From our creator index
- 22,393
- Instagram creators indexed
- 93.2%
- of the whole index
- beauty
- largest category, 4,045 creators
- 1,706
- median followers, whole index
- 31%
- under 1,000 followers
- 32.1%
- with a portfolio link
Snapshot of 14 September 2026. Every figure counts creators that passed the app's own UGC qualification gate; the index holds no engagement or rate fields, so none are quoted. Creator listed here? Request removal: hello@ugcagent.app.
Twenty two thousand creators deep, and what that does to your positioning
22,393 of the profiles we have qualified sit on Instagram, which is 93.2% of the index, against 1,639 on TikTok. The categories go deep rather than wide: beauty alone holds 4,045 profiles, fitness 3,040, parenting 1,690, home 1,209 and food 903. Nobody is short of supply here.
Part of why this platform dominates is that profiles here declare themselves. The work goes in the name field, the address sits behind a contact button, the link points at a page with files on it, and all of that is legible to anything scanning for proof of commercial work. The rest is buying habit: the teams commissioning this format have been briefing it here for years and their templates assume it.
For you the consequence is uncomfortable but useful. Calling yourself a beauty creator on Instagram puts you in a queue four thousand deep. Calling yourself a creator who films fragrance rituals for men, or who shoots skincare on textured, acne-prone skin in bathroom light, puts you in a queue of dozens. Narrow until a brand searching for a specific demonstration has to consider you, then widen later once you are being rebooked.
| What they open | What they are checking | What ends it there |
|---|---|---|
| Name field and bio | A category and a deliverable stated in nouns | Slogans, emoji, no mention of brand work |
| Contact button | An address a real email can reach | No button, or direct messages only |
| Top three posts | Product held, spoken about, filmed in a real room | Reposted brand assets or pure lifestyle shots |
| Recent nine | The same category repeated across weeks | One product per category, or four months of silence |
| Link in bio | Files they can watch without asking permission | A dead link, or a request-access page |
The top three and the link are the two you can fix this afternoon.
Reels, stills and carousels: what actually changes hands
A brand is buying files with permissions attached, not a post. The same shoot usually yields three saleable things, and creators who deliver only one of them leave money on the table. Vertical video is the ad asset. A set of stills from the same session feeds the feed grid and retargeting. A carousel sequence explains a product that needs steps rather than a reveal.
Shoot with that in mind. Filming a linen bedding set means the wide shot of the made bed, but also the close hand pulling a corner taut, the crumple test, and a still of the fabric with morning light raking across it. A ceramic planter needs the repot in sequence and one clean product photograph against a plain wall. A toddler snack pouch needs the cap coming off one-handed, the mess that follows, and a flat still of the box so a paid social team has something to place a price on.
Price the pieces separately. The 2026 planning estimates we publish put a thirty to sixty second video at roughly $195 for a nano creator and $295 for a micro creator, and a set of five photographs at about $175 and $225 respectively. Treat all of those as starting ranges for a scope conversation, not as rates anyone owes you. One caution specific to this platform: a Reel you cut over a track from the in-app audio library is not a licensable ad asset, so keep a version with only your own voice and sound.
The account settings that put you in front of a buyer
Three switches do most of the work. Turning on a professional account exposes a contact button with a real email behind it, which is the difference between being reachable and being a name someone gave up on. The paid partnership label is the platform's own way of saying that money or product changed hands, visible above the caption where nobody has to hunt for it; plenty of agreements now require it, and a declaration a viewer has to dig for counts for nothing with the bodies that police advertising. None of that is legal advice, only orientation.
The third is insights. There is no engagement column in our data and no fee column either, by design. A brand searching it learns your category, your platform and roughly how large you are, and learns nothing at all about how your posts perform or what you charge. Every performance claim in the conversation therefore arrives from you. That is why a screenshot of retention on one specific Reel, or saves on one specific carousel, earns its place in a media kit: the buyer has no other route to it.
One more thing that decides whether you are searchable at all. The name field, the one above the bio, is indexed differently from the bio text. Putting the category in it costs nothing and is read by both people and crawlers.
The grid review, in the order it actually happens
Assume forty seconds of attention from someone with a shortlist of thirty profiles open in tabs. They are not reading you generously; they are looking for a reason to close the tab. The sequence below is what that pass looks like, and the last column is what ends it.
Filming habits that survive a brand's edit
Brands recut nearly everything they buy, so shoot for the person holding the timeline. Give a full second of stillness at the head and tail of every clip. Keep the product label facing camera even when it feels unnatural, because a rotated label is unusable in a frame someone wants to freeze. Film the same action twice, once wide enough to show your face and the room, once tight on hands.
Then stay boring about file handling. Name exports with the brand, the format and the version. Deliver through a link that does not expire in a week. Hold the untouched clips for a year, because a buyer who comes back for raw footage is a buyer about to place a second order, and answering that request with an apology ends the relationship.
Questions
Does my Instagram need to be public for brands to find me?
Yes. Everything in our index comes from profiles that were publicly readable at crawl time, so a private account is invisible to this kind of sourcing regardless of how good the work is. If you want a private personal account as well, keep it separate from the one you use for client work.
Should I post the UGC I make for brands on my own grid?
Only if the agreement allows it and the brand has published its version first. Many contracts restrict where the footage may appear, and posting early can break an exclusivity window. When you can post it, label the partnership and keep it in a highlight so the work stays findable later.
Is it worth starting a fresh account just for UGC?
Usually yes if your existing account is a mixed personal feed, because the grid review above rewards consistency and punishes a scroll full of holidays and birthdays. Starting fresh costs you the follower count, which matters far less here than a legible category. Keep filming on both for a month and see which one a buyer would find easier to read.