Instagram Export Shows 0 Followers? Why the List Is Empty and How to Fix It

Cause 1: Date range wasn't All time

This is the big one. Instagram stores a timestamp against every follow, and the Date range picker on the export screen applies that timestamp as a filter. Choose Last 3 months and the followers file includes only people who started following you in the last 90 days. If your audience is mostly long-standing, that can be nobody, and Instagram writes an empty array rather than an error. The profile still shows the full count because the count isn't filtered; only the export is.

The picker offers presets such as Last week, Last month, Last 3 months, Last year, and All time, plus a custom range. Anything other than All time can produce an empty or short list. The mechanics, with a worked example of what each preset drops, are in All time vs Last year.

Cause 2: A different profile was exported

Accounts Center can hold several profiles, and the Create exportflow asks you to pick one before anything else. A Facebook profile linked to the same login, a second Instagram account you forgot about, or a brand-new business profile can all appear in that list. Export one of those and the followers file is accurate for that profile, which may well be empty. Nothing about the ZIP's filename tells you which profile it came from.

Open the Export your information screen and read the row for the request: it shows the profile name and the categories included. Or open following.jsonin the ZIP; if the usernames in it are not accounts you follow, it isn't your main profile. Create a new export and pick the right account at the first step. A wider list of reasons followers can appear absent is in export not showing followers.

Cause 3: The tool read the wrong file

Some checkers, especially browser extensions and quick scripts, make assumptions about the export that don't always hold. Two mistakes produce a 0-followers result from a perfectly good export:

• Looking only for followers_1.json. If the export was requested in HTML, the file is followers_1.html. A tool that doesn't fall back to the HTML name finds nothing and reports zero.
• Reading following.json as followers. The two files have nearly identical structure, and a tool that mixes them up can count your following as followers and your followers as nothing, producing a result where everyone you follow is flagged as not following back.

The tell is a result that is obviously wrong in a specific way: 0 followers but a plausible following count, or every single account listed as a non-follower. Either way, check the file yourself before acting on the number.

Cause 4: Brand-new or reset account

For completeness: an account created in the last few days, a test account, or a profile whose followers were all removed will export an empty followers list because the list is empty. In that case Instagram typically omits followers_1.json entirely rather than writing an empty one. If your profile page also shows 0 followers, the export is correct and there is nothing to fix.

A related edge case is a private account that only recently went public, or an account that bulk-removed followers using the Remove option on the followers list. Removing a follower deletes the follow relationship, so those accounts drop out of the export immediately. If you did a large clean-up and then exported, a smaller-than-expected list is accurate, not broken.

How to verify by opening followers_1.json

Extract the ZIP, open connections/followers_and_following/followers_1.json in any text editor, and look at the first few lines. A populated file opens with a square bracket and then a series of objects, each containing a string_list_data array. Inside that array, every follower has an href (the profile URL), a value (the username), and a timestamp (seconds since 1970, the moment they followed you). An empty file is just [].

If the file has entries, the export is fine and the 0 came from the tool: go back to cause 3. If the file is empty or missing, convert the earliest timestamp you can find in following.json to a date; if it sits inside a short window, the date range is the culprit. If the usernames look unfamiliar, it is the wrong profile.

The fix: re-request with All time and JSON

Whichever cause applied, the correction is one new request with the right settings. In the Instagram app, go to Settings and privacy → Accounts Center → Your information and permissions → Export your information → Create export. Choose the correct profile, tap Export to device, use Customise information to tick only Followers and following, and then set Date range: All time and Format: JSON before tapping Start export. The screen-by-screen version is in how to download your Instagram data export.

That request usually clears in 10 to 20 minutes. When the ZIP arrives, upload it as-is to UnfollowChecker or go straight to the who doesn't follow me back page. It reads both JSON and HTML, merges numbered follower files, and never confuses following with followers, so the count you see matches the file.