How to See Who Unfollowed You on Instagram

Check one person: search your Followers list

This is the fastest route when you have a specific account in mind. In the app:

• Tap your profile picture in the bottom right.
• Tap the number above Followers.
• Tap the Search bar at the top and type their exact username, not their display name.
• If they show up, they still follow you. If nothing comes up, they're not in your followers right now.

Check from a computer or from their profile

On a computer it works the same way: go to instagram.com, click your profile picture on the left, click Followers at the top and search the username.

You can also check from their side. Open their profile, tap Following and search your own username. If you're missing from a public account's Following list, they've unfollowed you or never followed you in the first place.

That last part matters. Someone missing from your Followers only counts as an unfollow if you know they followed you before. An account in your Following list that never followed you back is a different thing, and comparing Followers against Following only finds those non-followers, not the people who left.

How to see who unfollowed you on Instagram with two exports

To catch every account that left, you need two copies of your follower list from different dates. Instagram's official export gives you that list for free. Here are the steps in Accounts Center, which you reach in the app through your profile menu or on the web through More, then Settings:

• Open Accounts Center, then Your information and permissions, then Export your information.
• Tap Create export, pick your Instagram profile and tap Next.
• Choose Export to device.
• Under Customize information, untick everything except Followers and following.
• Set Date range to All time and Format to JSON (or HTML if you'd rather read it in a browser), then tap Start export.
• When the email arrives, go back to Export your information and download the file from Available downloads. You have four days before the link expires.
• Unzip it and open connections, then followers_and_following. Your followers sit in followers_1.json (or followers_1.html), with followers_2 and onward for bigger accounts.

Save a baseline before you need it

Rename the file with today's date and keep it. Then run the same export again in a week or a month. Instagram says an export link can take up to 30 days to arrive, so request it a little before you need it.

One honest limit: the first export is only a baseline. It can't tell you who left before you made it, because Instagram doesn't keep a record of who unfollowed you. While you're in that folder, you'll also see recently_unfollowed_profiles.json, which lists accounts you unfollowed, not accounts that unfollowed you.

Compare the two lists in a spreadsheet

The HTML version is the easiest to copy. Open each followers file in your browser, select all the usernames and paste them into Google Sheets or Excel: the older list in column A, the newer list in column B. In C2, enter =COUNTIF(B:B,A2)=0 and drag it down. Every TRUE is an account that was on your old list and isn't on the new one.

Here's a tiny example with four followers on September 1 and four on October 1:

• jon_runs is the only TRUE, so that's the account to look into.
• Flip it to find new followers: in D2, enter =COUNTIF(A:A,B2)=0. Here new.follower comes back TRUE.
• Prefer not to use formulas? Paste both lists into an AI chatbot and ask for usernames that appear in the first list but not the second. Share only the usernames, never the full export.

What a missing username can mean

A TRUE in column C tells you the name is gone, not why. Before you read anything into it, check which of these fits:

• Renames are the most common false alarm in a spreadsheet: one old name turns TRUE and a new one appears in column D, but it's the same person. Click both to compare.
• Instagram may flag followers as spam, bots or irrelevant. Once flagged followers are removed, they also leave your follower count and follower list, so a sudden drop of several accounts after a cleanup is normal.

Track the count, then outpace normal churn

Almost every account loses some followers each month, even ones that are growing fast. The number to watch is net growth: new followers minus the ones who left. Our free Instagram follower count tool shows your current follower, following and post counts with the time they were read, so you can log the total on the same day as each export and see the trend between snapshots.

If you'd like a fuller read on your account, the free profile scan measures your engagement rate against accounts your size, your posting rhythm and your recurring hashtags, and shows what worked and what didn't in your recent posts. When you want more of the right people to find your profile, our Instagram growth plans promote your public profile to a targeted audience every day. How it works walks through targeting, pacing and the daily numbers you see in your dashboard, and we never ask for your password.

As for third-party unfollower apps, any that ask for your Instagram login put your account at risk, while the export method above gives you the same answer for free.