You can't filter an Instagram feed by views, likes, or comments using anything Instagram ships — profile grids, hashtag pages, and Reels feeds are all locked into the order Instagram chooses. The workaround is a free Chrome extension called FeedRama, which adds a sort panel to instagram.com and reorders any public feed by whichever engagement metric you pick.
If you've ever opened a big account and wondered "which of these 400 posts actually performed?", this is the missing feature. Here's how it works, which metric answers which question, and where the filtering applies beyond plain profiles.
The short answer
Add FeedRama to Chrome, open any public Instagram profile or feed, and choose a metric — views, likes, comments, shares, saves, or date. The grid reorders on the spot, best performers first.
Add FeedRama to Chrome — freeWhat Instagram lets you filter natively (not much)
Instagram's only real feed controls live on your home feed, where you can switch between the algorithmic default, Following, and Favorites. That's it. On a profile you get three content tabs — posts, Reels, tagged — but no way to reorder anything inside them. Hashtag and explore pages are fully algorithmic. Even your own professional dashboard only sorts your content, not anyone else's.
So when people search for "filter Instagram feed," they usually mean one of two things: tidy up my home feed (use Following/Favorites), or rank a feed by performance — and that second one needs a browser extension.
How to filter any Instagram feed with FeedRama
- Install FeedRama from the Chrome Web Store. It's free, and you don't need to create an account to start sorting.
- Open the feed you want to filter. A public profile, a Reels tab, a hashtag page, a search result, explore, or your own saved posts — all work on instagram.com in desktop Chrome.
- Pick your metric. In the FeedRama panel, choose views, likes, comments, shares, saves, or date, and the feed instantly reorders with the numbers displayed on every post.
- Act on the results. Open the winners, save them into research folders, or select several to download or transcribe in one batch.
The free plan includes unlimited sorts across the previous 25 posts or the previous week — enough to answer "what's working lately?" on any account. Pro lifts the range so you can filter an entire multi-year archive; see the Instagram feed sorter page for the full breakdown.
Views, likes, comments, saves: which filter answers which question?
Each metric is a different lens, and picking the wrong one gives you misleading answers. A rough guide:
| Filter by | What it measures | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Views | Raw reach — how many people the algorithm showed it to | Finding an account's breakout Reels |
| Likes | Broad, low-effort approval | Quick read on general resonance |
| Comments | Conversation and controversy | Spotting hooks and topics that provoke replies |
| Saves | Utility — content people want to come back to | Identifying high-value educational posts |
| Shares | Word-of-mouth spread | Finding relatable or send-to-a-friend content |
A post with modest likes but heavy saves is often more strategically interesting than a viral one — it means the content is useful enough to bookmark. Comment-heavy posts are valuable for a different reason: the comments themselves hold the objections and follow-up questions an audience wants answered, which is a free list of content ideas. We dig deeper into like-based ranking in How to Sort Instagram Posts by Likes on Any Account.
It's not just profiles: Reels, hashtags, explore, and saved posts
The same filter panel works across most public surfaces on instagram.com. Sort a hashtag page by likes to see the strongest posts in a topic, filter a creator's Reels tab by views to find their biggest hits (a full walkthrough is in How to Find a Creator's Best-Performing Instagram Reels), or reorder your own saved posts by engagement to rediscover the best things you've bookmarked. Search results and explore work too — useful when you're mapping a niche rather than a single account.
Two combinations come up constantly in practice: sorting a competitor's Reels tab by views to reverse-engineer their reach, and sorting a hashtag you're about to post into by likes to see the engagement bar you'd be competing against. The saved-posts sort is the sleeper feature — most people's bookmarks are a graveyard, and re-ranking them by engagement instantly resurfaces the ones that were actually worth keeping.
Can you do this on your phone?
Honestly: no. The Instagram app has no performance filters, and FeedRama only runs in desktop Google Chrome. If you just want to casually browse, the app is fine as it is. But filtering feeds is fundamentally a research activity — comparing dozens of posts, taking notes, exporting numbers — and that work is faster on a laptop anyway. Do the analysis on desktop; post from your phone. A practical rhythm many creators settle into: one filtered research session at the laptop on Monday, then a week of posting informed by what the numbers actually said rather than what the feed happened to show them.
From filtered feed to actual research
Filtering is usually step one of something bigger. Once a feed is sorted, FeedRama lets you select multiple posts and process them together — download them, transcribe the videos to text, or (on Pro) export everything to CSV with URLs, dates, captions, and every engagement number. That turns "I scrolled and got a vibe" into a spreadsheet you can defend in a content meeting.
FAQ
Can you filter an Instagram feed by likes?
Not with Instagram's own controls — profile grids are fixed in reverse-chronological order. The FeedRama Chrome extension adds a sort panel to instagram.com that reorders any public feed by likes, views, comments, shares, saves, or date.
Does Instagram have any built-in feed filters?
Only on your home feed, where you can switch to Following or Favorites. Profiles, hashtag pages, and Reels feeds have no filtering or sorting options for performance metrics.
Which Instagram metric is best to filter by?
It depends on the question. Views measure reach, likes measure broad approval, comments measure conversation, and saves signal content people want to return to. For research, saves and comments are often the strongest indicators of value.
Can I filter someone else's Instagram profile?
Yes, as long as the account is public. FeedRama reads the same publicly visible numbers you'd see by tapping each post — it just reorders them for you. Private accounts can't be sorted.
Is there a way to filter Instagram feeds on iPhone?
The Instagram app doesn't offer it, and FeedRama is a desktop Chrome extension, so not directly. Most people run their filtering and research on a computer, then apply what they learn when posting from their phone.