Who unfollowed me on Instagram?

How it works

1. 1

   Request an export today

   Open Instagram → your profile → menu (☰) → Settings and privacy → Accounts Centre → Your information and permissions → Export your information → Create export. Tick only Followers and following, set the date range to All time, pick JSON, and choose Download to device.

2. 2

   Download and keep the ZIP

   Instagram emails a link when the file is ready, usually within 10–20 minutes for a followers-only export. The link works for 4 days, so download the ZIP promptly and keep it — renaming it with the date (for example instagram-2026-10-12.zip) makes later comparisons easier.

3. 3

   Request a second export later

   Come back in a week or a month and repeat step 1. If an older ZIP from a previous export is already sitting in your downloads, you can skip the wait and use that as the older file.

4. 4

   Upload both exports

   Drop the earlier ZIP into Older export and the later one into Newer export, then press Compare the two exports. Both resulting lists — who unfollowed you and who newly followed you — are shown in full, free, with CSV downloads. Nothing is uploaded; the comparison runs in your browser.

Why Instagram sends no unfollow notification

Instagram notifies you when someone follows you, likes a post or mentions you — the events that feel good. An unfollow is the opposite kind of event, and Instagram has never surfaced one. Your follower count drops quietly, the person's name simply stops appearing in your followers list, and there is no activity entry, no email and nothing in Insights that names them. Business and Creator accounts can see an Unfollows figure per day in the Followers chart, but it is a number, never a list.

The silence is deliberate: a feed of departures would be a miserable thing to open, so the product doesn't offer one. The question "who unfollowed me?" therefore has no in-app answer. It does have an answer in the data Instagram is obliged to give you on request, which is the method the full guide to seeing who unfollowed you walks through and this page carries out.

How two exports reveal who left

Every data export contains followers_1.json, a list of every account following you at the moment the file was generated, with the date each one followed. One export is a snapshot. Two exports taken at different times are a before and an after, and the difference between them is the answer: any username in the older followers file that is absent from the newer one stopped following you in between.

That is the whole job. Drop the earlier ZIP into Older export, the later one into Newer export, and press Compare the two exports. The result is headed N accounts unfollowed you, with a subline showing your follower count going from the first export to the second. Every name is listed, free, sortable by name or by the date they originally followed you, with an Export CSV button that saves unfollowed_you.csv. A second tab shows who newly followed you over the same period.

Why "who unfollowed me" apps get accounts banned

Search the App Store for unfollowers and you'll find dozens of apps promising the same answer in real time. Nearly all of them get it by asking for your Instagram password and logging in from their servers to pull your followers list every few hours. Instagram treats a login from an unfamiliar data centre followed by hundreds of rapid profile requests as automation — because it is. The usual result is the Action Blocked message, then a forced password reset, and for repeat offenders a disabled account.

The export method gets identical data with no login on your behalf. Instagram generates the file, you download it, and the comparison runs in your browser tab. There is no third party holding your credentials, which is why this is the one approach that stays safe however often you repeat it.

Reading the result

The unfollowed list is exact for usernames, but a username can leave your followers file for three reasons: the person unfollowed you, they deactivated or deleted their account, or Instagram removed them as spam. The export records none of the reasons — a departed account is simply absent. If a name on the list leads to a dead profile when you tap it, treat it as a deactivation rather than a snub. Someone who renamed their account shows up as an unfollow under the old name and as a new follower under the new one; the two cancel out if you check the other tab.

The subline — Followers went from X to Y between the two exports — is the sanity check. If it reads 1,240 to 1,236 and the list has nine names, five new people followed in the meantime. The tool never guesses at anything the files don't contain; the guide to why follower counts drop covers the usual patterns behind the numbers.

Starting your first comparison today

The honest catch with this method is that it needs two exports, and most people arrive with none. You can't look back past your first file: Instagram keeps no follower history for you, and no safe tool can reconstruct who left last month. What you can do is draw the line today. Request an export now, download it, keep it, and from that point on every later export can be compared against it. The question becomes answerable for good.

If a month-by-month habit appeals, the unfollowers tracker page describes the routine. If you only care about one sudden drop, lost followers covers what usually causes it. And if you'd rather know who you follow that doesn't follow you — a one-export question — use who doesn't follow me back, which is where the Only have one export? link under the dropzones leads.

What this tool can't do

It can't tell you who unfollowed you before your earliest export, and it can't tell you why anyone left — the file holds usernames and dates, nothing more. It can't distinguish an unfollow from a deactivation. It doesn't notify you; you choose when to export and when to compare. It can't tell you whether the people you unfollow are told, either — that's a separate question with its own answer. Two files from your own account, compared in your browser: that is the whole product, and it is free.

Frequently asked questions