How to find someone on Instagram

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 
2. First thing first: a bit about the Instagram search bar
3. Find Someone on Instagram By Username
4. Find Someone on Instagram By Real Name
5. Check Friends of Friends
6. Search By Places
7. Search By Hashtags
8. Find Someone Using an Email Address
9. Use Instagram’s “Discover People” Feature
10. Find Someone Using Instagram Bio Keywords
11. Find Someone By a Phone Number
12. Sync Your Facebook Contacts
13. Use an Influencer Discovery Tool
14. Find Someone by Photo (Reverse Image Search)
15. Check Link-in-Bio Tools
16. Bonus Tip: Just Ask Them!
17. Why You Might Not Be Able to Find Someone
18. What to Do If You Still Can’t Find Them
19. How to Find Your Target Audience on Instagram
20. Conclude

‍

Finding someone on Instagram sounds simple, but it isn’t.

You type a name, hit search, and suddenly you’re staring at hundreds of profiles that all look vaguely right… or completely wrong. Maybe it’s an old school friend, a coworker you lost touch with, or a creator whose content you remember but whose username you don’t.

If you’ve ever been in that situation, you’re not alone. Scrolling endlessly, opening profiles one by one, hoping something clicks. 

With so many users on Instagram, tracking down the right account can be tricky. The good news is, Instagram gives you more ways to find people than most users realize. Some are obvious, others are buried in settings, and a few require a bit of creativity. In this guide, we’ll walk through every practical method from basic searches to advanced tools, so you can track down the right account without wasting time.

First thing first: a bit about the Instagram search bar

Before you jump into finding people, you should understand IG’s search bar. Look for the icon of a magnifying glass at the bottom of the app. Clicking this opens the search and discover page.

At the very top, you see the search bar and beneath that the content that Instagram recommends based on your search. The default content appears based on your habits using the app, but let’s ignore that for now.

I want to draw your attention to the five tabs that appear when you enter a search query. If you type in a name or word and hit Search, you’ll see five tabs appear:

1. Top - This shows a mix of accounts, hashtags, and places. IG shows you things you’ve recently searched or interacted with, plus what it thinks you might like to find.  
2. Accounts - Only accounts. People you follow or interact with regularly, celebrities, or popular influencers and brands towards the top.
3. Audio - Audio clips that match your query in some way. These are often used to create IG reels, and aren’t really helpful for finding people.
4. Tags - Popular hashtags related to your search query.
5. Places - Geotags, or locations that are taggable on Instagram. The locations that appear will contain the word(s) contained in your query.

‍Instagram’s algorithm uses your past behavior to predict what or who you’re looking for and displays what it thinks is most relevant first. Keep that in mind when learning how to find someone on Instagram.

Find Someone on Instagram by Username

If you already know their exact username or even part of it, this is the fastest method.

Steps:

1. Open Instagram
2. Tap the search icon (magnifying glass)
3. Enter the username in the search bar
4. Switch to the Accounts tab
5. Look for profile photos, bios, or follower counts that match
   

💡 Tip: Try variations with dots, underscores, or numbers. Many people add these when their preferred username is taken.

Find Someone on Instagram by Real Name

If you don’t know someone’s handle, try searching for their actual name. They may have included it in their name or bio section on Instagram.

Instagram also indexes names, not just usernames.

1. Go to the search tab
2. Type the person’s full name or first name
3. Open the Accounts section
4. Check bios, profile photos, and locations
   

This works especially well for:

• Professionals
• Creators
• Business accounts

Me searching for songstress Phoebe Bridgers. The blue check lets me know which account is the real her.

Check friends of friends

Maybe you can’t find the person you’re looking for, but you follow someone who knows them (or who might know them). You could see if your target person is either following or followed by the person you already know.

1. Navigate to the profile of the person who you’re already connected with.
2. Click on their followers, and/or following (you can try both here).
3. Search for the name of the person you ultimately want to find.

You can also just DM the person you do know to see if they know the handle of the person you want to find.

What I’d do if I wanted to find someone who was a friend of @maple_the_mini_.

Search by places

If you don’t have any luck with the above methods, you could try to find someone via Places. Be warned, this will be a bit more difficult. But you can try to find someone based on the places that they might have tagged.

Do you know where the person is from? Maybe what their favorite hang-out place is? Where they go to the gym, or where they’ve just been on vacation?

Searching in Heepsy’s hometown, Bilbao.

‍If so, try searching those locations on the Instagram search page.

1. Click the magnifying glass to go to Search.
2. Enter the name of the place where you think you might find the person.
3. Click the Places tab.
4. Look through the content and see if you spot them.

Remember you can only find people this way if they have recently posted on IG and tagged the location you’re searching. Now, this might work for small towns or specific restaurants.

But if you’re trying to find someone in a huge city like New York or London, you’ll have a tough time. With so many people posting and tagging those places, finding your target will be like finding a needle in a haystack.

Search by hashtags

Hashtags work like keywords that people use to categorize their content for Instagram. If you post a picture of your new kitten and want other people who don’t follow you to be able to find that picture, you might use hashtags like #kitten, #catpics, or #kittensofinstagram.

If the person you’re trying to find is dedicated to some specific niche, you could potentially find them by searching for the right hashtags.

Examples:

• #nycphotographer
• #veganchef
• #startupfounder

Location tags like “London Soho” or “Toronto Downtown”

This is ideal if you know what they post, but not who they are.

1. Go to Search.
2. Type the tag into the search bar.
3. Click the Tags tab.
4. Take a look at the content that’s been tagged with that tag to see if you find the person you’re looking for.

This strategy will only really work if the target person belongs to some specific niche that doesn’t have a ridiculously high number of uses. But if you’re trying to find someone with the hashtag #dogs, which has 160M posts associated with it, good luck. You might also simply be out of luck if the person you want to find never uses hashtags.

Find Someone Using an Email Address

Instagram doesn’t allow direct email searches, but email syncing can still help.

How it works:

• If the person used their email to sign up
• And that email exists in your synced contacts
• Instagram may surface the account in suggestions
  

Steps:

1. Add the email address to your phone contacts
2. Enable contact syncing on Instagram

Check Discover People

Use Instagram’s “Discover People” Feature

Another way to find people is by using Instagram’s Discover people feature. This will suggest people who are in your network, usually because you share mutual contacts.

This is a good way to find someone on Instagram if you think that they’re connected to someone in your network but you’re not sure exactly who.

If you don’t have any connections whatsoever with the person you’re trying to find, they won’t show up here. But it only takes a minute to check, so it’s worth trying.

1. Go to your profile.
2. Click the person icon next to Edit Profile.
3. Click See all.
4. You can now see all the people Instagram suggests you connect with.

This works similarly to how you see recommended friends on Facebook, which is of course because Meta owns both platforms. Instagram will show you accounts who your friends already follow, accounts that follow your friends, and accounts that follow you but whom you haven’t followed back.

Find Someone Using Instagram Bio Keywords

Many users describe themselves clearly in their bios.

Try searching using Instagram bio search:

• Job titles
• Interests
• Cities
  
• Niches
  

Examples:

• “UX designer Berlin”
• “Fitness coach Mumbai”
• “Travel blogger Spain”
  

It's a search tactic, where bios often appear in results especially for public accounts.

Find Someone By a Phone Number

If you have the person’s phone number but not their Instagram handle, you can find them by syncing your phone’s contacts to Instagram.

1. Go to your Instagram profile.
2. Click the three lines icon at the top right.
3. Go to Settings → Account → Contact Syncing
4. Enable contact syncing
5. Return to your profile and tap Discover People

Instagram will suggest accounts linked to synced numbers.

⚠️ Privacy note: This only works if both users have contact syncing enabled.

Sync your Facebook contacts

How to find someone on Instagram if you’re already friends on Facebook? Good news: you can also sync Facebook contacts.

Instagram and Facebook are closely connected.

1. Follow the steps above to go to Discover People.
2. At the top, look for the Facebook icon.
3. Click Connect. Or, if your accounts are already linked, Sync.

If your IG and FB accounts are already connected but your contacts aren’t updated, you’ll see the Sync options instead of Connect.

Once that’s all set up, your Discover People will show you people you’re friends with on Facebook but not on Instagram.

This method is useful for finding:

• Old friends
• Classmates
• Colleagues

Use an influencer discovery tool

If the person you want to find is an influencer (meaning they have a few thousand followers), you might be able to find them using an influencer discovery tool. These tools are mostly designed for brands, though some social media users also use them to find influencers to collaborate with.

Manual search can be exhausting.

Influencer discovery platforms let you filter by:

• Location
• Category
• Audience size
• Bio keywords
• Engagement metrics
  

This approach is especially useful if you’re searching for a specific type of account, not a specific person.

‍

Find Someone by Photo (Reverse Image Search)

Have their photo but no name?

Another way to find someone is by reverse searching their picture. Reverse image search is when you input an image to find someone’s information, instead of running a search query to find images of the person.

1. Save their image
2. Go to Google Images.
3. Click the camera icon to access Search by image.
4. Check if the photos that match appears on Instagram or other platforms
5. Follow profile links if available

Do a Google search

When in doubt, turn to Google. If you can’t find someone on Instagram, search for them on Google. Try searching for their name, nickname, location, profession, hobby, and combinations of these.

An example of how you could try to find someone on Instagram using Google.

‍With the whole power of Google behind you, you’ll get much more thorough results than just on Instagram. And one of those results might be an Instagram page! Or, you might get the clues you need to piece together where to find that person on Instagram.

This isn’t guaranteed but it can work for creators or public figures.

Check Link-in-Bio Tools (Linktree, Taplink, Beacons)

Many users link their Instagram profiles elsewhere.

If you know:

• Their website
• YouTube channel
• Twitter/X profile

Look for tools like:

• Linktree
• Taplink
• Beacons

These often contain direct Instagram links.

Bonus Tip: Just Ask Them!

If you’re learning how to find someone on Instagram, it’s probably because you don’t want to ask that person for their handle. In some cases, maybe you don’t want the person to know you’re looking for them.

Whatever, I won’t judge. That’s your business, and we’ve all social media stalked someone at some point.

via GIPHY

Sometimes the simplest solution works best.

But if you really want to find this person, why not just ask them for their IG? Nowadays it’s so common for people to trade Instagrams, LinkedIns, TikToks, Facebooks, Discords, Twitches, and so on. So why not just ask them if they have an Instagram account and spend the time you’d use searching on something else?

Why you might not be able to find someone on Instagram

If all your searches fail, consider why you can’t find this person on Instagram. It could be for a variety of reasons, and some of them don’t have anything to do with your skills as an Instagram detective.

• They don’t have an account. 1 billion people use Instagram, but there are still another 7 billion people on the planet.
• You spelled their name or username wrong. Remember some names have various spellings. Are they Amy or Aimee? John or Jon?
• Their account did exist, but it was deleted, suspended, or blocked. Maybe they chose to get rid of their IG account, or maybe the network banned them for some reason.
• They might be shadowbanned. Maybe you KNOW that the person you want to find was posting on Instagram recently, but you can’t find them for the life of you. It could be that while their account still exists, they’ve been shadowbanned. This means their profile and content won’t appear in searches.
• There’s a bug affecting search. Instagram is a massive company, but even huge companies sometimes have problems with their tech. If anything else seems off while you’re searching, Instagram might coincidentally be suffering from a bug while you’re searching.

What to Do If You Still Can’t Find Them

Try these alternatives:

• Search other platforms (LinkedIn, Twitter/X, TikTok)
• Look through mutual followers
• Respect privacy and avoid aggressive searching
  

Not everyone wants to be found and that’s okay.

How to Find Your Target Audience on Instagram

Sometimes you’re not looking for one specific person, you’re trying to find a type of audience.

Maybe you want to connect with:

• Fitness creators in London
• Small business owners in the US
• Vegan food bloggers in Europe
• Tech founders posting about SaaS
  

In those cases, typing random names into Instagram search won’t get you very far.

Here’s how people usually do it and where it starts to break down.

1. Start With Manual Instagram Search (Good for Exploration)

Instagram’s search works reasonably well for initial discovery.

You can try:

• Hashtags related to your niche (e.g., #nycfitness, #saasfounder)
• Location tags for specific cities or countries
• Bio keywords like job titles, interests, or industries
• Exploring the followers of similar creators or brands
  

This helps you understand what kind of profiles exist in your space.

But it gets messy quickly.

You can’t easily:

• Filter by location + niche together
• See audience size or engagement quality
• Compare profiles side by side
• Scale beyond a few manual searches
  

That’s usually where people hit a wall.

2. Narrow Down Your Audience Using Filters (Where Tools Help)

If your goal is to find relevant creators or audiences at scale, filters matter.

Instead of guessing, you typically want to narrow things down by:

• Country or city
• Content category (fashion, fitness, tech, travel, etc.)
• Follower range (micro vs large creators)
• Engagement rate (to avoid inactive accounts)
  

This is where influencer discovery platforms become useful.

For example, tools like Heepsy let you search Instagram creators using filters such as:

• Location
• Niche or category
• Audience demographics
  
• Follower count
• Engagement metrics
  

So instead of asking “Who should I follow?”, you’re answering:

“Show me creators in this niche, in this location, with this type of audience.”

That’s a much clearer starting point.

3. When This Approach Makes the Most Sense

Finding your target audience this way is especially helpful if you:

• Work in marketing or growth
• Manage influencer campaigns
• Research competitors or creators
• Want to connect with a very specific community
  

Manual Instagram search is fine for casual use.
But once you care about relevance, accuracy, and time, filtering becomes essential.

Conclude

Finding someone on Instagram doesn’t have to be frustrating.

You can search by:

• Username or real name
• Phone number or email
• Hashtags, locations, and bio keywords
• Contacts, Facebook friends, or photos
• External tools and platforms
  

Start simple, then work your way through advanced methods if needed. With the right approach, you’ll usually find the account you’re looking for—or know when it’s time to stop searching.