If you have ever tried to grow an account by following people, liking posts and dropping a few comments, then hit a wall out of nowhere, you have run into Instagram’s invisible limits.

The numbers you find online say things like “60 follows per hour” or “7,500 max total”. Then you follow 45 people, like a handful of posts, and get action blocked anyway.

The short answer. Around 150 follow and unfollow actions per day is the ceiling most accounts can sit under safely, and the total number of accounts you can follow at once is capped at 7,500.

The pacing guidance has tightened a lot. Metricool’s Instagram limits reference, last updated 21 January 2026, now recommends spacing follows at roughly 10 per hour, which is a fraction of the 60 per hour figure still repeated across most of the internet.

That gap between the old advice and the current advice is why people keep getting blocked while technically staying “under the limit”. Below are the working numbers for follows, likes, comments and messages, how long each type of block tends to last, and the behaviours that trigger a block even when your counts are fine.

How Many Accounts Can You Follow on Instagram Per Day?

Roughly 150 follow and unfollow actions in 24 hours, combined. Instagram has never published official numbers, so every figure below comes from tracked action blocks and from tools that monitor them at scale rather than from Meta.

• Per day: about 150 follow and unfollow actions combined, across the whole 24 hours
• Per hour: about 10, per Metricool’s January 2026 limits reference. Older guides still say 20 to 60, and that number is where most action blocks come from
• Total following cap: 7,500 accounts at any one time, which is a hard ceiling rather than a rate limit

The per hour figure is the one that changed, and it is the one that matters. Following 60 accounts in an hour was survivable a couple of years ago and now reads as automation to a system that has got considerably more sensitive to burst behaviour.

New accounts get less room than that. An account under a few weeks old should treat every number here as a ceiling to stay well below rather than a target to hit.

None of this is the fast route to a big account, and it is not meant to be. If you are working towards a serious follower target, the path to 100k followers on Instagram runs through content that gets shared, not through following more people per hour.

Why You Get Blocked Even When You Are Under the Limit

Because Instagram scores the shape of your activity, not just the total. Following 40 accounts every hour on the hour keeps you under any daily cap and still looks exactly like a script running on a timer.

Here is what actually drives the decision:

• Patterns, not just counts. Evenly spaced, identical batches of actions are the clearest automation signal there is.
• Account history. If you have tripped a spam filter before or used a third party growth tool at any point, your personal limits sit lower than the published community numbers.
• Account age. Older accounts with a clean record get meaningfully more leeway. New ones get throttled fast.
• Stacked actions. Follows plus likes plus comments plus DMs inside the same short window compound the risk, even when each individual count is comfortable.
• Location and IP shifts. Logging in from a new country, or from several at once, can trigger restrictions on its own as a security precaution.

Timing carries more weight here than volume does. Spread the same 150 actions across a full day, at uneven intervals, and the risk drops sharply without you doing any less.

What Are the Limits for Likes, Comments and DMs?

About 1,000 likes a day for an established account, with no officially published comment limit. These are the same category of community sourced figures as the follow numbers, so treat them as safe ceilings rather than precise thresholds.

• Likes: up to around 1,000 per day on an established account. New accounts should stay near 20 per hour
• Comments: no published cap, but repetitive or copy pasted comments get filtered fast regardless of volume
• Direct messages: new accounts typically start with 20 to 50 per day
• Stories: up to 100 per day

With comments, quality matters far more than quantity. Repeating the same phrase across dozens of posts reads as spam whatever your intent was, and dropping the same link into multiple comments is one of the fastest routes to a block.

How Long Does an Instagram Follow Block Last?

Most first time action blocks clear within 24 to 48 hours. There is no countdown timer anywhere in the app, and the duration scales with how often you have been flagged before.

Type of Block	Typical Duration
Soft block (temporary delay)	A few minutes to 1 hour
First action block	24 to 48 hours
Repeat action block	3 to 7 days
Serious abuse block	7 to 14 days or longer
Shadowban (reach drop)	1 to 3 weeks, sometimes indefinite

These durations come from what creators consistently report rather than from anything Instagram documents. If you have been flagged more than once, the system treats the account as risky and every subsequent action gets watched more closely.

Two things worth knowing while you wait. Tapping “Report a problem” to appeal usually does not shorten a standard action block, and continuing to try the blocked action can extend it.

The reliable fix is boring: stop all follow, unfollow, like and comment activity for a full 48 hours and let the flag age out. Keep posting normally in the meantime, because posting is not what got you blocked.

The 7,500 Following Cap

Instagram caps every account at 7,500 accounts followed at one time, and there is no way to raise it. Once you hit it you get an error on every new follow attempt until you unfollow someone else.

This one catches people out because it is a hard cap rather than a cooldown. It does not reset overnight and it does not scale with follower count or verification.

Worth separating two numbers that get mixed up constantly. The 7,500 limit is on how many accounts you follow. There is no limit on how many accounts can follow you, which is why you will see profiles with tens of thousands of followers and never see one following more than 7,500.

If you are anywhere near the cap, slow the follow strategy right down and clean up inactive accounts gradually. Mass unfollowing in short bursts is one of the most reliable ways to earn a block on top of the cap you are already stuck against.

I use Systeme IO to track outreach and segment lists, which makes it easier to see which accounts are worth keeping when I am pruning a bloated following list.

How to Grow Without Getting Flagged

Make the activity look like a person using a phone rather than a process running on a schedule. Everything below is a version of that.

• Vary your activity. Do not follow, like and comment in the same five minute burst
• Avoid clean patterns. Exactly 10 follows every hour is as suspicious as 60, because the regularity is the tell
• Leave gaps. Follow a handful, put the phone down, come back later
• Unfollow slowly. 30 to 50 a day is far safer than several hundred in one sitting
• Engage with things you actually care about. Random engagement across unrelated accounts is easy to spot
• Never copy paste comments, emojis or links across posts
• Keep logins consistent. Frequent device or location changes lower your trust score

The more ordinary your behaviour looks, the more room you get, even close to the upper limits. Accounts that grow unusually fast from a standing start attract scrutiny that steady accounts never see.

I also use Flick to pace content and keep hashtag sets organised, which makes it easier to grow without constantly tripping Instagram’s filters.

Other Triggers That Get Accounts Blocked

Several behaviours trip Instagram’s moderation regardless of how careful your numbers are. None of these involve exceeding a published limit.

• Using third party apps or bots, including ones marketed as “safe”
• Frequent logins from different IPs, devices or countries
• Linking to flagged or low quality sites in your bio
• Being reported multiple times, even over trivial things
• Editing your bio or username repeatedly in a short window
• Sending large volumes of DMs to people who do not follow you
• Logging in through banned VPN servers
• Copy pasting identical captions, tags or hashtags across posts

Instagram tracks how you act as closely as what you do. Anything that looks automated, rushed or unnatural raises your risk score even when every individual number is inside the safe range.

It is also worth checking whether a block is what you are actually dealing with. A sudden drop in engagement often has nothing to do with limits, and the debate about whether organic reach on Instagram is dying covers the more common explanation.

What to Take Away

The working numbers are roughly 150 follow actions a day, about 10 an hour, 1,000 likes a day and a hard ceiling of 7,500 accounts followed. Treat all of them as guidelines that flex with your account’s age and history.

If you have been following the old “60 per hour” advice and getting blocked, that is the whole explanation. The safe pace dropped and the advice circulating online mostly did not update with it.

Pace yourself, avoid repetition, keep the logins stable, and watch how your own account responds over a few weeks. The community numbers are a starting point, and your real ceiling is whatever Instagram has decided your account has earned.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many people can you follow on Instagram per day?

Around 150 follow and unfollow actions combined across 24 hours is the ceiling most accounts stay safe under. Newer accounts and accounts with a history of spam flags get less room than that.

How many people can you follow on Instagram per hour?

Roughly 10, based on Metricool’s January 2026 guidance. The widely repeated figure of 20 to 60 per hour reflects older behaviour and is a common cause of action blocks today.

How long does an Instagram follow limit last?

A first action block usually clears in 24 to 48 hours. Repeat blocks run 3 to 7 days, and accounts flagged repeatedly can sit restricted for a week or two.

Can you follow more than 7,500 people on Instagram?

No. The 7,500 cap applies to every account with no exceptions and no way to request an increase, so the only way to follow someone new once you are capped is to unfollow someone else.

If the limit is 7,500, why do I see accounts with far more than that?

Because that number is followers, not following. There is no cap on how many accounts can follow you, so a profile showing 26,000 is showing its follower count while its following count still sits at or below 7,500.

How many accounts can you unfollow per day on Instagram?

Unfollows draw from the same daily pool as follows, so about 150 combined. Bulk unfollowing in short bursts is one of the most reliable ways to trigger a block, so 30 to 50 a day is the safer pace when cleaning up.

Does appealing an action block make it end sooner?

Usually not. Standard action blocks run their course on a timer, and repeatedly retrying the blocked action can extend it rather than clear it.