Competitors and Explore
Track the accounts you choose to monitor in Competitors, discover standout posts in your niche through Explore, and move accounts between them.
Competitors and Explore answer two different questions. Competitors is "how are the accounts I track doing?" Explore is "what is breaking out in my niche right now?"
Competitors
The Competitors page shows the watchlist of accounts you have deliberately added to track for your active Instagram account. It is best for:
- following a fixed set of brands or creators you compare yourself against
- watching a tracked account's trend over time
- pulling your own competitive set into reports
Competitors is tied to the active account selector. Switching to a different connected Instagram account shows that account's competitive set, not the previous one's.
For how watchlists work as a concept, including how many tracked accounts your plan allows, see watchlists.
Explore
The Explore page surfaces standout posts from accounts in your niche, including ones you have not yet added to a watchlist. It is best for:
- discovering creators or formats you would not have found by browsing
- spotting posts that are performing far above their account's normal range
- scanning a wider field than your tracked Competitors list
Outliers, in plain language
Explore highlights outlier posts — content that performed well above what is normal for the account that posted it. An outlier is not the same as "a popular post on a popular account." It is a post that broke out relative to its own account's baseline, which often signals a format or hook worth studying.
Filters
Explore filters by date range, media type, niche, and engagement level. The same filter chips you know from Posts apply here. Narrowing by niche keeps the discovery surface relevant to the kind of content you make.
Adding a competitor from Explore to your watchlist
When you find an account in Explore that you want to follow long-term, add it to your watchlist directly from the post or profile preview. From that point on, it appears in Competitors and feeds into your competitive trend reads.
A practical workflow
- Start in Explore when you want fresh ideas or creators to watch.
- Add the strongest matches to your watchlist.
- Switch to Competitors to follow how those accounts trend over time.
- Pull your competitive set into reports when you want to share the read with a client or team.