Instagram username generator

How to find a Instagram handle you can keep

Start from the word you want to be known by rather than the handle you wish were free. On Instagram the username doubles as a tag, so a seed somebody can type from memory after seeing it once beats a clever one they have to look up. Everything the generator offers has already been filtered against the format rules, so the only question left is whether somebody got there first.

1. 1Enter one or two seed words: your name, your niche, or the thing you make. Two short words beat one long one, because Instagram stops you at 30 characters.
2. 2Pick a separator you can say out loud. Instagram accepts dots and underscores and nothing else, so anything you cannot dictate down a phone line is a liability.
3. 3Ignore the urge to go shorter than 1 characters. Instagram rejects anything under that, which is why no suggestion here is that short.
4. 4Search the shortlisted name on Instagram itself. A dormant account sitting on the exact name changes which variant is worth taking.
5. 5Open the Instagram username checker from a result you like and confirm it is free before you get attached to it.
6. 6Take the same string on the other networks you post to, even the ones you are not using yet. Matching handles are far cheaper to hold than to reclaim.

Instagram’s handle rules, in full

Your username is your instagram.com address, the text in every tag and mention, and the only part of your profile that has to be unique. That makes the format worth reading once rather than discovering at signup: 1 to 30 characters, letters and digits, plus dots and underscores.

• Length: 1 to 30 characters. Instagram will technically accept a single character, but names that short went a decade ago, so treat the practical floor as whatever is still free.
• Characters: letters and digits, plus dots and underscores. Spaces, emoji and punctuation such as ! or & are refused.
• Usernames fold to lower case, which means capitalising a word will never free up a name somebody already holds.
• Hyphens are rejected outright. That catches people carrying a brand across from a domain name or a LinkedIn URL, where the hyphen is the normal break.
• Changing your username releases the old one rather than reserving it, and Instagram offers no route to get it back if somebody else moves first.

Where Instagram handles go wrong

The Instagram-specific trap is the decorative dot. A handle like your.brand.name reads fine written down and is painful to dictate, and a mistyped dot puts somebody on a different account entirely, sometimes on one parked deliberately close to yours. The second trap is choosing a name that reads as a variation on a larger account. Instagram removes and reassigns usernames under its impersonation and trademark rules, so a near miss on a known brand is a takedown waiting rather than a shortcut.

What this tool cannot tell you

Format is the easy half. This tool has no view of who already holds a name, what it means in another language, or whether it reads as somebody else’s brand with a character swapped, and those three are the usual reasons a handle you love turns out to be unusable.

• Dictate the shortlist to somebody and have them type it back. Whatever they get wrong is what your audience will get wrong.
• Keep the separator style consistent with the handle you use elsewhere, so a tag in somebody else’s caption still lands on you.
• Put the readable version in your name field, which is searchable, may contain spaces and capitals, and is not required to be unique.