Who Unfollowed Me on Instagram? 3 Ways to Check (Only 1 Is Safe)

Instagram deliberately does not tell you who unfollowed you. There is no notification, no list, no built-in screen. So if your follower count dropped and you want to know who left, you have three realistic options. They are not equal — one is safe, one is tedious, and one can get your account banned.

Method 1: Check manually (free, painful)

You can open your following list and your followers list and compare them by hand. For an account with 80 follows it is doable. For anything bigger it is hopeless, and Instagram does not let you sort either list by "follows you back," so you are scrolling and cross-referencing names.

It is also a snapshot. To know who unfollowed you over time, you would have to memorise your follower list, which nobody does.

Verdict: free and private, but realistic only for tiny accounts.

Method 2: A "tracker" app you log into (fast, risky)

These are the apps all over the App Store: enter your Instagram username and password, and they show your unfollowers instantly. They are fast because they log in as you and scrape your lists from the inside.

That convenience is the problem. Logging into a third-party app breaks Instagram’s Terms of Use, and Instagram enforces it automatically — action blocks, forced password resets, login challenges, sometimes a disabled account. You also hand your live password to a company you cannot vet. We broke down exactly what happens in this article on password apps and bans.

Many of these apps also charge $4.99 per week — over $250 a year — for something you can do for free.

Verdict: fast, but it risks your account and your password. Avoid.

Method 3: Your own Instagram data export (safe, private)

Instagram is legally required to give you a copy of your own data, and that copy includes your complete followers and following lists. This is the method that needs no login and breaks no rules, because you are downloading your data through an official feature.

Once you have the file, you open it in a tool that reads it on your device and compares the two lists for you. The whole comparison — who you follow that does not follow back, who follows you that you do not follow back — is just set arithmetic on two lists. No account access required.

That is what Unfollowly does. You drop in the file Instagram emailed you, and your browser computes everything locally. Your data never leaves your device (you can confirm it in your browser’s network tab), so there is nothing to leak and nothing to ban.

How to do it

1. In the Instagram app: Accounts Center → Your information and permissions → Download your information.
2. Select only "Followers and following" and choose the JSON format.
3. Instagram emails you a small file, usually within 5–30 minutes.
4. Open it in the checker — results are instant.

Full details are in our download guide.

Can you see when someone unfollowed you?

A single export is a snapshot, so it shows who does not follow you back right now. To catch unfollows as they happen, you save a snapshot today and compare it to a new export later — the difference is exactly who left. Unfollowly’s Tracker plan does this comparison for you, storing the snapshots on your device.

One honest caveat: the export identifies people by username, not by a permanent ID. If someone changes their username between two exports, it can look like they unfollowed you when they only renamed. No tool can fully avoid this, because the data simply does not contain stable IDs.

Bottom line

If you care about your account, skip the login apps. The data-export method is free for a one-time check, private by design, and impossible to get banned for. It takes a few extra minutes — and those minutes are the whole point.

Check your unfollowers now →