How to Find Trending Instagram Hashtags in August 2025?

I worked on the Brand24 Instagram profile and tried many methods to increase visibility. I noticed that whenever I post on marketing tips with hashtags like #MarketingTips, I started getting consistent engagement from a similar group of marketers. In less than 2 months, they became followers, and some even became leads. It felt less like random likes and one-time reach and more like really building a community. But to get good results, you need to use hashtags in the right way. So, how to find trending hashtags on Instagram in August 2025?

Let’s find out!

Quick Summary:

– Finding trending hashtags on Instagram is crucial for boosting content and Instagram Reels visibility and reaching a wider audience.

– You can use the Instagram app to browse hashtags manually or use advanced tools to make it more efficient.

– Balancing around 8-12 popular and niche hashtags ensures better engagement and avoids oversaturation of the same hashtags.

How does the Instagram hashtag work?

On Instagram, hashtags are kind of your “to be or not to be” – they make your content discoverable and can increase the social media reach of your posts.

In general, they aim to categorize content.

They even have their own “feed”. Plus, people can follow the hashtag, which makes the algorithm push more content, including the tag in their “Explore” pages.

What does it mean for you, a marketer? Your content is more visible to a wider audience.

Therefore, hashtags are one of the best ways to grow your Instagram profile.

How it works? Hashtags are clickable. Users who click on a hashtag on Instagram posts or type it in a search will see a page showing content tagged with that particular hashtag:

That’s the power of them!

We can use hashtags on posts, Stories, and Reels. If you tag your content with the proper hashtag, it will appear on the hashtag page.

Here’s what happens when you add hashtags on Instagram Stories – they’re also added to the hashtags page:

Pro tip: Many brands create their own hashtags to engage followers and build a wide online community.

Adidas does it well. Their branded hashtag #ImpossibleIsNothing, has already reached over 547k posts (data source: Brand24).

You should track the performance of branded hashtags. Why?

It enables you to learn:

• How your community grows over time
• Which actions worked well & things you may not want to continue
• Audience sentiment toward your brand or specific topics
• Opportunities for user-generated content and collaborations

Unfortunately, Instagram does not give us extended analytics. The only thing you can do within the app is check how many times the hashtags were used.

Here’s how:

1. Type in the phrase in the search bar.
2. The related hashtags will appear below and include the usage insights under each of them.

Here’s what it looks like in the app:

But, to analyze your branded hashtag campaign, you can use a hashtag tracker that will bring you much more data.

How to find trending hashtags on Instagram in 2025?

The first thought that probably comes to your mind is to start your Instagram hashtag search inside an Instagram mobile app.

And that’s a good lead!

But Instagram gives us a few ways to discover what is trending.

Doing it manually is not the only way. I will show you some interesting tools and apps worth using.

01 Check the Instagram’s Explore Page

Explore Page is driven by the Instagram algorithm.

It is a collection of posts and reels generated based on data about

• Your reactions (also the time you spend looking at a specific post)
• Followers
• Accounts you are following
• Search history (also on Facebook and threads)

You can see here content related to your specific interests. Everyone sees it differently.

It can be a place to search for hashtags, but you will have to do it manually.

You’ll need to click on each post and check their description… So, it will be time-consuming and definitely biased.

That’s why the Explore page might not be your friend here.

However, the thing about the Explore page is that getting your content there is a huge, huge, huge booster in reaching a wider audience, so let’s not kill it entirely.

It’s just a little tricky.

02 Check the hashtag autocomplete feature

Instagram has a search engine.

You can use it to search:

• Accounts
• Audio (sounds)
• Places
• Tags
• Reels
• & Not personalized content

Plus, anyone can use it to search for hashtags related to their interests.

While typing, the search engine also shows similar, often used hashtags:

An important note is that this feature suggests highly often used hashtags with millions of posts.

Well, using such a popular tag has two faces. One positive and one negative.

Which one do you want first?

Well, the good thing is that content with popular hashtags is pushed to a ton of people.

The bad one – only the best ones get this attention. It’s hard to notice, and the chance that your content will disappear from the crowd is very high.

Using related hashtags can enhance Instagram engagement and reach, especially for businesses and influencers.

03 Use the social listening tool

My personal tip is to use a social listening tool to discover new hashtags.

It can be very effective in finding the tags that are highly related and dedicated to your business.

How does such a tool work?

In general, social listening tools collect real-time mentions of predefined keywords from all over the web.

You can monitor literally any keyword. Here are a few examples of what you might track:

• The name of your company brand, product, or service
• Your branded hashtags
• Your campaign-specific hashtag
• Your CEO’s name or any other prominent team member
• Keywords related to your business niche
• Keywords that might be trending in the future

Based on that data, the tool defines the most used hashtags related to your business.

So, it’s main advenatge is a very high accuracy based on real data.

I’ll show you based on a Brand24 example.

The process here is very simple.

1. You establish your keyword and set up the project.
2. Go to the Analytics Tab and look for “Trending hashtags.”

These hashtags are based on what tags people use when talking about your brand.

3. You can analyze each of them further by clicking on the blue icon on the right.

It takes you to a very detailed analysis, where you can monitor:

• The volume of mentions of the hashtag over time
• The reach it generates over time
• The sentiment around it over time

You can also filter it in terms of:

• The platform
• The location
• Language
• Author
• & more!

Brand24 updates the data once per hour.

So, you don’t have to waste your time searching hashtags on your Instagram feed, but can simply check the list.

The tool does all the work for you.

Set up Brand24, find trending hashtags, and expand your brand awareness on Instagram!

04 Follow relevant influencers

Influencers create trends on Instagram. That’s a fact. So why don’t you check what hashtags they use? There is nothing wrong with following their steps.

Instagram Stories can also contain hashtags. So do not forget to look at them too.

Those influencers should understand what kind of content their audience wants to consume. So it’s essential to pick the right ones.

Brand24 detects the top and most active public profiles related to you.

I think this list can be very helpful in finding Instagram influencers.

This is what it looks like for Tidal:

I filtered the results to get only the Instagram profiles, but you can access the Influencer analysis from all available sources:

05 Use niche-specific hashtags lists

You can easily access lists of trending hashtags on Instagram for a specific niche.

Either by searching it online or doing your own analysis.

Keep in mind that those kinds of lists contain highly popular tags used by millions of users.

As I mentioned before, it’s not always a good idea to add them to your Instagram posts. Furthermore, it’s hard to verify whether the lists are updated and trustworthy.

Still, many people search for the most popular hashtags on Google.

I created my own lists for some of the most popular industries – slide to the “Top Instagram hashtags” paragraph for them.

I also explain there how to make your own Instagram hashtag list based on actual data.

06 Use mobile apps

App Stores are full of mobile apps that generate popular hashtags for social media platforms.

There are many mobile apps that prompt trending hashtags:

I tested 3 hashtag generator mobile apps: In Tags, Leetags, and Hashtags – Hashtag Manager.

The first two are paid, and Hashtag Manager is a free tool.

Here’s what I think about them:

Those hastags mobile apps are based on the same features. You can search hashtags by category or generate them by typing keywords.

What’s important is that you can filter the hashtags by the number of uses.

I found this feature very helpful. Usually, free versions of hashtag generator mobile apps are full of ads that pop up full screen.

They work pretty nicely if you are looking for popular or the most popular hashtags.

But will they detect that some hashtags are trending and attracting more interest from Instagram users?

No, they don’t.

These apps simply list hashtags by popularity and help you categorize your hashtags into groups. That’s all.

You can also determine how many hashtags you want to generate.

The only feature I found interesting was the “reliability” scoring in Leetags:

It could be helpful to create the most relevant list possible.

Mobile apps vs. Social listening tools

Which one will be better in searching for the most popular Instagram hashtags?

I’ve deepened my research and tried to find trending hashtags for my company, Brand24. Here are the results:

• In Tags app proposed hashtags related to digital marketing
• Leetags app did the same as In Tags
• Hashtags – Hashtag Manager app suggested hashtags containing the word brand

As you can see, it’s very hard to discover accurate tags for brands from less popular industries.

Now, let’s take a look at data generated by the social listening tool Brand24.

The tool suggested hashtags related to the business niche:

• social listening
• digital marketing
• social media
• social media marketing
• marketing

The results from social listening are much more accurate.

And the data is updated once per hour, so you can detect what’s trending almost in real-time.

Trending Instagram hashtags for August 2025

As we discussed before, using top trending hashtags on Instagram can have both advantages and disadvantages.

The most popular hashtags have a lot of users following and interacting with them, which can increase the visibility of your posts to a larger audience.

On the other hand, top hashtags are often oversaturated with content and Instagram Reels, making it difficult for your post to stand out and actually get noticed.

So is it worth using them?

The best approach is to balance top hashtags with niche and branded hashtags specifically tailored to your audience, which will provide the most sustainable results.

Here’s a list of top Instagram hashtags detected by the Brand24 tool (updated in August 2025):

Top 20 Instagram hashtags for fashion

1. #fashion (149K mentions)
2. #love (53K mentions)
3. #instagood (49K mentions)
4. #instagram (45K mentions)
5. #style (43K mentions)
6. #photography (38K mentions)
7. #trending (31K mentions)
8. #viral (30K mentions)
9. #photooftheday (30K mentions)
10. #follow (29K mentions)
11. #explore (28K mentions)
12. #art (27K mentions)
13. #like (27K mentions)
14. #beautiful (26K mentions)
15. #instadaily (25K mentions)
16. #explorepage (24K mentions)
17. #model (23K mentions)
18. #reels (22K mentions)
19. #shopping (22K mentions)
20. #usa (21K mentions)

Top 20 Instagram hashtags for beauty

1. #beauty (96K mentions)
2. #skincare (41K mentions)
3. #lipstick (28K mentions)
4. #lipgloss (27K mentions)
5. #mysenelook (26K mentions)
6. #lipsticklover (26K mentions)
7. #lipmatte (26K mentions)
8. #shadowsense (25K mentions)
9. #senegencedistributor (24K mentions)
10. #lipstik (24K mentions)
11. #waterproofmakeup (24K mentions)
12. #makeup (24K mentions)
13. #powerlips (24K mentions)
14. #lipsmatte (23K mentions)
15. #lipboss (23K mentions)
16. #lipstikhalal (22K mentions)
17. #kissproof (20K mentions)
18. #makeupartist (19K mentions)
19. #kosmetikviral (19K mentions)
20. #beautiful (18K mentions)

Top 20 Instagram hashtags for travel

1. #travel (121K mentions)
2. #nature (23K mentions)
3. #love (20K mentions)
4. #photography (18K mentions)
5. #fyp (18K mentions)
6. #instagood (16K mentions)
7. #photooftheday (14K mentions)
8. #instagram (14K mentions)
9. #viral (13K mentions)
10. #art (13K mentions)
11. #explore (12K mentions)
12. #trending (12K mentions)
13. #beautiful (12K mentions)
14. #travelphotography (11K mentions)
15. #fashion (10K mentions)
16. #beauty (9.9K mentions)
17. #summer (9.8K mentions)
18. #picoftheday (9.7K mentions)
19. #shorts (8.5K mentions)
20. #photo (8.3K mentions)

Top 20 Instagram hashtags for fitness

1. #fitness (239K mentions)
2. #gym (89K mentions)
3. #motivation (59K mentions)
4. #workout (58K mentions)
5. #fitnessmotivation (50K mentions)
6. #lifestyle (41K mentions)
7. #fit (40K mentions)
8. #love (39K mentions)
9. #instagood (38K mentions)
10. #bodybuilding (37K mentions)
11. #gymmotivation (34K mentions)
12. #health (33K mentions)
13. #instagram (32K mentions)
14. #training (32K mentions)
15. #sport (29K mentions)
16. #viral (28K mentions)
17. #fyp (28K mentions)
18. #fashion (27K mentions)
19. #gymlife (27K mentions)
20. #healthylifestyle (24K mentions)

Top 20 Instagram hashtags for restaurants

1. #restaurants (7.9K mentions)
2. #chef (2.9K mentions)
3. #pizza (2.6K mentions)
4. #coffee (2.5K mentions)
5. #dinner (2.5K mentions)
6. #food (2.5K mentions)
7. #italy (2.5K mentions)
8. #vegan (2.2K mentions)
9. #eat (2.2K mentions)
10. #beauty (2.2K mentions)
11. #dubai (2.2K mentions)
12. #spain (2.1K mentions)
13. #greece (2.1K mentions)
14. #club (2.0K mentions)
15. #brazil (2.0K mentions)
16. #restaurant (2.0K mentions)
17. #suppliers (2.0K mentions)
18. #models (2.0K mentions)
19. #coffe_shop (2.0K mentions)
20. #foodie (1.6K mentions)

Top 20 Instagram hashtags for technology

1. #technology (31K mentions)
2. #innovation (20K mentions)
3. #tech (19K mentions)
4. #business (12K mentions)
5. #ai (12K mentions)
6. #viralreels (12K mentions)
7. #tesla (11K mentions)
8. #elonmusk (11K mentions)
9. #explorepage (10K mentions)
10. #entrepreneur (9.6K mentions)
11. #entrepreneurship (9.5K mentions)
12. #action (8.1K mentions)
13. #takeaction (8.1K mentions)
14. #businessmindset (8.0K mentions)
15. #mindsetmatters (8.0K mentions)
16. #adviceoftheday (8.0K mentions)
17. #habits (8.0K mentions)
18. #richest (7.9K mentions)
19. #apple (5.3K mentions)
20. #crypto (5.2K mentions)

How did I get them?

It’s pretty simple. You need to set up a social listening project for your niche. The tool will analyze mentions from all over the web and find the most commonly used hashtags during those conversations.

You’ll find them in the “Hashtag Analysis” Tab.

It’s a great way to determine popular Instagram hashtags that will stay relevant to your topic.

Of course, it would be best to redo the process from time to time, as online conversations are ever-changing. This way, you ensure you know what hashtags are trending on Instagram right now.

Best practices for Instagram hashtags in 2025

Finding trending hashtags is just half the story – another important part is how to use them properly. As Instagram’s algorithm changes from time to time, the Internet is full of questions and tips on how to use hashtags.

I know that social media is dynamic, and so are the hashtag strategies.

But there are some more timeless tips.

Here’s my list of 10 tips

01 Avoid popular and too general hashtags

If too many people use a hashtag, it’s hard to gain a broad reach.

The algorithm won’t favor your post for that hashtag. It’s much better to use a combination of trending/popular + niche hashtags.

I get the hype over those numbers – “#fyp” has over 474M posts, but look at what kind of content is there. Spammy, and without any particular topic.

02 Avoid random hashtags, use relevant ones

Using super trending hashtags is tempting but if irrelevant to your photo, they might do more bad than good. Instagram’s algorithm treats irrelevant hashtags as spam which may result in shadowban.

Using relevant hashtags adds your content to the right group where people who look for certain topics can find you.

Just like it happens with #interiordesign. It still has a lot of volume but is much more specific:

03 Use niche hashtags

Using niche hashtags will bring a highly targeted audience, they will drive quality engagement on your profile.

Plus, it’s easier to get noticed in a less crowded space.

Let’s say I’m looking for a new bed for my dog. I’d very likely browse Instagram and look for #dogbeds.

This hashtag is perfect – niche, with a relatively high volume but not too big:

As you can see, it was doable for a brand with dog beds to get to the top of this hashtags page and offer their product:

04 Don’t overuse your hashtags

If you post often, make sure you change hashtags but always keep them relevant and as trending as possible.

Yes, it might be hard.

But otherwise, Instagram’s algorithm might recognize you as a spammer.

05 Add Instagram Reels hashtags

Do not forget to add a trending hashtag to your Stories and Instagram Reels. So it will be more visible and pushed to a wider audience.

06 Create branded and campaign hashtags

Using dedicated hashtags for your brand and marketing campaigns is a great way to increase brand awareness and measure the results of Instagram marketing.

You can track the performance of such hashtags with a brand monitoring tool.

It’s very simple – you set up a project for your branded hashtag as a keyword. Just like you do for your brand.

I did it for #SamsungGalaxy and can monitor it’s performance:

07 Create hashtag lists

Make your life easier with a few hashtag lists you will only copy and paste into your Instagram post. Remember to keep the lists fresh and avoid overusing them.

That is where the hashtag generator apps can be useful – to store and update your lists.

08 Use local hashtags for your local business

Local hashtags are the best way to reach an audience near you. The second way is to mark posts and Stories with localization.

09 Track your hashtag performance

Keep an eye on how your hashtags are doing to see what’s working and what’s not.

Social listening tools can help you check things like reach, engagement, and how your audience is reacting. Regularly reviewing this helps you stay on track and keep your hashtag game strong.

Afterschool Alliance used Brand24 to track how their hashtag performs, and that’s their feedback:

How many hashtags should I use on Instagram?

I guess every Instagram user asks this question. There are different theories about the number of hashtags an Instagram post should contain.

The number of hashtags definitely impacts reach. It used to be a big number; posts with 30 Instagram hashtags were getting the most likes and comments.

However, times have changed, and now it’s more about the kind of hashtags you use, not the number.

I suggest using 8-12 hashtags per post.

The mix of highly used ones with niche hashtags would be best.

Conclusion

Trending Instagram hashtags are super important in digital marketing.

The goal is to place your posts on the Explore Page. 

Why? 

Getting up there means reaching a wider audience and, more importantly – new potential customers.

Your hashtags shouldn’t be guesswork. A well-defined Instagram hashtag strategy can make the whole process much easier and more efficient.

Read more about how to level up your Instagram audit!

Key takeaways:

1. Quality over quantity! You should focus on finding highly relevant tags. This way, you can reach your target audience.
2. Most popular Instagram hashtags can be a trap! It’s hard to get noticed in such a crowded space, while it’s easy to be seen as a spammer.
3. Use tools! Social listening is a fantastic way to discover relevant hashtags and monitor hashtag performance over time.

Want to find trending and regularly updated hashtags? Start with a Brand24 free trial!