What is the most followed account on Instagram?
As of 2026-08-15, the most followed account on Instagram is Instagram, with 686 million followers, ranked live across 22 of the platform's largest public accounts via the SocialCrawl API. This ranking counts every account, including Instagram's own, so the biggest account other than @instagram is listed separately: Cristiano Ronaldo, on 679 million followers.
Last updated August 15, 2026
The numbers, right now
Last updated August 15, 2026
Most followed account
685,943,527
Followers
Cristiano Ronaldo
Top account excluding @instagram
22
Accounts ranked
Live top 10
| Rank | Name | Followers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 685,943,527 | |
| 2 | Cristiano Ronaldo | 679,430,158 |
| 3 | Leo Messi | 516,255,391 |
| 4 | Selena Gomez | 404,079,567 |
| 5 | Dwayne Johnson | 382,047,594 |
| 6 | Kylie | 381,385,289 |
| 7 | Ariana Grande | 363,152,344 |
| 8 | Kim Kardashian | 344,341,034 |
| 9 | Beyoncé | 299,552,829 |
| 10 | Khloé Kardashian | 292,086,797 |
How we compute this
SocialCrawl reads the public follower count for a curated basket of the largest public Instagram accounts via the API endpoint /v1/instagram/profile, then ranks them by follower count. 22 accounts were ranked on 2026-08-15. Unlike the most-followed person page, this ranking includes brand, club and platform accounts, so Instagram's own @instagram account competes in it. The basket is a curated set of accounts already known to be among the largest, not an exhaustive scan of every account on Instagram, so it answers which of these is biggest rather than surveying the whole platform. The API returns no category, business-account or account-type field, so no account here is classified as a person or a brand; the only account singled out is @instagram, because it is the platform's own. Follower counts are read live, never estimated.
- Source endpoints
- /v1/instagram/profile
- Sample size
- 22
- Computed
- 2026-08-15
Run this yourself
One API call returns the same live feed we sampled. Drop in your key and go.
curl "https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/instagram/profile?handle=instagram" \
-H "x-api-key: sc_your_api_key_here"Have a question? We got answers
Find answers to frequently asked questions about SocialCrawl's API, pricing, and capabilities.
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