TikTok vs Instagram:
where creators are in each European country

The ratio by country: TikTok creators per 100 Instagram creators

The simplest way to compare the two platforms is to count how many TikTok creators a market has for every 100 Instagram creators, using the same definition on both sides: accounts above 10,000 followers with more than 30% of their audience in the country.

Source: TANKE internal data, Instagram analyses and B2B data providers including Kolsquare and onsocial.ai. Data collected in November 2026.

Three groups appear:

• TikTok-first: Romania, France and Germany, with more creators on TikTok than on Instagram.
• Balanced: the United Kingdom (87) and Poland (85).
• Instagram-first: Italy (70), Greece (59), the Netherlands (56), Spain (51) and Portugal (39).

The United States, often used as the model for platform strategy, sits at 51: closer to Spain than to France.

Creator density on each platform

The ratio can be high because a market is strong on TikTok or because it is weak on Instagram. Density, the number of creators per 100,000 inhabitants, separates the two cases.

Source: TANKE internal data, Instagram analyses and B2B data providers including Kolsquare and onsocial.ai. Data collected in November 2026.

France is TikTok-first because of TikTok: its density of 140 is the highest of the ten markets, while its Instagram density is average. Germany is TikTok-first for the opposite reason: its TikTok density (73) is below average, but its Instagram density (66) is much lower still. Spain and Portugal combine a very dense Instagram scene with an ordinary TikTok one.

Who reaches one million followers

The two platforms do not produce large accounts at the same rate. In every large market, the share of creators above one million followers is higher on TikTok than on Instagram.

Source: TANKE internal data, Instagram analyses and B2B data providers including Kolsquare and onsocial.ai. Data collected in November 2026. Share of creators above 10k followers.

Across the ten markets, 0.9% of TikTok creators pass one million followers against 0.7% on Instagram. Follower counts are easier to build on TikTok, so a TikTok account of one million and an Instagram account of one million are not equivalent. Tiers should be compared within a platform, not across platforms.

YouTube, the third platform

YouTube has far fewer creators than the other two platforms, and its weight also depends on the country.

Source: TANKE internal data, Instagram analyses and B2B data providers including Kolsquare and onsocial.ai. Data collected in November 2026.

France has 17 YouTube channels for every 100 Instagram creators, four times the level of the United Kingdom (4). English-speaking audiences are shared with American channels, which leaves less room for local ones. Markets with their own language, such as France, Germany, Poland and Romania, keep a stronger local YouTube scene.

How to use this in a campaign

• Set the platform mix per market. A European campaign with one platform split for all countries will be over-weighted on TikTok in Spain and under-weighted in France.
• Read the pool, not only the audience. A platform can have many users in a country and few local creators. The number of creators decides how selective the casting can be.
• Adjust tier definitions by platform. Because large accounts are more common on TikTok, the same follower threshold selects a wider group there than on Instagram.
• Consider YouTube where the local scene is deep. In France, Germany and Poland, long-form partnerships are a realistic option. In the United Kingdom, the local pool is thin.

Running a campaign in several countries? Ask TANKE for a platform mix market by market. The full comparison is in the European creator census.

Methodology and source

The census counts creator accounts with at least 10,000 followers on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. An account is attached to a country when more than 30% of its audience is located there. We chose 30% instead of a simple majority because large accounts tend to have more international audiences, and a 50% rule would remove many of them.

• Markets: the ten largest European creator markets in the data (Italy, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Portugal, Greece, Romania), with the United States as a benchmark. Smaller markets were left out because their top tiers hold too few accounts to give stable shares.
• Sample: close to 1.8 million account records across the eleven markets. An account with a split audience can count in two countries, so country figures should not be added up.
• Gender: shares are calculated on accounts with an identified gender (individual creators, not brands or media), which is 88% of Instagram accounts, 98% on TikTok and 81% on YouTube.
• Tiers: accounts above 5 million followers are merged into the “1M and more” tier. Accounts under 10,000 followers are excluded, because coverage of very small accounts varies too much from one country to the next.
• Reading the figures: the data is a large sample of each market, not an official register. Shares and ratios are more robust than absolute counts, which is why this study reports percentages first. Population figures are rounded 2025 estimates.

Source: TANKE internal data, Instagram analyses and B2B data providers including Kolsquare and onsocial.ai. Data collected in November 2026.

Frequently asked questions