How many hashtags should you use on Instagram Reels?

The short answer: five at most, because that is now the limit Instagram enforces on every post and Reel, and all five should genuinely describe what is in the video. The longer answer is worth reading, because the reason the number changed tells you what to do with the space you just freed up.

Why thirty used to work

For years, hashtags were the main way Instagram categorised a post. A hashtag page was a real destination people browsed, and the system leaned on those tags because it had limited ability to work out what a photo or video contained on its own. Stuffing thirty tags into a caption was a rational, if ugly, bet.

Two things ended that. Instagram's own classification of image and video content got dramatically better, and the recommendation feed replaced browsing as how most people encounter posts from accounts they do not follow. Once the system can see what is in the video and has a feed to place it in, a list of tags is no longer the primary evidence.

What Instagram has actually said

Instagram had said for years that adding hashtags unrelated to the content does not increase reach. In December 2025 it went further and began limiting the number of hashtags in a post or Reel caption to five, saying that a few targeted tags improve both a post's performance and the experience of the people browsing them. The thirty-tag block is not a strategy any more; it is simply not possible.

What replaced them

Caption text. Instagram search reads the words in your caption, and the recommendation system uses them as a strong signal about the subject of the post. This is the practical shift most creators have not made: the effort that used to go into building hashtag blocks is worth more spent on writing a caption that says, in plain words, what the video is.

• Put the subject of the video in the first line, in the words a person would search for.
• Write for a reader first. A caption that reads as keyword filler suppresses the comment and save behaviour that actually drives reach.
• Add up to five tags at the end: one broad category tag, two or three specific to the content, and one that names the niche or audience.
• Skip the tags that only attract accounts trying to farm follows. They watch nothing and they drag your retention average down.

Caption or first comment?

Caption. The first-comment habit exists because hashtag blocks looked untidy in the feed, not because of any reach advantage. With a set of five tags there is nothing to hide, and splitting tags between the caption and a comment only makes it harder to see how many you have used against the limit.

Restricted and broken tags

Instagram limits certain hashtag pages, and a tag can be quietly restricted without any announcement. You are unlikely to trip this if every tag you use describes your own video, which is another practical argument for a small hand-checked set over a pasted block you have never read.