How Long Do Bought Followers Actually Last? (30/90/365 Day Data)

The single most useful metric when evaluating a follower provider is the drop rate at 30 days. It separates real-account providers from bot batchers more reliably than any marketing claim. Here's what the data actually looks like.

The 30-day rate

Real-account providers hold under 5% at 30 days. Ours runs 3.7% on Instagram Followers as of Q2 2026. Bot-batch providers see 50-90% within the first week because Instagram's monthly integrity sweep removes flagged accounts en masse. The delta is the difference between a follower cohort you keep and a follower cohort you rent.

The 90-day rate

By 90 days, real-account cohorts have settled into organic churn — under 10% cumulative loss. Bot cohorts by this point are usually gone. If your count at day 90 is anywhere near your delivery count, you bought real accounts.

The 365-day rate

One year in, real-account followers hold at under 20% cumulative loss — that's the natural yearly churn any Instagram account experiences from users deleting accounts, going private, or switching interests. Bot cohorts are 0% by this point.

The refill window math

A 30-day auto-refill means any drops inside the window trigger a top-up without you doing anything. For real-account providers this handles the small natural churn. For bot providers this is theater: they refill your 5k bot batch with another 5k bot batch that gets swept the following month. The refill guarantee only matters if the underlying sourcing is real.