Instagram Export Date Range: All Time vs Last Year (Why It Changes Your Followers List)

Why a date range applies to a followers list at all

It seems odd that a list of who follows you could have a date range; either someone follows you or they don't. The reason is in the data. Every entry in followers_1.json carries a timestamp recording when that account followed you, and every entry in following.jsonrecords when you followed them. Instagram's export treats those timestamps the same way it treats the date on a post or a message: as the thing the Date range filter applies to. The filter isn't “who follows you as of this period”; it is “follows that started in this period”.

The option sits on the summary screen after you tap Export to device, next to Format and Media quality, and offers presets of Last week, Last month, Last 3 months, Last year, and All time, plus a custom range. The followers export is the one place where every preset except All time is actively harmful. You can see those follow dates for yourself using how to see when you followed someone on Instagram.

What Last year or Last 3 months actually drops

A concrete example makes the damage obvious. Suppose an account opened in 2019 has 2,400 followers and follows 900 accounts. Of those 2,400 followers, 300 followed in the past twelve months. Of the 900 following, 150 were followed in the past twelve months.

• All time: followers file has 2,400 entries, following file has 900. A non-follower check compares the full lists and gives the right answer.
• Last year: followers file has 300 entries, following file has 150. Of the 750 accounts you followed before last year, every one is now missing from the following list, so they are never checked. Of the 2,100 people who followed you before last year, every one is missing from the followers list, so anyone you followed recently who also followed you years ago is wrongly flagged as not following back.
• Last 3 months: the same problem with far smaller numbers, often tens of entries on each side, and on a quiet account potentially an empty followers file.

The errors run in both directions: real non-followers hidden because they aren't in the trimmed following list, and real followers flagged as non-followers because they aren't in the trimmed followers list. The results aren't slightly off; they are unusable. If the followers file came back completely empty, the fuller explanation is in export shows 0 followers.

How to tell your export was trimmed

Two checks, one quick and one precise. The quick one: compare the number of entries in followers_1.json (plus any numbered continuation files) with the follower count on your profile. A gap of a few per cent is normal, because deactivated accounts and recent changes drift; a gap of half or more means a filter.

The precise one: open the file and find the smallest timestamp value. Convert it to a date with any epoch converter. On an All time export that date should be near when your account first gained followers, possibly years ago. On a trimmed export it sits suspiciously close to the start of the range you chose: about 365 days ago for Last year, about 90 for Last 3 months. If the oldest follow in the file is younger than your account, the range cut it. The other reasons a followers list can look sparse are collected in export not showing followers.

Does All time slow the export down?

Not for a followers-only request. People pick Last year because they assume All time means a bigger, slower job, and for a full export with photos and videos that is true: All time on a decade of media is the slowest thing you can ask for. But the Followers and following category contains no media, only short text records, and the difference between 300 entries and 24,000 is a few hundred kilobytes. The export arrives in the same 10 to 20 minutes either way. There is no trade-off to weigh; All time is simply correct.

The one scenario where a shorter range is deliberately useful is curiosity rather than checking: Last month on a followers-only export gives you a quick list of who followed you recently without scrolling the full file. Just don't feed that export into a non-follower comparison, and don't keep it as the baseline for a later unfollower check.

Re-request with Date range: All time

If your existing export was trimmed, there is no way to fill in the missing entries; request a new one. In the app:

1. Settings and privacy → Accounts Center → Your information and permissions → Export your information.
2. Tap Create export, choose the profile, then Export to device.
3. Tap Customise information and tick only Followers and following.
4. On the summary screen tap Date range and choose All time. Set Format to JSON and Media quality to Lower quality at the same time.
5. Tap Start export.

The remaining options and where the file appears are in how to download your Instagram data export. When the new ZIP arrives, upload it as-is to the who doesn't follow me back checker. Because the export is now complete, every account it flags as not following back really isn't, and the ones it leaves off really are.