How to get verified on Instagram: both routes, honestly
There are two blue checks on Instagram and they look identical: a subscription starting at $14.99 a month, and a free badge gated on being famous. Here is what each actually requires, and what neither reliably does for reach.
8 minute read
Two badges that look exactly the same
There are two ways to end up with a blue check next to your Instagram handle, and once it is there nobody can tell them apart. The first is Meta Verified, a monthly subscription that confirms your identity against a government ID and hands you the badge. The second is the older notability badge, which Instagram still awards free to accounts it judges famous and highly searched. Instagram's help pages describe both routes and issue the same mark for each, while being clear that the badge signals authenticity rather than importance, authority or expertise. What differs is what you had to do to get it, what else comes with it, and what happens if you stop paying. Most guides on this topic quietly collapse the two, which is where the bad advice starts.
What Meta Verified costs right now
Meta's creator page lists four plans, priced per profile. Standard is $14.99 a month in the app, and Meta discounts it if you subscribe on the web instead, because Apple and Google take a cut of in-app purchases. The three larger plans — Plus at $49.99, Premium at $149.99 and Max at $499.99 — are app-only. Since billing is per profile, verifying Instagram and Facebook means paying twice, and businesses are pointed at a separate product with its own tiers. Prices outside the US differ, and the figures circulating in third-party guides contradict each other for the same country by several pounds or dollars. Check the number on your own signup screen rather than any published table, this one included: the pricing has been revised more than once since the 2023 launch.
What you get, and what you have to hand over
Every plan includes the same three core things: the badge, proactive monitoring for accounts impersonating you, and access to a real person when something goes wrong with your account. Above that, Meta sells discovery features rather than outcomes — appearing at or near the top of search results, a featured profile slot, and between two and six links in Reels depending on the tier, plus stickers, chat themes and content strategy advice at the top end. The requirements are unglamorous. You need to be 18 or over, have a profile photo showing your face, have posted before, and have two-factor authentication switched on. Then you submit a government ID whose name and photo match the profile, and in some regions a selfie video as well. If your handle is a brand name and your ID is your legal name, expect friction.
The free notability badge has not gone away
Instagram still publishes the criteria and still accepts applications from Settings. Four things must be true. Authentic: a real person, registered business or entity, not a fan or parody account. Unique: one account per person or business, with an exception for language-specific accounts. Complete: public, with a bio, a profile photo and recent activity. And notable, which Instagram defines as belonging to someone famous and highly searched. That last word is the wall. Reviewers look for coverage across multiple news sources and explicitly exclude paid or sponsored placements, so a press release you paid to distribute counts for nothing. You hear back within 30 days, meeting the criteria still does not guarantee approval, and a rejection means waiting another 30 to reapply. Accounts verified under the old rules keep their badges, and Meta committed to honouring them globally.
Does the badge do anything for reach? Start with what Meta claimed
When Meta announced the subscription in February 2023, the launch post listed increased visibility and reach among the benefits, promising prominence in areas like search, comments and recommendations. Within about a month, as the test expanded to the United States, that benefit came off the list: Meta said it was removing increased reach as a subscription feature for now while it gathered feedback, and TechCrunch reported the same approach applied when the product reached India that June. Read Meta's current creator page and the language is narrower — search optimisation, a featured profile slot, links in Reels. Those are specific placements you are buying, not a promise that your Reels get shown to more people. Meta has never published a measurement of what any of it does to distribution.
The one public before-and-after test
Buffer's Kirsti Lang subscribed on an account with 5,734 followers and compared the two weeks before with the two weeks after. Followers went from 5,734 to 5,724. Accounts reached fell from 1,946 to 1,823, roughly 6.5% down. Accounts engaged rose from 160 to 217, and profile activity jumped from 121 to 279. Her own conclusion was that the subscription had no impact on her content performance. Treat that as one account over four weeks with no control group, which proves nothing on its own — but notice the shape of it. The two numbers that moved are the ones that happen after someone is already looking at you. The one that did not move is the one that decides how many people get there in the first place.
Why no price or plan in this post is permanent
In May 2026 Meta began testing Meta One, a subscription bundle with its own ladder of tiers, and Meta's help centre now documents a verified badge for Meta One subscribers alongside impersonation monitoring. TechCrunch reported the entry tier at $14.99 a month including the badge, a higher tier adding visibility and analytics features, and the first tests running in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Thailand and Bangladesh. Meta told TechCrunch the new plans do not replace Meta Verified, so for now both exist. The useful takeaway is not the tier names. It is that the blue check has become a line item inside a subscription bundle Meta is actively rearranging, which means any guide quoting a fixed price and a fixed feature list is a snapshot with a short shelf life.
Where that $15 a month is better spent
Two reasons to subscribe hold up. If people impersonate you, the monitoring and the support queue are real goods, and one recovered account justifies a year of the fee. If brand partners check for a badge before replying, buying that signal for the price of lunch is a rational trade. Buying it for reach is not supported by anything Meta or anyone else has published. Reach still comes from posting more good short video more often, which for most accounts is a production problem rather than a credibility one. That is the gap FrameOS fills: drop in a long recording and get vertical clips with captions ready to post, so whatever badge you end up with sits on an account that actually publishes. 300 credits for 3 days · no card.
FAQ
How much does it cost to get verified on Instagram?
Meta Verified Standard is $14.99 a month in the Instagram app, with a discount for subscribing on the web. Larger creator plans run $49.99, $149.99 and $499.99 a month and are app-only. Billing is per profile, so Instagram and Facebook are separate subscriptions. Prices differ by country and have changed since launch, so trust your own signup screen. The notability badge remains free.
Can you still get verified on Instagram for free?
Yes. Instagram still accepts free verification requests from Settings and still publishes its four criteria: authentic, unique, complete and notable. Notable is the hard one — reviewers look for coverage in multiple news outlets and discount paid or sponsored placements. You get an answer within 30 days, approval is never guaranteed even if you qualify, and a rejection means waiting 30 days to reapply.
Does being verified on Instagram increase your reach?
Meta listed increased reach as a benefit at launch in February 2023, then removed it weeks later as the test expanded, and has never published a measurement. The current creator page sells specific placements — search prominence, a featured profile — not distribution. Buffer's own before-and-after test found reach fell about 6.5% while profile activity rose sharply. Assume it changes behaviour on your profile, not in feed.
What happens to your badge if you cancel Meta Verified?
The subscription benefits end and the badge comes off your profile, along with impersonation monitoring and the support queue. Accounts that earned a badge under the older notability rules are unaffected: Meta said it would keep honouring those globally, on the grounds that they passed a review and face a higher impersonation risk. Instagram can still remove any badge for policy breaches.
Sources
- Meta Verified: Get the verified badge on Instagram & Facebook · Meta
- Testing Meta Verified to Help Creators Establish Their Presence · Meta Newsroom
- Requirements to apply for a verified badge on Instagram · Instagram Help Center
- I Got Meta Verified on Instagram — Here's My Honest Review · Buffer
- Meta Verified arrives in India, now honors legacy verified badges · TechCrunch
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