Later Analytics: What Each Plan Really Shows, Network by Network

What Later's analytics cover, and what they quietly skip

Later Social bundles analytics into every paid plan, and the pitch is simple: one dashboard for the networks you already schedule to. The reality is more uneven. Instagram gets the deepest reports by far. Facebook, TikTok, Threads and Pinterest get solid but narrower views. LinkedIn, YouTube Shorts and Snapchat get little or nothing. The plans differ mostly in how far back you can look, and the pricing page says as much: 3 months on Starter, 1 year on Growth and 2 years on Scale, with Scale alone adding Custom Analytics and Meta Ads Analytics ^[1]. This guide walks through what each report shows, which plan unlocks it, and where the help pages disagree with each other.

A few ground rules apply everywhere. Later tracks organic content only, so boosted posts are left out of the standard dashboards. It keeps updating a post's numbers for two weeks after publishing and then stops, which means late-blooming posts look smaller than they are. Data can take up to 24 hours to appear after you connect a profile (up to 48 hours for Facebook). And the analytics live on the desktop web app: there are none on Android, while iOS shows only a limited Instagram overview with a 7-day or 30-day range. If you review numbers on your phone, plan around that.

How far back each plan can look

History is the real dividing line between plans, so it helps to see it in one place. The figures below come from Later's analytics-by-plan article and the pricing page, which agree on them ^[2]. The Free plan, which lives in the help center rather than on the pricing page, has no Instagram analytics at all according to the plan reference guide, even though another help article describes Free as including introductory analytics.

Two caveats sit under that grid. On Starter, Instagram post performance covers only the last 30 posts within the 3-month window, not every post you published. And Later's pages differ on Threads: the dedicated Threads help article and the plan reference guide describe up to 3 months of data on every plan, while the pricing page and the analytics-by-plan article give Threads the same 1-year and 2-year ranges as Instagram, so do not count on more than 3 months of Threads history. Pinterest is the odd one out. It keeps 3 months on every paid plan, whatever you pay. Cancelling also matters here. When a paid plan ends, analytics beyond the Free level disappear immediately, so export anything you want to keep before you downgrade.

Legacy plans follow different rules

Everything above applies to plans started on or after July 1, 2025. Earlier subscriptions may still be on legacy Starter, Growth or Advanced tiers, and their analytics differ: legacy Starter sees 3 months of basic Instagram data, while legacy Growth and Advanced see 1 year. Later says some legacy customers need to upgrade to reach the full set of current insights. If your account predates that cutoff, check which plan name your billing page shows before you compare your dashboard with anything in this guide.

Instagram: the deepest report Later has

Instagram analytics need a business or creator profile, which is free to switch to inside Instagram, and several pieces also need the profile connected to a Facebook Page. Once that is in place you get an overview, audience data, post performance, Reels, Stories and hashtag reports. Later computes Instagram engagement rate as likes plus comments plus saves plus shares, divided by reach. Reach over a period is the sum of daily unique reach, which is one reason Later's totals rarely match the numbers inside Instagram's own app. Collaborative posts show metrics only for the creator who published them.

Reels, Stories and hashtags

Stories can be ranked by reach, completion rate and reply count. Instagram's API does not pass along swipe ups, profile clicks or sticker taps, so those never show up. Story reply data from Europe and Japan is excluded because of privacy laws. Hashtag analytics show the top 50 industry hashtags published through Later, refreshed weekly, plus detailed performance drawn from at most 50 of your posts in 30 days, filterable by likes, comments, reach and saves. Hashtag data starts collecting only when you begin a paid plan with a business profile. Which plan unlocks hashtag analytics is unclear. One help article puts Reel, Story and hashtag analytics on Growth and Scale, while the analytics-by-plan page marks hashtags as included on Starter too.

The Performance Report

The Performance Report is a shareable link built from your existing Instagram data, not a file. Each report covers 90 days and shows profile growth, audience demographics, an industry comparison, Link in Bio interactions and your best posts and Stories. It uses medians instead of averages, can be refreshed once every 24 hours, and turns into a PDF only through your browser's print dialog. The industry comparison follows the industry set on your profile, which you can change once every 30 days. Its plan is another point the pages dispute, with some listing Starter and others Growth and up, so confirm in your own account. A weekly Instagram summary email also reaches account admins on current paid plans every Monday afternoon.

Metrics Meta took away, and audience thresholds

Some gaps are not Later's choice. Changes to Meta's API removed profile views, website clicks, total video views, top languages, impressions, initial plays and total plays from Instagram analytics. On Facebook, Page likes and impressions are gone for the same reason. If an older report or a client template still asks for impressions, it cannot be filled from Later anymore. Reach and views are now the anchor metrics. That shift also explains why Later's standard engagement formulas now divide by reach or views rather than impressions, though Custom Analytics still divides Facebook engagement by impressions.

Audience data has a floor on every network. Instagram accounts under 100 followers cannot see age, gender, location or language breakdowns. TikTok audience analytics need more than 100 followers, Threads audience analytics need at least 100, and Facebook analytics need a Page with at least 100 followers. History has a floor too. Instagram data can be backfilled only to the date you enabled auto publish, and real-time numbers such as follower counts, views and Story performance cannot be backfilled at all. TikTok is more generous, backfilling up to 60 days within 24 hours of connecting. Small accounts should expect thin dashboards for a while.

Facebook, TikTok, Threads and Pinterest

Facebook analytics need a connected Page on a paid plan, and data can take up to 48 hours to appear. Later counts engagement as reactions plus comments plus shares plus post clicks, divided by reach. Facebook Reels are not included in post analytics, which is a real hole if Reels carry your Page. Check that first. The Page Summary covers a fixed 90-day range you cannot customize, and the post table exports as CSV. Whether you can change which metrics count toward engagement rate depends on which page you read: the Facebook article says Growth and up, the analytics-by-plan table says Starter and up.

TikTok analytics run on the web on all paid plans and cover follower demographics, audience growth and post-level performance. Engagement rate is likes plus comments plus shares, divided by reach. Threads analytics start on Starter, run on desktop only, may take a day to appear, and keep updating a post for two weeks; engagement rate there is likes plus quotes plus replies, divided by views. Pinterest is the narrowest of the four. It tracks only Pins scheduled through Later, starts counting on the date you upgraded, and follows each Pin for just two weeks after posting.

LinkedIn, YouTube Shorts and Snapchat: the gaps

Later publishes to eight networks but reports on fewer. YouTube Shorts are always auto published, and analytics are not available for YouTube. Snapchat scheduling is desktop only and auto publish only, and it comes with no analytics either. Custom Analytics on Scale does not fill these gaps, since it also leaves out LinkedIn, YouTube and Snapchat. X is not a factor: Later ended X support on August 28, 2025, and analytics for it stopped with it.

LinkedIn splits by account type. The plan reference guide lists LinkedIn analytics on Starter and up for personal profiles only, desktop only, with CSV export from Growth, and a separate LinkedIn article says history starts at connection with a two-week post window. The supported-platforms page lists analytics for LinkedIn Pages as unsupported ^[3], and an older getting-started guide that says Later has no LinkedIn analytics at all is out of date. Our reading: plan on no analytics for LinkedIn Company Pages, while personal profiles get them on Starter and up, on desktop. Teams that live on LinkedIn will need LinkedIn's own reporting.

Best Time to Post and Link in Bio: analytics you act on

Best Time to Post is the analytics output most people use daily without calling it analytics. It runs on Starter, Growth and Scale, not on Free, and covers Instagram, Facebook and TikTok on the web. Instagram suggestions draw on the last 6 months of engagement, Facebook uses your last 50 posts, and TikTok returns one best time per day and needs a TikTok Business account. The product page says it surfaces your top 7 posting times. Multi-profile best times are on Growth and Scale only, though Starter users get a 24-hour trial when they select several profiles. LinkedIn gets no best-time suggestions, and the mobile app handles Instagram only.

Link in Bio has its own analytics page tracking page views, post clicks, button clicks and click-through rate. It is web only and exports to CSV. The Free plan keeps 3 months of this data; the pages give conflicting answers for the paid plans, so check your account rather than trusting a single number. A few quirks are worth knowing. TikTok Link in Bio clicks do not show in the TikTok post dashboard. Per-item clicks on the multi-item banner sit in the Link in Bio manager, not on the analytics page. Location data, which needs Growth or higher, is collected once a day from midnight UTC. Google Analytics UTM tracking is switched on by default. Our Later Link in Bio guide covers the page itself.

What Scale adds: Custom Analytics, ads, alerts and listening

Scale costs $110 a month billed monthly or $82.50 a month billed yearly, and most of what it adds is reporting. Custom Analytics is the headline: a dashboard covering Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest and Threads with up to two years of history, refreshed every 24 hours ^[4]. Free, Starter and Growth can preview it but not use it. Its Instagram engagement formula divides by views and covers feed posts and Reels, not Stories. Scheduled report deliveries and conditional alerts are Scale only too. Lower plans get neither. On Starter and Growth, scheduled sharing is limited to the weekly Instagram summary email and the Instagram Performance Report link, which can refresh daily on its own; everything else leaves as a CSV you export by hand.

Meta Ads Analytics lets you connect a Meta ad account and see paid and organic results together in Custom Analytics. Paid data for a boosted post needs that post's ad account connected, and it can reach up to 90 days before the connection, while growth metrics count only from the connection date. Campaign and post tags help here as well. You can filter standard analytics by tag on any plan, with caps of 20 tags each on Starter, 50 on Growth and unlimited on Scale, but analyzing tagged content inside Custom Analytics needs Scale.

Benchmarking and listening

Competitive benchmarking is Scale only, Instagram only and desktop only. The pricing page says it tracks up to 20 competitors; the help article describes up to 5 lists of 20 accounts, with 7 days shown by default and 3 months available. Social listening covers Instagram and TikTok: Brand Mentions finds who is talking about you, sentiment scores comments on a scale from -1 to +1 across Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, and Future Insights predicts trending hashtags 7 or 14 days ahead and tracks up to 10 chosen hashtags.

Getting data out: CSV, links and no API

Exports are where Later stays basic. Instagram analytics export as CSV on Starter, Growth and Scale, covering overview, audience, post, Story, hashtag and Link in Bio data, but graphs cannot be exported. The standard dashboard CSV is on all three paid plans as well, while the LinkedIn article puts its own CSV at Growth and up. The Performance Report is a link, not a file. Beyond that, there is no route for pulling data out automatically. Later has no public API and no Zapier connection, so you cannot pipe metrics into a spreadsheet, a BI tool or a client dashboard without someone downloading files by hand. For an agency reporting monthly on many clients, that manual step adds up quickly.

The practical workflow is short. Pick the plan whose history window covers your reporting period, schedule a recurring task to download CSVs before the window rolls past your data, and keep the files outside Later. That matters most on Starter, where 3 months goes fast, and on any plan you might cancel. Our Later pricing guide lays out the plan costs if a longer window tempts you to upgrade.

How it compares with Buffer Insights and Hootsuite reports

Buffer rebuilt its analytics as Insights, retiring the old Analyze product on October 7, 2026. Its Free plan keeps 30 days, and paid plans add longer ranges with CSV, Markdown and PDF exports. Buffer's pricing page lists branded reports (logo, cover page) on Team only, though its help center describes a PDF export with your own cover logo on any paid plan, and AI takeaways come on every plan, Free included. Buffer's paid Essentials plan lists unlimited analytics history. It lacks a custom report builder, audience demographics and best time to post for now, and it offers an API on every plan. Compared with Later, Buffer is the more open option for moving data around, while Later is ahead on Instagram depth and posting-time suggestions.

Hootsuite sits at the other end. It offers reports and dashboards for owned and paid social, competitor benchmarking on every plan, and overview reports that export to PDF and PowerPoint on all plans, with custom reports and CSV and Excel exports from its Advanced tier. An Analytics API comes only through an Enterprise add-on. For teams that need formal client decks and paid reporting, Hootsuite goes further. For an Instagram-led brand or creator, Later's reports cover most of the job at a lower plan price.

The bottom line

Later's analytics are strongest where Later itself is strongest: Instagram, with Reels, Stories, hashtags, a shareable 90-day report and posting-time suggestions built on your own engagement. Facebook, TikTok, Threads and Pinterest get useful but narrower views, and LinkedIn Company Pages, YouTube Shorts and Snapchat get nothing you can count on. The plan you pick mostly decides how far back you can look, while Scale is the only plan that adds custom dashboards, ad data, alerts, benchmarking and listening. With no API, plan on manual CSV exports. If those trade-offs fit, our Later review weighs the rest of the product.