Following the release in October, Instagram had one million registered users in December 2010. In June 2011, it announced that it had 5 million users,  which increased to 10 million in September.  This growth continued to 30 million users in April 2012, 80 million in July 2012, 100 million in February 2013,  130 million in June 2013, 150 million in September 2013,  300 million in December 2014,  400 million in September 2015, 500 million in June 2016, 600 million in December 2016, and 700 million as of April 2017.

In June 2011, Instagram passed 100 million photos uploaded to the service. This grew to 150 million in August 2011  and by June 2013, there were over 16 billion photos on the service.  In October 2015, there existed over 40 billion photos


On August 9, 2012, English musician Ellie Goulding released a new music video for her song "Anything Could Happen." The video only contained fan-submitted Instagram photographs that used various filters to represent words or lyrics from the song, and over 1,200 different photographs were submitted.

Instagram was listed among Time's "50 Best Android Applications for 2013" list.
It was proven in a survey completed by 212 Instagram users that social interaction, archiving, self-expression, escapism and peeking are the five main motives of Instagram users.