Wondering why you cannot follow more than 7500 users on Instagram? It’s because Instagram placed that limit on all accounts. If you’re stuck at 7,500, and try to follow more people, you will receive an error that states you cannot follow any more people and your organic Instagram growth will be affected.
How Can I Remove the Instagram 7,500 Following Limit
Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to bypass this limit. The policy was introduced by Instagram a long time ago and it was intended to prevent aggressive following of accounts. Though, we certainly feel it’s a silly policy given that most new Instagram users will receive no visibility whatsoever and actually prefer to follow many accounts to uncover interesting photos, stories, and discussions. Sadly, when a platform gets as big as Instagram, it’s motives are primarily focused on reducing fake / spam / bot accounts, and advertising revenue, regardless of whether such a policy impacts rule-abiding users negatively.
You can look for some magical workaround, but you won’t find any that does not violate Instagram’s terms of service. Instagram prohibits users from following more than 7,500 users. This helps ensure that users do not violate Instagram’s Community Guidelines.
You can refer to this support doc on Instagram that confirms the following limit.
I’m getting the message, “Error: You can’t follow any more people.”
To help reduce spam, Instagram doesn’t allow anyone to follow more than 7,500 people.
Anyone who tries to follow more than 7,500 people will see an error message, regardless of how many followers they have. Anyone who’s currently following more than 7,500 people did so before this change was made.
source: https://help.instagram.com/408167069251249
Why Can Some Accounts Go Beyond the 7,500 Following Limit
As stated in Instagram’s support doc above, if an account had already been following greater than 7,500 before the policy change, it can continue to follow as many people as it wants. However, any existing (or new) account that had less than 7,500 following will be capped upon reaching that number.
Throughout the dark web, there are shady folks selling a ‘hack’ or ‘workaround’ to bypass this limit, but I recommend you never attempt such solutions. Stay safe and do not risk your account.
What To Do After You’ve Hit the 7,500 Following Limit
It’s a good time to reconsider your growth strategy. Below are just a few of the steps you can take after you reached your maximum Instagram limits.
Unfollow Ghost Following – Once maxed out, you have to unfollow a user before you can begin following a new one. Therefore, it’s makes sense to identify all inactive, un-engaged, or irrelevant accounts that you’re following. To do this, get a data dump of all your Following and sift through all the accounts to identify and unfollow the least valuable. It’s a cumbersome exercise, but typically results in 20 – 40% of purge allowing you follow more relevant accounts again.
NOTE: Our team at Ampfluence does this for all our clients on a regular basis.
Focus on Content – Create better content! Take better photos, create better stories, and publish only the best grams. People will notice.
Focus on Engagement – Since you cannot follow, focus on your existing followers and following to get them to engage with your content. A detailed explanation on what you can do would requires a few chapters, but try to engage with their content by liking and commenting on photos, take time to understand your followers and build a relationship with them. Over time, these authentic gestures will result in more engagement.
Cross Your Fingers – Let’s all just pray that Instagram comes to their senses and removes this limit.
Your Instagram account isn’t as fun once you’ve hit the 7,500 following limit, but try to make the most of it and focus on other activities.
14 Responses
Hi, I’m only following 700 people and I’ve removed lots of pending follow requests but I still can’t follow anyone? I’ve not followed anyone new since yesterday so I know its not the hourly/daily limit that is stopping me. I’ve sent a problem request to instagram but no response as of yet. Any advice?
did you sort this out – i can’t follow any more that 723 at the minute and I have no pending follow requests – i get the message – you have reached the maximum follow limit, please unfollow to follow, It’s been like this for 3.5 weeks and it’s driving me insane – no one seems to know how to fix it
Hi Athena – Are you actually getting the error: “Error: You can’t follow any more people.” If not, then you’re issue is not related to the following limit. It’s likely more likely a temporary block on your account. You can read about temporary blocks in this article here:
https://ampfluence.com/why-does-instagram-block-me-from-following-people/
Removing people you’re following doesn’t allow you to follow more people. It’s not that you can’t have more then 7500 people you’re following at one time…you can’t follow more then 7500 ever. I removed hundreds of accounts and I STILL can’t follow anyone anymore!
How about 7506?
https://www.instagram.com/forgamezcz/
that was really useful
thanks a lot
Plz if anyone out there did solve the problem of following and after i unfollowed many accounts still not able to add any frd please do reply me and helping me to know what i should do ty in advance
Another trick is to use the followers unfollowers app and connect it with our account and unfollow the people that are not following back (non followers) i did it when i hitted the limit and from 7500 i went to 300
Hi
I follow only 300 account and everytime i try to folow someone there is an error massage that pops up and delete the follow requests, its been going on for a few days…
Hello,
I deleted people that i followed, and i still cant follow no one, this for 3 months.
Managing a growing Instagram account can be challenging, especially when followers disappear without explanation. I wanted to know see who unfollowed you on instagram, but the app itself doesn’t provide that option. Familiarity with third-party tools helped figure out the details, although they do carry a privacy trade-off.