Instagram shows you posts in the order it chooses — newest first on a profile, algorithm-shuffled in the feed. What it never lets you do is the one thing you actually want when researching an account: sort by likes or views to see the best-performing posts first. Whether you're studying a competitor, planning content, or just curious what really landed, here's how to sort an Instagram feed by engagement.
Why You Can't Sort Instagram Natively
Open any Instagram profile and the grid is strictly reverse-chronological. There's no "sort by most liked" button, no filter, nothing. The same is true in your home feed, which is ranked by Instagram's algorithm for engagement-bait, not by raw numbers you can control. If you want to know an account's top posts, your only native option is to scroll the entire grid and eyeball the like counts one by one — slow and unreliable past a few dozen posts.
The Manual Way (and Why It Falls Apart)
You can, in theory, open each post, note the likes, and build a mental ranking. For an account with 30 posts that's tedious; for one with 500 it's hopeless. You'll lose track, miss posts, and the numbers blur together. Worse, on a phone you can't even see like counts on the grid thumbnails — you have to tap into every single post. It's the kind of task nobody actually finishes.
The Fast Way: Sort the Feed by Engagement
A browser extension solves this by reading the post data already on the page and reordering it for you. FeedRank adds a sort control to Instagram so you can rank any profile or feed by likes, comments, views, or date in one click. The top-performing posts jump to the front instantly, with the stats shown right on each thumbnail — no tapping into posts, no spreadsheet.
FeedRank — Instagram & TikTok Feed Sorter
FeedRank sorts any Instagram or TikTok feed by likes, views, comments or date — so the top, most viral content rises to the top in seconds. See stats on every thumbnail and download in one click. Free, right in your browser.
Try It Free →What Sorting by Engagement Reveals
Once the best posts are at the top, patterns you'd never spot by scrolling become obvious:
Sort your OWN profile by likes first. Seeing your top five posts side by side is the fastest content-strategy audit you can run — double down on whatever's already working.
Use It for Research, Not Just Curiosity
Sorting by engagement turns idle scrolling into actual research. Planning your next post? Sort a few accounts in your niche and study what tops their grids. Sizing up a competitor? Their best posts reveal their real strategy in two minutes — more in how to find top-performing posts for competitor research. And if you want the numbers behind each post, see how to see engagement stats on Instagram and TikTok.
Sort by Date and Comments, Not Just Likes
Likes are the obvious sort, but the other options answer different questions. Sorting by comments surfaces the posts that started conversations — often more valuable than passive likes, because comments signal content people felt compelled to respond to. Sorting by views (on reels and video) shows true reach rather than approval. And sorting by date both ways lets you see an account's very first posts or jump to its latest without endless scrolling. Switching between these views on the same profile tells a fuller story than any single metric — a post can be high in likes but low in comments, or vice versa, and each pattern means something different about how the content landed.
A Two-Minute Content Audit
Here's the fastest use of feed sorting on your own account. Sort your profile by likes and look at the top five posts together. Ask: what do they share? Same format, same topic, same posting time, same kind of hook? Then sort by your lowest performers and ask the opposite. In two minutes you've identified what your audience rewards and what falls flat — an audit that would otherwise take an afternoon of opening posts and jotting numbers. Repeat it monthly and let the data, not your gut, steer what you make next. Most people are surprised to find their assumptions about their "best" content are wrong.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you sort an Instagram profile by most likes?
Not with Instagram itself — profiles are reverse-chronological only. A browser extension that reads the page can reorder posts by likes, views, comments, or date.
Does sorting work on any account?
It works on public profiles and feeds whose posts you can already see. It simply reorders the data that's loaded on the page — it doesn't access anything private.
Do I need to log in or share my password?
No. A good sorting extension runs in your browser on Instagram pages you're already viewing. It never asks for your password.
Will it show like counts on the grid?
Yes — that's the point. Stats appear on each thumbnail so you can compare posts without opening them one by one.
The Bottom Line
Instagram hides the simple ability to sort by performance, which makes researching any account a scrolling chore. A feed sorter flips that: rank by likes or views, read the stats on every thumbnail, and the best posts — yours or anyone's — surface in seconds.
