Differences between public and private accounts on Instagram
Note: If you are under 16 when you sign up for an Instagram account, you’ll have the option to choose between a public or private account, but Private is selected by default.
If you’re over 16, your Instagram account is public by default and you can choose to make your account private at any time. Learn more about how to make your account private.
Learn more about how to make your account private.
The differences between public and private accounts on Instagram:
| Public | Private | |
|---|---|---|
Who can follow you? | Anyone on Instagram | Only people you approve |
Who can see public accounts you follow and who follow you? | Anyone on Instagram | Anyone on Instagram |
Who can see private accounts you follow and private accounts that follow you? | Anyone on Instagram | Your followers |
Who can see your photos and videos on your profile or in feed? | Anyone on Instagram | Your followers |
Who can see your photos and videos in search results, Explore, and hashtag and location pages? | Anyone on Instagram | No one |
Who can see your profile information, including your profile photo, name, username and bio? | Anyone on or off Instagram | Anyone on or off Instagram |
Who can share your photos and videos with other people on Instagram and see what’s shared? | Anyone on Instagram, unless you update your settings | Your followers, unless you update your settings |
Who can download your reel? | Anyone on Instagram, unless you update your settings | No one |
Who can remix your videos? | Anyone on Instagram, unless you update your settings | No one |
Who can embed your photos and videos off Instagram? | Anyone on or off Instagram, unless you update your setting | No one |
Things to keep in mind if you have a public account and are over 16:- Anyone on Instagram can reshare and remix your videos (unless you’re under 16 and you’ve changed your settings to allow this). This may include downloading part of your original photo or video as part of the remix. You can turn this off in privacy settings.
- Anyone on Instagram can share your photos and videos, including adding your posts to their story. You can change who can share your photos and videos in privacy settings.
Things to keep in mind if you have a private account and are over 16:- Follow requests appear in Activity, where you can approve or ignore them.
- If someone was already following you before you set your posts to private and you don't want them to see your posts, you can remove them from your followers list or block them.
- Your followers can share your photos and videos in messages unless you update your settings. Only people who follow you can see what’s shared.
- Private posts you share to social networks may be visible to the public depending on your privacy settings for those networks. For example, a post you share to Twitter that was set to private on Instagram may be visible to the people who can see your Twitter posts.
Things to keep in mind for all accounts:- Your public account may be recommended for other people on Instagram to follow.
- Content from and information about your public account may be accessible to third-parties who use our research tools.
- Your account may appear in search results on Instagram.
- Anyone on Instagram can tag, mention, request to message you, and add you to group messages unless you change this in your privacy settings.
- Your account may appear in search engine results but only your profile picture and bio will be visible.
Keep in mind that business profiles aren't able to make their accounts private. If you want to make your business account private, first switch back to a personal account.
| English (US) | + |