How many Instagram hashtags to use, and whether they still do anything
Instagram capped hashtags at five in December 2025, and Adam Mosseri had been saying for years they do not drive distribution. Two very large datasets back him up. Here is what is left worth doing.
8 minute read
The short answer, and the number that changed
Five. That is the ceiling Instagram now enforces, so the old question of how many hashtags to use has largely answered itself. Use three to five, make each one specific to what the post is genuinely about, and do not expect them to bring you reach on their own. That last part is where most surviving hashtag advice goes wrong. Instagram has been saying for four years that tags are a labelling tool rather than a distribution lever, and the two largest independent datasets on the question broadly agree with it. Hashtags deserve about thirty seconds of your attention per post. They do not deserve the saved block of thirty tags you may still be pasting in.
What Instagram has actually said, on the record
Three statements matter, and all three are public. In March 2022, answering a question in his Instagram Stories, Adam Mosseri said hashtags help the platform understand what a post is about and can surface it on a hashtag page, but added that he "wouldn't try to think of hashtags as a way to get more distribution." In December 2024 Instagram removed the ability to follow a hashtag, which closed the one route by which a tag could push your post into the feed of someone who did not follow you. Then on 18 December 2025, as Social Media Today reported, Instagram's creators account said the platform would gradually reduce the number of hashtags allowed in a caption for a post or reel to five, reasoning that fewer, more targeted tags serve both performance and the browsing experience better than many generic ones.
What the biggest datasets found
Two studies are worth knowing because of their scale. Socialinsider analysed more than 75 million Instagram posts published between March 2021 and March 2022 and concluded that the number of hashtags on a post does not influence its distribution. The best engagement rate by impressions in that data, 3.41%, came from posts carrying three or four tags, but the differences across hashtag counts were small rather than decisive. More recently, Metricool studied 24,364,803 posts from 375,118 accounts, comparing January and February 2026 against the same window a year earlier. It found that posts using at least one hashtag drew 31.70% fewer views and 33.89% fewer interactions than the platform average. That is a striking number, and it needs unpacking before you act on it.
The folklore that did not survive
The thirty-tag block is simply gone, enforced away rather than argued away. The caption-versus-first-comment debate was never worth the airtime it got: Socialinsider and Quuu looked at roughly 650,000 posts from 6,784 brand profiles and found caption placement slightly ahead, with the average reach difference around 3.5% for accounts under 5,000 followers and about 1.23% for those between 5,000 and 10,000. That is noise dressed up as strategy. Rotating hashtag sets to dodge a supposed repetition penalty, hunting for secret banned tags, and copying a competitor's tag list all belong to an era when following a hashtag was a real feed. Since December 2024 it has not been.
How to spend your five slots
Treat them as five labels, not five lottery tickets. One or two should name the niche community your post belongs to, the kind of tag a real person browses rather than one carrying fifty million posts. One or two should name the specific topic or format, the thing someone would type if they wanted exactly this. Keep one for your own branded or series tag so your archive stays navigable and people can find the rest of your work. Match tag size to your account: if you have 2,000 followers, a tag with millions of posts refreshes faster than anyone can scroll it. Open each tag page before you use it and check that the content there looks like yours.
Where the leverage actually is
Everything Instagram has said, and every large dataset, points at the same conclusion: distribution is decided by whether people stop, watch, finish and share, not by what you appended to the caption. So set your five tags in a minute and put the rest of that time into the opening second, the on-screen text, and how many clips you are actually shipping each week. That is where consistency beats cleverness, and where a repeatable workflow pays off, which is the part FrameOS handles for us: one recording in, a week of captioned vertical clips out, so the posting itself stops being the bottleneck. Hashtags are housekeeping. Hooks are the job.
FAQ
How many hashtags should you use on Instagram in 2026?
Five is the hard ceiling. Instagram began reducing the allowance to five hashtags per post or reel in December 2025, and said fewer targeted tags work better than many generic ones. Three to five specific, relevant tags is the practical answer. Socialinsider's analysis of over 75 million posts also found three to four tags produced the best engagement rate by impressions, so the cap sits close to where the data already pointed.
Do Instagram hashtags still work?
They work for categorisation and search, not for reach. Adam Mosseri said in 2022 that he would not think of hashtags as a way to get more distribution, and Instagram removed the ability to follow hashtags in December 2024, closing the main route by which a tag could put your post in front of strangers. Use them to label the post accurately, then stop thinking about them.
Should hashtags go in the caption or the first comment?
The caption, but the difference barely matters. Socialinsider and Quuu analysed around 650,000 posts from 6,784 profiles and found caption placement slightly ahead, with average reach differences of about 3.5% for accounts under 5,000 followers and 1.23% for accounts between 5,000 and 10,000. With only five tags allowed, they no longer clutter a caption enough to be worth hiding.
What should I use instead of hashtags on Instagram?
Keywords. Instagram search matches what people type against captions, on-screen text and profile copy, and since July 2025 public posts from professional accounts can be indexed by search engines too. Hootsuite's small experiment found keyword-led captions pulled about 30% more reach than hashtag-led ones. Write the caption someone would actually search for, and keep the five tags as labels.
Sources
- Instagram Implements New Limits on Hashtag Use · Social Media Today
- Instagram executive suggests hashtags don't affect reach · Hootsuite
- Metricool's 2026 Instagram Study · Metricool
- New Report Highlights That Instagram Hashtags Don't Significantly Increase Post Engagement · Social Media Today
- Experiment: Instagram SEO vs Hashtags · Hootsuite
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