per hour.

If the account is younger than 6 months:

• No more than 200 comments a day;
• No more than 40 per hour.

If the account is older than 6 months:

• No more than 250-300 comments a day;
• No more than 50 per hour.

No more than 50 per hour.

This remains the most frequent reason for blocking accounts, as it irritates other users more than anything else. Be careful. Don't use this tool when logging in important accounts. Instead, you can register a multi-account specifically for promotional purposes. Even if most of them get banned, you won't lose access to important chats or photos.

Use inexpensive and reliable virtual numbers from SMS-Activate to register as many accounts as you wish.

Even if you don't exceed the limits, your account can be blocked if the messages are repeating each other. Try to change the text of messages so that algorithms don't recognize them as spam.

If the account is younger than 1 week:

• No more than 20 messages a day.

If the account is younger than 6 months:

• No more than 40 messages a day.

If the account is older than 6 months:

• No more than 50 messages a day.

How to reduce the risk of being blocked

1. Follow the timeout

   Regardless of the account age, the pause between actions must be longer than a certain amount of time:

   • 35 seconds between likes;
   • 7 minutes between comments;
   • 1 minute between followings;
   • 8-10 minutes between direct messaging.
2. Create content

Instagram has almost no limits on posts, reels and stories. Yes, you can catch a ban for posting more than 150 pieces of content a day. But if you're able to generate that much quality content, you're already making millions as an SMM specialist for some international company. That is, in fact, this limit does not exist. This means that you can attract the attention of your target audience not only with intriguing likes from a stranger, but also with an interesting (useful, beautiful, funny - underline the necessary option) account.

Yes, this process requires time, imagination and effort. Even posting some fresh memes is a lot of labor. But you get a chance to build a really loyal audience, which is more likely to respond positively to your promotional posts. You can add up to 30 hashtags to each post, which will further increase your engagement. You don't have to possess an army of bots and walk on thin ice of constant risk of being banned.

If you deal with traffic from Instagram a lot, you need to constantly follow the news. Telegram thematic and news channels about SMM are good for this. Limits change regularly, and it's better not to come close to the prohibited figures.

But here's universal advice that will definitely remain relevant. In order to create new accounts for any purpose, use SMS-Activate service. It offers virtual numbers for account registration at a low price. You can choose the country of the number to hide your geolocation if you want. Such accounts will allow you to launch newsletters or other mass actions, quickly promote your account or simply communicate anonymously on Instagram.