Should I use mean or median engagement?

Median across your last nine to twelve posts. It is harder to inflate and better describes what a brand can expect from the next post.

Which engagement rate formula do brands use?

Usually engagement divided by followers, because it is the only version an outsider can verify from a public profile without the creator's cooperation.

Creator business

Engagement Rate Calculator

Q: What is a good engagement rate?

Honest ranges are wide and differ by platform, niche, follower band and format, so a single cross-platform benchmark is guesswork. Smaller accounts routinely post higher rates than large ones.

Part of: The business of being a creator For creators

There is no single engagement rate. There are four formulas in common use, they disagree with each other by a wide margin on the same account, and a brand will pick whichever one it prefers. This calculates all four from the same numbers so you know what each one says about you before someone else does the arithmetic.

Followers

Reach per post

Likes per post

Comments per post

Saves + shares

Formula	What it divides by	Your rate
By followers (ER)	Followers	—
By reach (ERR)	Accounts reached	—
Likes only	Followers	—
With saves and shares	Reach	—

Enter your numbers to see the spread.

Which number a brand will use

Expect engagement by followers. It is the one most brand-side templates ask for, because it is the only one an outsider can verify from a public profile — they can count your followers and your likes without your consent. The reach-based figures are usually kinder to you and completely unverifiable from outside, which is exactly why a sceptical buyer discounts them.

That produces a specific, avoidable mistake: leading a media kit with the reach-based number, and being asked for the follower-based one in the next email. You have then anchored high and been corrected downward, which is a worse position than opening with the honest figure.

Lead with followers, then show reach

Give the follower-based rate first, then the reach-based rate beside it with reach stated. Two numbers with their denominators named reads as someone who understands their own analytics. One flattering number with no denominator reads as someone hoping nobody checks.

Why saves and shares deserve their own line

A like is the cheapest action on any platform. A save is someone intending to come back to the thing you showed them, and a share is someone spending their own credibility on it. For product content those two predict purchase behaviour far better than likes, which is why the fourth formula above exists at all.

If your saves-and-shares figure is strong while your like rate is ordinary, that is worth saying explicitly in a pitch, with the raw counts next to it. It is the difference between an audience that scrolls past approvingly and an audience that acts.

What a rate does not tell anyone

Whether the audience buys. Engagement measures attention, not intent. A craft account with warm comments can convert worse than a quieter account whose followers came looking for product recommendations.
Whether the audience matches the brand. A high rate from the wrong country is not useful to a retailer that ships domestically.
Whether one post carried the average. Median across your recent posts is more honest than the mean; one viral post drags an average somewhere you cannot repeat.

Questions

What is a good engagement rate?

We are not going to give you a number to compare yourself against, because the honest ranges are wide and they differ by platform, niche, follower band and format. Anyone quoting one benchmark across all of that is guessing. What is defensible: smaller accounts routinely post higher rates than large ones, so being compared against a celebrity account's rate is a comparison you should decline.

Should I use mean or median?

Median across your last nine to twelve posts. It is harder to inflate and it describes what a brand can actually expect from the next post.

Do I include followers who never see the post?

That is precisely what the two families of formula disagree about. The follower-based rate includes them; the reach-based rate does not. Show both.

Last verified 1 September 2026. This page describes formulas and how they are read, not platform features; the arithmetic is stable, but where a platform reports reach does change. Nothing here is an earnings estimate.