What does the Instagram repost button do?
ยท Ethan Parker, Editor
Tap repost and the post lands on a Reposts tab on your profile, still under the original name. Who sees it, and where the likes actually count.
Tapping the repost button puts someone else's post on a Reposts tab on your profile, where your followers and anyone visiting your profile can see it. It does not land in your grid, and it does not become your post.
The exception is the part people miss, and it changes what the button is for. A repost is a pointer, not a copy. The post keeps the original creator's name on it, and every view, like, share and save it collects through your repost is counted on their post, not on yours.
The mechanic takes five seconds to check. Open any post and look at the row of icons under it, beside the heart and the speech bubble. The repost icon is two arrows curved into a loop. Tap it, confirm, and the repost is live. If that icon is not there, that is a separate question with its own answers.
What happens when you tap repost?
Three things happen at once, and only the first one is obvious.
The post is filed on a Reposts tab on your profile, sitting alongside your grid, your reels and your tagged tab rather than inside any of them. It becomes eligible to appear in your followers' feeds, labelled as a repost with your name attached to that label. And the original post gains one repost on its own counter, which the creator can see.
What does not happen: nothing is copied. Your repost is a live window onto their post. If they delete it, archive it or switch their account to private, your repost stops showing anything, because there is nothing left to point at.
Where does the repost show up on your profile?
On its own tab, not in your grid. Your profile has never been one shelf. It carries a grid, a reels tab, a tagged tab and, on accounts that have the feature, a reposts tab, with highlights sitting above all of them under your bio.
That separation is deliberate. Your grid is meant to read as your work. The reposts tab is meant to read as your taste. Anyone can open the tab and scroll it, so a repost is a public statement even when nobody in your feed happens to see it that day. The longer version of which reshares land where is in where each kind of reshare goes.
Who sees a repost?
Two groups. Your followers may see it in their feed, marked as a repost rather than presented as yours. And anyone who visits your profile and opens the reposts tab sees the whole list, whether they follow you or not, as long as your account is public.
The creator sees it too. They get a repost count on the post, and a repost is one of the few reshare actions that leaves a name attached rather than a bare number. How the various reshare counters are tallied is covered in how Instagram counts shares. So a repost is not a quiet act. Treat it as something you are happy to have next to your name.
Do the likes and views count for you?
No. They count for the original post. This is the single most useful thing to understand about the button, so it is worth being blunt: a repost is generosity, not growth. You spend some of your audience's attention on work that is not yours, and the numbers that result show up in somebody else's Insights.
That is not a flaw. It is the whole design. A pointer that quietly credited the person who pressed the button would let anyone farm engagement off other people's work. Because the counting follows the original, the creator is the one who benefits when their post travels, which is the behaviour Instagram wants to encourage.
Repost and re-upload are not the same thing
Downloading a post and uploading it again looks similar and behaves nothing alike. That version is a brand new post of yours. It sits in your grid, it carries your caption, and its likes and views are yours.
It also starts cold. A new post generally goes out to a small first slice of people, and travels further only if that slice reacts, and a copy usually does worse than the original did, because the people most likely to react have already seen it once. Add the credit problem on top, and re-uploading is rarely the clever shortcut it looks like. Reposting also sits next to several other actions that all get called sharing, and what a share on Instagram means separates them.
What the repost button does not do
- It does not copy the post. Delete the original and your repost goes blank.
- It does not put anything in your grid. The grid stays your own posts only.
- It does not give you the likes, views or saves. Those stay on the original post.
- It does not notify your followers individually. It is eligible for their feed, which is not the same as guaranteed to appear in it.
- It does not add a caption of your own. A repost carries the original caption, not your commentary.
Can you take a repost back, and what if the button is missing?
Yes, a repost can be removed, and the original post is unaffected when you do. The button works as a toggle: open the post again, or find it on your own reposts tab, and tap the same two-arrow icon a second time. The repost comes off your tab and the creator's repost count drops back by one.
If the icon is simply not on your app, that is common and it is usually not a fault. The feature has rolled out unevenly across app versions, account types and countries, and any individual account can also switch resharing off for its own posts. Update the app, check the post is from a public account, and look along the whole share row before deciding the feature is broken. The reliable instruction is to trust your own share row over any article, this one included, because the layout keeps moving.
So should you use it?
Use it when you actually want the other person to do well, or when your taste is part of what people follow you for. A curator's reposts tab is a real reason to visit a profile. Use it knowing the arithmetic: their post gains, your account gains goodwill and very little else.
If reach on your own work is the goal, reposting is not the lever. Your own posting rhythm is, and the way people find the door is through saves and sends rather than through your reposts tab. ReachGrows delivers reach, views, likes, shares, reposts and saves. It does not touch Instagram Stories. It also only covers the feed posts and reels you publish yourself during the month, so a repost of somebody else's post gets nothing from it, and neither does a story reshare. The FAQ lists what is and is not included.
- What does the Instagram repost button do? It files someone else's post on a Reposts tab on your profile and makes it eligible for your followers' feeds, still under their name.
- Does a repost go in my grid? No. The grid stays your own posts. Reposts sit on their own tab.
- Do I get the likes and views? No. Every like, view, share and save from your repost counts on the original post.
- Can the creator tell? Yes. They see a repost count on the post, and they can look at who reposted it.
- What if the original is deleted? Your repost goes blank, because it points at the post rather than copying it.
- Is reposting the same as re-uploading? No. A re-upload is a new post of yours, with your grid, your caption and your numbers.