You've been staring at a competitor's Instagram profile for twenty minutes.

Their content is performing. You can see it — the comments, the engagement, the follower count climbing while yours sits flat. But Instagram doesn't exactly hand you a leaderboard. There's no "sort by most viral" button. No engagement breakdown. No way to quickly see which posts are responsible for most of their growth.

So you scroll. And scroll. And try to mentally tally up which posts have the most likes.

There's a better way.

Why You'd Want to See Someone Else's Best Posts in the First Place

Before we get into the how, let's be clear about the why — because this isn't about copying anyone.

Seeing which posts perform best on a competitor's (or any creator's) Instagram tells you something incredibly valuable: what the audience you're trying to reach actually responds to.

You're not reverse-engineering their creativity. You're understanding the market.

If three of their top posts are all behind-the-scenes content, that's a signal. If their carousels consistently outperform their Reels, that's a signal too. If every single one of their high-engagement posts leads with a direct question in the caption — you've just learned something about your audience that no amount of guessing could tell you.

This is how smart content creators operate. They don't just create. They research.

The Manual Approach (And Why It Falls Apart)

Instagram does let you view any public profile. And yes, you can see likes on individual posts.

But here's the problem.

Scrolling through someone's grid and eyeballing likes doesn't account for when the post was published, how many followers they had, or whether a spike in likes came from a paid push rather than organic reach. A post with 4,000 likes on an account with 200k followers is a very different story from a post with 1,200 likes on an account with 8,000.

You're not comparing apples to apples.

And if the account posts frequently? You could spend an hour scrolling and still miss the post that actually drove most of their growth.

What You Actually Need: Engagement Rate, Not Raw Numbers

The metric that actually matters is engagement rate — the ratio of interactions relative to follower count.

A post with 500 likes on an account with 2,000 followers is performing significantly better than a post with 5,000 likes on an account with 500,000 followers.

This is the number that levels the playing field. It's what tells you whether a piece of content genuinely resonated — or just happened to reach a lot of people because the account is already massive.

The problem? Instagram doesn't show you this. You'd have to manually calculate it for every single post you want to analyse.

How to Actually Do This

This is where Viral Finder changes the game.

You type in a username. The tool pulls up to 50 posts from that account and ranks them using a viral score — a weighted formula that factors in likes, comments, and video plays, with comments counting for more because they signal deeper engagement. Newer posts also get a slight recency boost.

The result is a ranked list that surfaces the posts that actually performed — not just the ones that happened to get a lot of likes.

You can sort by viral score, most likes, most comments, or most views. You can filter by time period — last 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, or all time. If you want to narrow things down further, you can set a minimum engagement threshold too.

No scrolling. No spreadsheets. No manual calculations.

What to Do With That Information

Once you've identified their top posts, look for the pattern.

Ask yourself:

Format — Are they Reels, carousels, or single images? If their top posts are all carousels and you've never posted one, that's worth testing.

Hook — What does the first frame or the first line of the caption do? Does it ask a question? Make a bold claim? Lead with a relatable problem?

Topic — Is there a subject that keeps appearing in their highest-performing content? That's not a coincidence — that's what their audience came for.

Length — Are their top posts short and punchy or detailed and educational? Both can work, but your audience will consistently tell you which they prefer through their engagement.

You're not building a copy of their content strategy. You're using their data — which reflects real audience behaviour — to inform your own creative decisions.

A Real-World Example of How This Plays Out

Say you're a personal trainer trying to grow on Instagram. You search three accounts in your space.

One of them has 47,000 followers. Their top posts by viral score are all the same format: a client result, a short caption that starts with the client's specific struggle, and ends with a question inviting comments.

You've been posting workout videos and tip carousels for six months and wondering why nothing's clicking.

That's your answer. The audience isn't there for the exercises. They're there for the transformation story.

One search. A completely different content direction — backed by actual data instead of a guess.

The Bottom Line

You don't need to guess what's working on Instagram. The data is already out there — it's just buried inside other accounts where Instagram's interface makes it nearly impossible to surface efficiently.

The smartest content creators aren't the ones who post the most. They're the ones who study what already works, and then apply that insight to their own voice and their own audience.

Viral Finder gives you 3 free searches to start — no credit card required. Type in any public username and see their top-performing posts ranked by viral score.

Your next piece of content deserves better than a coin flip.

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Stop guessing what works. Start discovering top-performing content instantly.

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