Hashtag advice ages badly, and most of what circulates is describing a version of Instagram that stopped existing several years ago. The short version: they still do something, the something is small, and the number is much lower than the number you were told.
Do hashtags still work on reels?
They work as a hint about what the video is, not as a way of reaching people.
The old model was a feed you followed plus hashtag pages you browsed, so a hashtag was a distribution channel — put the tag on, appear on the page, get seen. Reels are recommended rather than browsed. The system decides who sees a video by reading the video, and hashtag pages are a minor surface almost nobody browses.
Instagram's own public guidance has said for a while that three to five relevant hashtags is enough. That is not a compromise number designed to be polite; it reflects a system where the tag is one weak input among several strong ones.
How many should you use?
| Count | Effect | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Works fine | Acceptable |
| 3–5 | Slight categorisation help | Use this |
| 10–15 | No measurable gain | Harmless, pointless |
| 30 | No gain, looks spammy | Avoid |
The thirty-hashtag habit comes from the cap on a post, not from evidence. Nobody has shown a reach benefit from filling it, and a wall of tags under a caption reads as someone chasing the algorithm rather than talking to a reader.
Which hashtags?
Specific beats large, every time. A tag with forty million posts puts your video in a pile it will never surface from; a tag with fifty thousand describes your video accurately enough to be a useful signal.
| Type | Example shape | Worth using |
|---|---|---|
| Huge generic | #reels, #viral, #fyp | No |
| Broad niche | #homebaking | Sometimes |
| Specific niche | #sourdoughstarter | Yes |
| Format | #recipereel | Yes |
| Location | #lisbonbakery | Yes, if local |
| Branded | your own handle | Yes, one |
A workable set is two specific niche tags, one format tag, one location or audience tag, and your own. That is five, it describes the video honestly, and it takes ten seconds.
Do not use #viral, #fyp or #explorepage. They describe nothing, they are attached to billions of unrelated videos, and #fyp is TikTok's vocabulary anyway — which is a small tell that a video was cross-posted carelessly. Posting one video to Reels, TikTok and Shorts covers doing that properly.
Caption or first comment?
It makes no difference. This argument has been running for years and neither side has produced evidence, because there is nothing to find — Instagram reads both.
Put them in the caption. Hiding tags in a comment to keep the caption clean is a real aesthetic reason and the only one that matters; do it if you prefer how it looks, not because you think it performs better.
What actually decides who sees a reel
This is the part worth internalising, because it reallocates the ten minutes you were about to spend on hashtag research.
- Retention in the first second. The strongest signal by a distance. What the first three seconds have to do.
- Watch time and rewatches. A short video watched twice is a strong signal — one reason length is worth deciding deliberately.
- Sends and saves, which outweigh likes. The four numbers worth reading.
- What is visibly in the video — objects, scene, faces, on-screen text. Your captions and text overlays are read, and they categorise the video far more precisely than a tag does.
- The audio, which associates your video with everything else using that track. Trending audio: what it buys and what it costs.
- Account coherence. Nine videos about nine subjects give the system nobody to show the tenth to.
Hashtags sit somewhere below all six. That is the honest ranking, and it is why "which hashtags should I use" is almost always the wrong question from someone whose real problem is one of the first three.
Common mistakes
- Copy-pasting the same thirty tags onto every video. It categorises nothing, because it does not vary with the content.
- Tagging what you wish the video were about. A tag that mismatches the video teaches the system the wrong thing.
- Hashtag sets in a notes app. The habit outlives the accuracy; the set stops matching what you post.
- Tagging huge accounts or brands hoping to be noticed. It is not a reach mechanism and it reads badly.
- Believing a banned-hashtag list. Most circulating lists are years old and wrong.
Where the ten minutes should go instead
If hashtags are worth ten seconds a video and the first second is worth most of the reach, the useful change is one that gets you more attempts at that first second — because the hook that works is found by posting, not by planning.
That is a volume problem, and volume is a production problem. Four to seven videos a week is where accounts start moving, and it is unsustainable if each one is an hour on a timeline. Batch-creating reels is the workflow; Easy Reels is the tool underneath it — a track, a folder of clips and a template in, a finished 1080 × 1920 out, ten or twenty-five at a time, with the cuts on the beat because they came from the audio.
Then the ten seconds of hashtags is the last thing you do, which is roughly the attention it deserves.
Common questions
How many hashtags should I use on a reel?
Three to five, specific to the video, in the caption. More has no demonstrated benefit and thirty reads as spam to the only audience that matters — people.
Do hashtags still work on Instagram in 2026?
As a weak categorisation signal, yes. As a way of getting reach, no — that has been true for several years, and the system now reads the video, its on-screen text and its audio instead.
Should I put hashtags in the first comment?
It makes no measurable difference. Choose on how you want the caption to look.
Can hashtags get my reel shadowbanned?
Almost certainly not. Low reach on a new or broad account is the ordinary behaviour of a recommendation system with nothing to go on, and it looks identical from the inside to a punishment.
Do hashtags help a brand-new account?
Marginally, and less than narrowing your subject does. An account that posts one recognisable thing gets recommended; an account that posts nine unrelated things does not, whatever is in the caption.