How to Find Trending Hashtags on Instagram

Instagram doesn’t publish a list of trending hashtags, so you find them by searching a topic, opening the Tags results to compare how many posts each hashtag has, and checking whether its newest posts are recent and getting engagement. Since December 2025 you can use at most 5 hashtags per post or reel, so picking the right ones matters more than adding many.

A hashtag is trending when a lot of new posts use it in a short time, not just when it has a huge total. This hub covers how to spot that, how many tags to use, and links to guides on searching hashtags and trending audio. Every other Instagram guide starts from how to search on Instagram.

How Many Hashtags Can You Use on Instagram?

You can use up to 5 hashtags on a post or reel. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri announced the cap in December 2025, saying a few specific tags perform better than a long list of generic ones, and that hashtags help with search but don’t necessarily increase reach (Digital Trends). Guides recommending 20 or 30 hashtags predate the change.

How Do You Find Trending Hashtags on Instagram?

Search your topic, compare the hashtags in the Tags results, and open each one to see how fresh its posts are. Listed below are the 5 steps.

1. Tap the magnifying glass and type your topic.
2. Open the Tags results to see related hashtags and their post counts.
3. Open a hashtag and look at its newest posts.
4. Check how recent they are and how much engagement they get.
5. Repeat for related tags and shortlist the ones that are active and specific.

How Do You Tell If a Hashtag Is Trending?

A hashtag is trending when many new posts use it each day and those posts get engagement; a huge total post count alone only shows it’s popular, not rising. The table shows how to read what you see.

Signal	Trending tag	Established or crowded tag
Newest posts	Minutes or hours old	Days old
Total posts	Often modest, growing fast	Very large, growing slowly
Engagement on new posts	Strong	Mixed
Topic	Tied to a moment, event or format	Generic, such as #love

Which Hashtags Should You Use?

With only 5 slots, use specific hashtags that describe the post, rather than the biggest tags. A useful mix is one or two niche tags, one for the content format, one for your community or location, and a trending tag only when it truly fits. Searching several tags together is covered in how to search multiple hashtags on Instagram.

What Else Trends on Instagram?

Audio trends move faster than hashtags on Instagram, especially on reels. The Audio tab in search shows how many reels use a sound, and a rising count is the clearest trend signal Instagram gives you. The full method is in how to find trending audio on Instagram.

How to Measure Hashtag Trends With apidojo

To see whether a hashtag is actually rising, count its new posts per day; apidojo’s Instagram Hashtag Scraper on Apify collects a hashtag’s posts and reels with their dates, likes, comments and hashtags list, and its until input limits results to posts created on or after a date. The until filter works most reliably with posts only (Apify).

{
  "keyword": "marathontraining",
  "getPosts": true,
  "getReels": false,
  "until": "2026-10-01",
  "maxItems": 1000
}

Each hashtag query costs $0.016 and includes the first 60 posts, then $0.0004 per post, so 1,000 posts from one hashtag cost about $0.39. Checking hashtags on a schedule is covered in how to monitor Instagram hashtags and brand mentions.