What share rate means a reel is going viral?
We found no share rate that marks a reel as going viral. Across 239,507 viral reels with a share count, the middle one had about 7 shares per 1,000 views.
None that we could find. Of 239,507 viral reels in Aubrium's library with a share count, the middle one had a share rate of 0.71%, about 7 shares for every 1,000 views. Half sat between 0.24% and 1.46%. The library holds only reels that went viral, with counts read after they travelled, so it's a range, not a target.
Aubrium's library, 22 October 2026. Share rates are from the 239,507 viral reels with a share count.
Lately, a lot of creators watch shares. You post a reel, wait an hour, divide the shares by the views and look for the line that says it's taking off.
We looked for that line in our data and didn't find one. Our data is 243,920 reels that already went viral, each reaching at least twice its creator's follower count and at least 10,000 views. Of those, 239,507 showed a share count. Share rate is that count divided by the reel's views.
The library holds each reel's latest counts, read after it had already travelled. It doesn't follow a reel as it takes off, so none of this is an early sign or the odds for a new reel. Every new reel starts cold, shown to a small group first and then to wider ones if people respond. You can watch your own reel's first hours. Our library can't.
What share rate do viral reels have?
About 0.71% for the middle one, with a wide spread around it.
So a low share rate didn't keep these reels from travelling: a quarter had 0.24% or less.
Do people share reels as much as they like them?
No. Shares ran far below likes.
That's about one share for every four likes (a median of 0.23 shares per like), and comments were rarer still.
Rare doesn't mean ignored. In 2023, Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram, named resharing among the most important things it guesses about a reel.1
The most important predictions we make are how likely you are to reshare a reel, watch a reel all the way through, like it, and go to the audio page…
Meta's page on how Instagram picks which reels to play next still lists that guess.2 There's more on what Mosseri has said about sends and what Instagram says about sharing in DMs.
Do reels that travelled further get shared more?
Mostly, up to a point. How far a reel travelled is its views as a multiple of its creator's followers, as in a views-to-followers ratio.
The share rate climbs to 0.79% at 25 to 100 times, then dips past 100 times. The library can't say why.
Two catches. These counts were read after each reel travelled, so they can't show whether shares or views came first. And small accounts sit higher on this scale partly by definition: with a 10,000-view floor, a 1,000-follower account needs 10 times its followers to count, a 50,000-follower account twice.
Does account size change the share rate?
Barely.
The slip from 0.78% to 0.64% is small next to the gaps between niches. The 10,000-view floor may tilt it a little too: small accounts' viral reels sit at higher multiples, which carried slightly higher share rates.
Which niches share the most?
Memes and restaurant reviews, by a long way. Cleaning routines share the least.
That's a tenfold gap from top to bottom. By broad category, gaming led at 1.11% and home services and trades came last at 0.21%.
Our guess, and it's only that: the top is things you send to one person, like a joke, a place to eat or a tool. The bottom is things people watch for themselves.
So what should you do with your share rate?
Compare like with like.
If you're checking a new reel
Compare it with your own reels at the same age. Our data can't say what an early share rate means.
If you're comparing with other creators
Stay inside your niche. The same share rate can be high in one and low in another.
If you want more shares
Make the reel someone would want to pass on. Meta's page for Reels lists a guess about whether you'll reshare it.
There are more numbers like these in Instagram reels statistics for 2026.
Questions people ask
What share rate means a reel is going viral?
We couldn't find one. Of 239,507 viral reels in Aubrium's library with a share count, the middle one had a share rate of 0.71%, about 7 shares per 1,000 views, and half sat between 0.24% and 1.46%.
How do I tell if a reel is going viral early?
Our library can't, because its counts were read after each reel travelled. Researchers studying Facebook photo reshares could predict well whether a photo would keep being reshared, and timing was one of the key clues.3 Their predictions got better the more reshares they watched. That's a prediction, not proof of cause. There's more in nobody can predict a hit before it's posted. On your own account, the fairest check is your past reels at the same age.
Do saves matter more than likes?
Nothing Meta has published ranks saves above likes, and its pages give no weights. Our library has no save counts to add. More in our post on saves, sends and likes.
Why are my reels not going viral?
Our library can't answer that, because it only holds reels that made it. It does show that a low share rate didn't keep reels off the list: a quarter of them had 0.24% or less.
How we did this
We read Aubrium's library on 22 October 2026. It holds reels from creators with 1,000 to 100,000 followers. A reel counts as viral if it reached at least twice its creator's follower count and at least 10,000 views. That gave 243,920 viral reels from 181,983 creators. Of those, 239,507 (98%) showed a share count, and they're the reels behind every share number here.
Share rate is the share count Instagram shows on a reel, divided by its views, as a percentage. Comment rate works the same way. Like rate and shares per like count only the 239,248 reels whose likes were showing; 259 had likes hidden or at zero. Every figure is a median, the middle value. Niche figures cover the 96 niches with at least 1,000 viral reels that showed a share count, and category figures the categories with at least 3,000 viral reels. A reel can sit in more than one niche. Carousels and photos carry no view count, so they're left out.
What the library can't tell you: it holds each reel's latest counts, read after the reel had travelled, and it doesn't follow a reel as it takes off. So there's no early curve and no first-hour share rate. It has no save counts. We don't know exactly what Instagram's share count includes, such as sends in DMs. And it's a set of reels that already went viral, so it shows what they have, not what made them travel or the odds for a new reel.
Sources
- Instagram Ranking ExplainedAbout Instagram, Adam Mosseri · For Reels, "The most important predictions we make are how likely you are to reshare a reel, watch a reel all the way through, like it, and go to the audio page". 31 May 2023. Checked word for word against the Internet Archive's copy of 21 October 2026, because the live page returns an error page to a plain download. Read 22 October 2026.
- Instagram Reels Chaining AI systemMeta Transparency Center · Lists "How likely you are to reshare a reel" among its predictions. Updated 11 November 2025. Read 22 October 2026.
- Can cascades be predicted?Justin Cheng, Lada A. Adamic, P. Alex Dow, Jon Kleinberg and Jure Leskovec, WWW 2014 · A study of Facebook photo reshares: 150,572 photos, each reshared at least five times; from the first five reshares, it predicted whether a photo would double to ten with accuracy of 0.795, against 0.5 for random guessing; temporal and structural features are key predictors; growth gets more predictable as more reshares are seen. Read in full in the arXiv copy. Submitted to arXiv 18 March 2014. Read 22 October 2026.
Changelog
- First version.
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