How to remove followers on Instagram

Does the person know you removed them?

Instagram doesn’t send them a notification, and nothing appears in their activity feed. Its Help Center says this plainly for both ordinary removals and the spam-follower tools.

They can still work it out:

• Your account disappears from their following list. If they check who they follow, you’re no longer there.
• On a private account, your posts and stories vanish for them and your profile shows a Follow button again.
• Follower trackers show it. If they use an app that tracks their own following list, a removal looks the same as them unfollowing you.

So it’s quiet, not invisible. If you need someone to have no way back in, block them instead (see below).

Private vs public accounts: what removing changes

Instagram’s Help Center describes removing followers as a private-account tool, and that’s where it does real work: the person loses access to everything you share with followers. On a public account the Remove option still tidies your list, but the person keeps seeing your public content and can follow you again with one tap.

If your goal is to stop someone seeing your followers and following lists, removing them only helps on a private account. Our guide to hiding followers and following on Instagram covers the rest of the options.

Removing spam and bot followers in bulk

Instagram has no button to remove many real followers at once, and outside apps that promise mass removal need your password, which puts your account at risk. For spam, Instagram has two built-in tools:

• Flagged for review. Instagram can flag followers it thinks are spam, bots or irrelevant accounts and show them in a notification. You can remove them one at a time or with Remove all. The Help Center says this is available to accounts set to public.
• Potential spam list. Accounts Instagram filters as likely spam are grouped under your followers list, where you can remove them all at once.

In both cases Instagram says it won’t tell the accounts that they were removed. Clearing obvious bots can make your follower count and engagement rate more honest. Expect the count to drop, which is the point.

Remove, block, restrict or unfollow?

These four options are easy to mix up:

• Remove takes them off your followers list. You still follow them if you did before.
• Unfollow takes them off your following list. They still follow you. To tidy that side, see how to unfollow people who don’t follow you back.
• Block removes them in both directions and stops them finding your profile, messaging you or following you again. They aren’t notified, though the signs of a block are easy to spot.
• Restrict keeps them as a follower but hides their comments from others and moves their messages to requests. It’s the gentlest option; see how Restrict works.

A common sequence for someone you want out of your life without drama: switch to private, remove them, and block only if they send a new follow request or contact you another way.

Before you remove: who doesn’t follow you back?

Many people clean up their followers and their following list at the same time. The free not-following-back checker compares the two lists and shows who you follow that doesn’t follow you back, and the unfollowers tool shows who has stopped following you.

If you’d like to keep an eye on changes over time, Peekd tracks public accounts and logs every follow and unfollow with a date from when tracking starts, checked twice a day, with an alert when a check finds a change. It can’t see private accounts and never asks for your password. Read how Peekd works.