# How to Find Who Doesn't Follow You Back on Instagram

To find who doesn't follow you back on Instagram, compare your Following list with your Followers list: anyone you follow who isn't in your followers doesn't follow you back.

[![apidojo](/blog/authors/apidojo.png)**Apidojo** *15+ years of experience in data retrieval.*](/blog/authors/apidojo/)

**16 October 2026** Published

**2 min** Read

![Cover card reading 'Find Who Doesn't Follow You Back on Instagram'](/blog/covers/not-following-back.png)

**To find who doesn’t follow you back on Instagram, compare your Following list with your Followers list: anyone you follow who isn’t in your followers doesn’t follow you back.** For one person, open their profile, tap Following, and search for your username. For your whole list, download your followers and following lists from your Instagram data and compare them in a spreadsheet. The other follower checks start from [how to see who unfollowed you on Instagram](/blog/instagram-followers/who-unfollowed-you/).

Instagram doesn’t offer a “not following back” filter, and apps that promise one usually want your password. This guide covers the safe methods. Finding unfollowers over time is covered in [how to see who unfollowed you on Instagram](/blog/instagram-followers/who-unfollowed-you/).

## How Do You Check If One Person Follows You Back?

**Open their profile, tap Following, and type your username in the search box at the top of the list.** If your account appears, they follow you. On a private account you can only see the list if they’ve approved you.

## How Do You Find Everyone Who Doesn’t Follow You Back?

**Download your followers and following lists, then compare them.** Listed below are the 4 steps.

1.  **Export** your data with the followers and following information selected; see [how to download your Instagram data](/blog/instagram-data/download-your-data/).
2.  **Open** the followers and following files from the export.
3.  **Copy** each list of usernames into its own spreadsheet column.
4.  **Find** usernames in Following that aren’t in Followers.

In Python, with each list saved as a text file of usernames, one per line:

```
followers = set(open("followers.txt").read().split())
following = set(open("following.txt").read().split())

not_following_back = sorted(following - followers)
print(len(not_following_back), "accounts don't follow you back")
print("\n".join(not_following_back))
```

Choosing JSON when you export makes the lists easier to extract than HTML.

## Are “Not Following Back” Apps Safe?

**Apps that ask for your Instagram password to show non-followers are risky: they get full access to your account, and automated activity can get your account restricted.** The data export does the same job without sharing your login.

## Should You Unfollow People Who Don’t Follow Back?

**Only if they’re not worth following for their own sake: brands, news accounts and creators rarely follow back, and that’s normal.** For personal accounts, a mismatch is more often a forgotten follow than a snub. Removing followers, rather than unfollowing, is done from your Followers list with the Remove option.

## How to Check a Public Account’s Lists With apidojo

**For a public account you manage, apidojo’s [Instagram User Scraper](https://apify.com/apidojo/instagram-user-scraper) on Apify exports both its followers and its following list with `getFollowers` and `getFollowings` switched on.** It costs $0.01 per profile plus $0.0005 per user returned, reads public data only, and never asks for your login (Apify). Verified accounts return only their first 50 followers, a limit Instagram sets. The developer guide is [how to scrape Instagram followers and following lists](/blog/instagram-scraping/scrape-followers/).

## The scrapers behind this

-   [Instagram Profile Scraper Profiles, followers, following and public emails; 40 profiles free per search $0.01 / profile + $0.50 / 1K](/scrapers/instagram-user-scraper/)

## Questions people ask

### Does Instagram show who doesn't follow you back?

No, there's no built-in list; compare your two lists instead.

### Does someone know if you check whether they follow you?

No, viewing someone's Following list doesn't notify them.

### Why did someone stop following me back?

They may have unfollowed, deactivated, or been removed by Instagram; see [how to see who unfollowed you on Instagram](/blog/instagram-followers/who-unfollowed-you/).

### Could they have blocked me instead?

Possibly; the signs are covered in [how to know if someone blocked you on Instagram](/blog/instagram-followers/who-blocked-me/).

## More on your Instagram followers

-   [How to See Who Unfollowed You on Instagram Instagram doesn't notify unfollows. Safe ways to check one person or everyone, and why unfollower apps put your account at risk.](/blog/instagram-followers/who-unfollowed-you/)
-   [How to Know If Someone Blocked You on Instagram The signs of an Instagram block, the check that confirms it, and how to tell a block from a deactivated, banned or renamed account.](/blog/instagram-followers/who-blocked-me/)

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