How to Check for Fake Followers on Instagram (and Remove Them)

Signs a follower is fake or a bot

No single sign proves an account is fake. Look for several together:

Real people can match one of these. A brand-new user often has no posts and no photo, and a private account can look empty from the outside. That's why Instagram's filter and a quick manual review work better than deleting by rule.

Why fake followers hurt your account

Fake followers don't just inflate a number. They distort how your account performs:

• They dilute engagement. Instagram's ranking is built on predicting whether people will interact with your content. Followers who never look, like, comment, share or save add nothing to those signals.
• Instagram says they affect discoverability. Its Help Center explains that removing flagged accounts stops them from affecting your discoverability and your ability to build authentic engagement with real followers.
• They skew your insights. Audience demographics, active times and follower growth become less reliable when a chunk of your audience isn't real, which leads to worse decisions about when and what to post.
• They damage trust with brands. Partners check engagement against follower counts. If you plan to work with businesses, our guide on how influencer outreach works explains what they look for.
• Bought followers can limit recommendations. Instagram's Recommendation Guidelines say it tries not to recommend accounts that repeatedly use misleading practices to build a following, such as purchasing likes.

How to check your followers using Instagram's built-in filter

Instagram now detects likely spam, bot and irrelevant accounts at scale and separates them for you. Instagram notes this may not be available to everyone yet, and the labels vary slightly between versions: you may see Flagged for review, Flagged or Potential spam.

Remove flagged followers in bulk

1. Go to your profile and tap Followers.
2. If Instagram has flagged any accounts, tap Flagged for review or Potential spam.
3. Tap Remove all (or Remove all spam followers) to clear them at once, then confirm.
4. To handle accounts one by one, tap Remove next to each.
5. If a real person was flagged by mistake, tap Options next to them and choose Not spam or irrelevant.

Removed accounts disappear from both your follower list and your follower count, and they aren't notified.

Review incoming follows from flagged accounts

Instagram says that even on a public account, follows from flagged accounts can arrive as requests you approve or deny. You'll find them in the Flagged folder in your Followers list. Requests you don't approve within 30 days are automatically declined.

Turn the filter on or off

The setting's location depends on your app version. Look under Menu > Follow and invite friends > Flag for review, or Menu > Settings and privacy > Followers > Filter spam followers. Keep it on unless it's catching real people you need to hear from.

How to remove individual fake followers manually

For accounts the filter missed:

1. Go to your profile and tap Followers.
2. Tap X (or Remove) next to the follower.
3. Tap Remove to confirm.

Instagram's Help Center describes removing followers this way on private accounts, and the flagged-accounts tools above cover public ones. If a specific spam account keeps coming back or messaging you, block it, and choose the option to also block any new accounts it creates.

Work in batches rather than removing hundreds of people in one sitting. Instagram doesn't publish action limits, and a very fast burst of removals can look automated.

Instagram's automatic removal of fake accounts

You don't have to catch everything yourself. Instagram's Help Center says non-Instagram apps sometimes create automated likes, comments and follows to make accounts look more popular, which goes against its rules, and that this activity is removed when those accounts are discovered. It also routinely removes disabled accounts.

The result: your follower count can drop noticeably in a short time without anyone choosing to unfollow you. If you've noticed a sudden dip, that's the likely cause. Our guide to finding out who unfollowed you explains how to tell cleanup apart from real unfollows.

Inauthentic behavior, spam and fake accounts are all covered by Meta's Community Standards. For a plain-English summary, see our Community Guidelines explainer.

A caution on fake follower audit tools

Many websites offer a "fake follower percentage" for any account. Before using one:

• Never enter your Instagram password. Instagram warns that apps given your login details, whether a password or an access token, can gain complete access to your account, including your private messages. Instagram also says accounts that use non-Instagram apps for inauthentic activity may be limited or disabled.
• Know the limits. Outside tools can only see public profile information. They estimate "fake" accounts from patterns like missing photos or follow ratios, not from Instagram's internal signals, so two tools can give very different scores for the same account.
• Watch for upsells. A checker that ends by offering to sell you "real followers" or engagement is selling the problem it claims to detect.
• Prefer Instagram's own data. Your flagged followers list, follower insights and engagement per post are more reliable than a third-party score.

We explain how to judge tracking tools more generally in our look at Instagram follower trackers.

How to attract fewer fake followers

• Skip engagement-bait hashtags. Tags like follow-for-follow and like-for-like attract bots and trading accounts. Our #followers and #likes pages list them under tags to avoid and suggest better options.
• Use specific tags. A local shop is better served by a niche tag than a generic one; see the sets on #smallbusiness.
• Never buy followers or engagement. Beyond the risk to your account, bought followers are the kind of fake audience that's hardest to clean up later.
• Keep the spam filter on, and clear flagged accounts every few weeks.

For a realistic benchmark of what a normal account looks like, see how many followers the average person has.