What are profile visits on Instagram?
In short
Profile visits is the number of times people went to your profile from a post or story — the step between liking something and following you.
A profile visit is intent: somebody saw the post and wanted to know who made it. It is served for feed posts and stories. Reels do not report it — Instagram serves a different set of metrics for reels, and none of the after-the-post actions are in it.
Profile activity is its sibling: the taps on your profile's action buttons after seeing a post — call, email, directions, or the link in your bio. Where profile visits tells you people came to look, profile activity tells you they did something once they got there.
Account-wide, Instagram still serves a daily profile-views count even though Meta dropped it from its published metric list, so treat that number as one that could disappear.
Is higher better?
Higher is better
As a share of reach. It is one of the few numbers that says a post made people curious about you, not just about the post.
Where to find it
Open the post and tap View insights under it. You need a professional (Business or Creator) account. It is listed under the profile activity section of the insights.
Questions people ask
Why don't my reels show profile visits?
Instagram does not serve profile visits, profile activity or follows for reels through its insights API. They are reported for feed posts and stories only.
Related metrics
- FollowsFollows is the number of accounts that started following you from a particular post or story — the post-level answer to "what is growing my account?"
- Link tapsLink taps is the number of times people tapped a link on your Instagram profile — the closest Instagram comes to measuring traffic you sent somewhere.
- ReachReach is the number of unique accounts that saw your post, reel or story at least once — people, not views, so one person watching three times counts once.
Sources
- Meta — Instagram Media insights reference — Metric names and definitions for posts, reels and stories
- Meta — Instagram User insights reference — Account-level metrics