Social Listening's competitive benchmarking tool allows you to compare the performance of up to 5 lists of Instagram accounts. Each list can contain 20 accounts.

Use this information to benchmark your account performance against key competitors and work on improving your competitive position. Your own account will also be included in this comparison automatically.

Important:

• Social Listening Benchmarking is available on Later's Scale plans and up if you signed up in or after July 2025
• Social Listening is currently only available on desktop (not on mobile)
• If the account you're tracking has turned off like counts in Instagram, some benchmarking metrics won't be available
• Social Listening data is updated hourly

Access & Set Up Benchmarking

1. From Later for desktop, select Social Listening > Benchmarking from the left sidebar
2. Select the pencil icon from the top right or select Create New List
   
3. Under Competitor List Title, give your list a title
4. Under What competitors do you want insights on? enter the handle for any Instagram profiles you want to track, pressing enter after each one
   • These must be business or creator profiles (due to API limitations, personal profiles can’t be tracked)
   • You can track up to 20 competitors
5. Select which of your brands to compare with (if multiple)
6. Select Save Competitor List

By default, the last 7 days of data will be displayed, but the past 3 months of data will be available upon set up. You can adjust the date range from the date picker near the top right.

Benchmarking Insights

The following performance insights are compared:

• Followers: Number of followers on the last day of the selected date range
• Follower Growth Rate (%): Calculated based on the number of followers on the last day of the selected date range versus the first day
• Posts: Number of posts published during the date range
• Average Engagement Rate (%): Average engagement rate of all posts published during the date range (calculated as engagements ÷ by followers on the post’s publish date)
• Total Engagements: Total likes and comments on all posts publishing during the date range
• Likes: Total likes on all posts published during the date range
• Comments: Total comments on all posts published during the date range
• Share of Voice: The brand’s engagements compared to total engagements from all brands in the table (calculated as brand’s total engagements ÷ combined total engagements × 100)

At the top of the page, there will also be a leaderboard displaying the top competitors (out of those you’re tracking) for the following metrics:

• Highest Engagement Rate: Highest average engagement rate
• Most Talked About: Highest number of comments
• Most Active: Highest number of posts
• Largest Audience: Highest number of followers