What makes a reel "viral"?

A reel is viral when it reaches far more people than the account has followers.

Instagram shows reels to people who don't follow you. When a reel gets many times more views than the account has followers, it means Instagram kept showing it to strangers — because they watched it, shared it and wanted more. That's the clearest sign an idea works.

For example, an account with 10,000 followers posts a reel that gets 160,000 views. That's 16× their follower count — a viral reel.

You'll see that number in the Virality column. A reel only makes it into the library if it reached at least 2× the account's followers and at least 10,000 views.

Photos and carousels work a little differently, because Instagram doesn't show them to strangers in the same way. For those, we compare their likes to what an account that size normally gets.

We focus on accounts with 1,000 to 100,000 followers — creators your size, not celebrities. When one of their reels travels that far, it's the idea that worked, not the fame. That's what makes it worth borrowing.