How Long Instagram Takes to Send Your Data

Instagram gives no fixed deadline for sending your copy of information, and that is the first source of anxiety: you request your data, hours pass, and there is no way to tell whether the file is coming or the request vanished. The good news is that the waiting time depends mostly on one decision you make when requesting it — and almost nobody makes it correctly.

The short answer

If you request only "Followers and following" in JSON format, the file is usually ready within minutes, and at most within about 48 hours. If you request all of your information — photos, videos, messages, stories — the request joins the heavy queue and can take days, because Instagram has to package gigabytes of content.

In other words: what matters is not the size of your account but the size of what you asked for. An account with 50,000 followers that only requests its connections gets the file sooner than an account with 300 followers that asked for seven years of photos.

How to request only what you need

If your goal is finding out who does not follow you back, the connection lists are all you need. Here is the path in the app:

1. Open Instagram, go to your profile and tap the menu (three lines) → Accounts Center.
2. Go to Your information and permissions.
3. Tap Download your information, then Download or transfer information.
4. Select your account and choose Some of your information.
5. Tick only Followers and following, inside the connections block.
6. Choose Download to device.
7. In the options, select JSON format and the "All time" date range.

Step 7 is where most people slip, and it has consequences: the HTML format reads beautifully in a browser but is useless for analysis, so choosing it means starting over. We cover this in detail in the guide on choosing between JSON and HTML.

The email never arrives: the four real causes

Instagram notifies you by email and with an in-app notification when the file is ready. If more than 48 hours have passed since a small request, it is almost always one of these four things:

The email went to spam. By far the most common cause. The message comes from a Meta domain and many providers file it as promotional. Search your spam folder and the promotions tab for "information" or "download".

The Accounts Center email is not the one you think. Instagram sends the notice to the address registered in the Accounts Center, which on older accounts may be an address you no longer use, or one belonging to another linked platform. Check it under Accounts Center → Personal details → Contact info.

The request is ready and nobody told you. You do not need to wait for the email: you can check the status and download directly. Go back to Download your information and you will see your requests listed with their status. When one shows as available, the download button is right there.

The link expired. Generated files are not available forever: after a few days Instagram removes them and the link stops working. If you open the email a week later and nothing downloads, it is not broken — just request it again. Since a connections-only request takes minutes, it is no tragedy.

Download from a computer if you can

This detail saves trouble: even if you make the request from your phone, you can download the file on a computer by signing in through a browser and going to the same section. The ZIP lands in your downloads folder without passing through the phone's file manager, which on both Android and iOS sometimes unzips or renames things on its own.

If a phone is all you have, that is fine — the file works the same. Just avoid opening or extracting it with third-party apps before analysing it, because some of them rearrange the folder structure.

What to do while you wait

Nothing, honestly. Requesting again does not help: repeat requests join the queue and speed up nothing. If you asked for connections only and it has been less than 48 hours, your request is alive.

The one useful thing you can do is confirm you asked for the right format. If you selected HTML, the file will still arrive, but when you open it you will find web pages instead of data, and you will not be able to cross-reference them automatically. Better to find that out now than in two days.

When the file arrives

You will get a ZIP. Inside it, what you want lives in the connections/followers_and_following/ folder, with two main files: followers_1.json (who follows you) and following.json (who you follow). If your account has many followers, the first one is split into several: followers_1.json, followers_2.json, and so on. That detail matters more than it looks, and we explain it in the guide to the export files.

From there, finding out who does not follow you back is a list comparison: any account present in following.json but absent from the followers files is not following you back. You can do it by hand with a handful of accounts, or drop the ZIP into NomeSigueApp and see it instantly. The analysis runs inside your browser, so the file is never uploaded to any server and you never have to hand over your Instagram password.

Frequently asked questions

Does Instagram tell anyone that I downloaded my data?

No. A copy of your information is an access request for your own data and is a private operation. Nobody on your list receives any notification.

Can I request my data more than once?

Yes, with no practical limit. Many people repeat the request every few weeks to compare lists and track changes.

How large is the file if I only request connections?

Very small: kilobytes or a few megabytes even on large accounts, because these are text lists. The exports that weigh hundreds of megabytes are the ones including photos and videos.

Does it work if my account is private or professional?

Yes. The export works the same on private, public, creator and business accounts. It is the same mechanism for all of them.