Definition
What the Instagram top nine decides
The top nine is a ranking, not a collage. Three things make the ranking: the window, the posts, and the metric.
1. The window
Posts published between 1 January and 31 December of the year. A December 2025 post that kept collecting likes does not belong to the 2026 recap.
2. The posts
Images, carousels and Reels shared to the feed. A carousel is one post, regardless of how many slides it contains. Stories are not part of the ranking: they expire, and they have no public counters.
3. The metric
| Metric | What it rewards | Typical result |
|---|---|---|
| Likes | Reach | Broadest posts; the safest recap |
| Saves | Usefulness | Guides, recipes, references |
| Comments | Conversation | Posts you had forgotten |
The two traps
Missing counters. Instagram does not always expose every metric. A post with an unknown counter must stay unknown — if it becomes a zero, it silently falls out of the nine and nobody can tell afterwards.
Stale numbers. A count is a snapshot. Build the card in the last week of December; a ranking made in November is already out of date.
Who can build it automatically
Instagram returns per-post counters for Creator and Business accounts through its API. Personal accounts do not expose them, which is why automatic recaps require the optional account connection — and why most tools ask you to pick photos instead.
If a recap cannot tell you which metric it used, it is not a ranking.
Does Instagram provide the top nine?
No. It is a community ritual built by third-party apps or by hand.
Which posts count?
Feed posts published during the year: images, carousels and Reels. Stories are excluded.
Which metric is the default?
Likes, because it is the oldest public number. Saves and comments are usually more revealing.
Keep reading
The app builds this card from your published posts.
Prevz reads your Instagram account (optional, read-only), ranks your nine by likes, saves or comments, and exports a Story at 1080 × 1920 or a Post at 1080 × 1350.
Open Prevz for iPhone