LinkedIn Engagement Benchmarks 2026: What "Good" Actually Looks Like

You posted on LinkedIn. Got 45 likes and 6 comments. Is that good or bad?

Most people have no idea. They compare themselves to creators with 500K followers and feel like failures. Or they see a post with 3,000 likes and think that's normal. Or worse, they see a "LinkedIn guru" post about how they get 100,000 impressions on every single post and start questioning their entire content strategy.

It's not normal. None of it is. The posts you see in your feed are pre-filtered by the algorithm to show you the best-performing content from your network. It's like judging your cooking skills by watching MasterChef. You're seeing the highlight reel, not the reality.

We analyzed 10,222 posts from 494 creators to build actual benchmarks. Real numbers. No guessing. No cherry-picking the good ones.

Here's what "good" actually looks like on LinkedIn in 2026.

The Median Post: 40 Likes, 8 Comments

This is the most important number in this article. I'd put it on a billboard if billboards were how LinkedIn creators communicated. (Don't give them ideas.)

The median LinkedIn post in our dataset gets 40 likes and 8 comments. Half of all posts perform above this. Half perform below.

If you're consistently hitting 40+ likes per post, you're doing better than 50% of the creators we track. That's not failure. That's average. And average, on a platform with nearly a billion members, is perfectly respectable.

Most people don't know this because they only see the top-performing posts in their feed. The algorithm surfaces the winners, so your feed is biased toward the outliers. You never see the thousands of posts that got 12 likes and 2 comments.

They exist. There are a lot of them. In fact, there are way more 12-like posts than 1,200-like posts. But the 1,200-like posts are the ones that show up in your feed, making you think that's what "normal" looks like. It's a perception distortion that messes with creators' heads constantly.

Pro tip: Take your last 10 posts and calculate your actual median. Sort them by likes, pick the 5th and 6th, average those. That's your real baseline. Compare it to 40. If you're above it, congratulations: you're outperforming half the active creators on LinkedIn. If you're below it, at least now you have a real target instead of comparing yourself to someone with a 200K following.

Average vs. Median: Why Most Benchmarks Mislead You

The average post in our dataset gets 288 likes and 52 comments. That's 7x higher than the median.

Why such a huge gap? Because averages get pulled up by outliers. A single post with 11,576 likes drags the average for thousands of normal posts. It's the same reason the "average" American household wealth sounds impressive until you realize Jeff Bezos is in the sample.

This is why "average engagement" benchmarks are misleading. When someone tells you the average LinkedIn post gets 288 likes, they're technically correct. But it gives you the wrong mental model. Most posts get nowhere near 288 likes. Saying the "average" post gets 288 likes is like saying the average person has approximately one testicle. Statistically accurate. Practically useless.

The median is the honest number. It tells you what a typical post actually does, uncontaminated by the outliers at the top.

Use the median (40 likes, 8 comments) as your baseline. That's what a typical post actually looks like.

Pro tip: Whenever you see a blog post or LinkedIn "expert" citing average engagement numbers, mentally divide by 5-7 to get a rough median. If someone says "the average post in our analysis got 500 likes," the median was probably around 70-100. Averages in content performance data are almost always misleadingly high because of the outlier effect.

The Distribution: Where Do You Actually Sit?

Here's the full distribution from our dataset of 10,222 posts:

And for comments:

If you're getting 573+ likes consistently, you're in the top 10% of all LinkedIn posts. That's genuinely excellent performance. You're doing something right and you should figure out exactly what it is so you can keep doing it.

If you're getting 3,959+ likes, you're in the top 1%. That's rare. Out of 10,222 posts, only about 102 hit that level. You're either very good, very lucky or very famous. Probably some combination.

Most creators should be measuring themselves against the median and P75, not the P99 outliers they see in their feed.

The Jump From P50 to P75 Is the Most Valuable Move

Going from 40 likes (median) to 150 likes (P75) means you're outperforming 75% of all posts. That jump is achievable for most creators through basic optimization: better hooks, posting on the right days, using images instead of text, writing in the 500-1,200 character sweet spot.

Going from P75 to P90 (150 to 573 likes) requires genuine expertise in your niche, a growing audience and consistently excellent content.

Going from P90 to P99 (573 to 3,959 likes) requires some combination of large audience, perfect timing and a topic that hits a nerve. You can't reliably manufacture P99 performance. But you can consistently hit P75, and that's where the real business value lives anyway.

Pro tip: Track your P75 performance, not your best post. Your best post in any given month might be an outlier. But if 75% of your posts are landing above the overall median, you have a robust content operation. That consistency is what builds audiences, attracts opportunities and convinces potential clients or employers that you know what you're talking about.

What "Viral" Actually Means

We define viral as posts that significantly outperform the norm in our dataset. By that measure, 221 out of 10,222 posts went viral.

That's 2.16%.

Statistically, you need to publish about 46 posts for one to go viral. If you post three times a week, that's roughly one viral hit every four months. If you post once a week, maybe once a year. If you post once a month... you get it. The math is patient even if you aren't.

This isn't a failure rate. It's the actual math of content distribution. Even experienced creators with large audiences go viral on only a small fraction of their posts. The most consistent creators in our dataset, the ones with the highest overall engagement, still had plenty of posts that landed below the median. Nobody bats a thousand.

The goal isn't to go viral every time. The goal is to consistently perform above the median while occasionally catching a wave. If your median performance is at P75 (150 likes), you're building a real audience whether or not any individual post breaks through.

Pro tip: When you do get a viral post, study it. What was the hook? What format did you use? What day and time did you post? What made people comment? Viral posts are partly luck, but they usually contain a signal about what your audience responds to most strongly. Extract that signal and apply it to future posts. You might not go viral again immediately, but you can lift your baseline performance by understanding what resonated.

Benchmarks by Content Format

Not all post types perform the same. Here's the breakdown, and the gaps are large enough that format choice alone can move you up a full percentile band.

Image Posts (Includes Carousels)

• Average engagement rate: 0.93%
• Average likes: 468
• Average comments: 85
• Viral posts: 142 out of total images

Text Posts

• Average engagement rate: 0.50%
• Average likes: 191
• Average comments: 33
• Viral posts: 79 out of total text posts

Poll Posts

• Average engagement rate: 0.07%
• Average likes: 25
• Average comments: 23
• Viral posts: negligible

Images outperform text by 87% on engagement rate. They get 2.45x more likes and 2.6x more comments on average.

Polls are essentially dead. A 0.07% engagement rate means they get almost no algorithmic distribution. If you're still posting polls, switch to literally any other format. Write a text post asking the same question. You'll get 7x better distribution and actually hear people's real answers instead of getting four taps on radio buttons.

The takeaway: if you're benchmarking your image posts against text post averages (or vice versa), you're comparing the wrong numbers. Compare within format. A 300-like image post is below the image average. A 300-like text post is well above the text average. Context matters.

Pro tip: If you've been posting mostly text and you're frustrated with your numbers, try switching three of your next five posts to image format. Don't change anything else: same topics, same voice, same posting schedule. Just add a visual element. The 87% engagement rate difference means you should see a noticeable lift almost immediately. It's the closest thing to a free upgrade that exists on the platform.

Carousels: The Format Within the Format

Within the image category, carousels (document uploads that display as swipeable slides) deserve special mention. Industry data shows carousels generate 596% more engagement than text posts. Yes, 596%.

Why? Every swipe is an engagement signal. Someone swiping through 8 slides generates far more dwell time than someone reading a text post of equivalent length. The algorithm interprets that extended attention as high-quality content.

If you're going to invest effort in one format, carousels give you the best return per unit of effort invested.

Benchmarks by Post Length

Medium-length posts (500-1,200 characters) have the highest engagement rate. This is the sweet spot where you deliver enough value to hold attention without losing people halfway through.

But notice something interesting: very long posts (2,000-3,000 chars) generate the most comments at 74 per post on average. They have a lower engagement rate but create deeper conversation. If your goal is meaningful discussion rather than maximum reach, longer works.

Short posts get quick likes (376 average) but fewer comments (35). They're easy to consume, easy to react to, but they don't generate much discussion. Someone reads your one-liner, taps a like and moves on in 2 seconds. The algorithm sees that as shallow engagement.

The Length-Intent Mismatch

Here's something most advice misses: the optimal length depends on what you're trying to accomplish with that specific post.

• Building reach and growing followers? Stay in the 500-1,200 range. Maximum engagement rate means maximum algorithmic distribution, which means maximum new eyeballs on your content.
• Building depth with existing followers? Go long (2,000+). The comment count is where relationships form. People who take the time to write a thoughtful comment on your long post are your most valuable followers.
• Quick thought or reaction to news? Short (under 500) is fine. Just know that the engagement rate will be lower. These posts serve a different purpose: staying visible and staying timely.

Pro tip: Count your characters before publishing. If you're at 450, add one more supporting example to push into the sweet spot. If you're at 1,400, either cut to 1,200 or expand to 2,000+. The 1,200-2,000 range is a bit of a dead zone: too long for easy consumption, too short for deep exploration. Either go medium and tight or go long and thorough.

Benchmarks by Content Category

This is where it gets really useful. Different niches have wildly different benchmarks, and comparing yourself to creators in a different category is like comparing your tennis game to someone's bowling score.

Highest Engagement Rate Categories

Highest Raw Engagement Categories

Most Posts (Largest Categories)

The data tells a clear story: niche professional content (Software Engineering, Sales) gets the highest engagement rates, while broad personal content (Personal Development, Leadership) gets the highest raw numbers.

Software Engineering has a 2.57% engagement rate. That's nearly 3x the overall image post average. It's a smaller audience but an incredibly engaged one. If you're in a technical niche, your "good" number looks different from someone posting leadership content.

Social Media Marketing is the most commented category in our dataset at 210 comments per post. People who talk about social media attract social media people, who are by nature active commenters. It's a self-selecting audience of people whose literal job is engaging with content online. No wonder the comment sections are active.

Personal Development gets 1,222 average likes but a 0.39% engagement rate. These posts reach huge audiences through emotional resonance but generate relatively less discussion per impression. If you're in this space, your like count will look great. Your engagement rate won't. That's not a problem, it's just the nature of the category.

Category Benchmark Cheat Sheet

Here's how to use this data practically:

• If you post about Software Engineering: 100+ likes with a 2%+ engagement rate = you're performing at category standard. Below 50 likes means something isn't working.
• If you post about AI: 339 is the average. Below 150 means you're underperforming. Above 500 means you're standing out in the most crowded category on the platform.
• If you post about Personal Development: Anything under 500 likes might feel disappointing, but that's still above the overall platform median by 12x. Don't panic.
• If you post about Sales: 1%+ engagement rate is your target. These posts don't need massive like counts to be effective. They need engaged, relevant audiences.

What This Means for You

Stop comparing your engagement to people in different categories. A Software Engineering post with 200 likes and a 2.5% engagement rate is outperforming a Personal Development post with 800 likes and a 0.3% rate. The engineering post reached a smaller audience but generated proportionally far more meaningful interaction.

Find your category in the data above. That's your benchmark. Not your favorite influencer's benchmark. Not the viral post you saw this morning. Your category's benchmark.

Pro tip: If you post about multiple topics (which most people do), track your benchmarks by category separately. You might find that your sales-focused posts consistently outperform your leadership posts. That's valuable information. It tells you where your audience finds the most value, which tells you what to post more of. Let the data guide your content calendar, not your instincts about what "should" work.

Benchmarks by Day of the Week

Tuesday is the best day to post by engagement rate (0.92%). Saturday is the worst (0.46%). That's a 2x difference just based on when you hit publish. Two identical posts, same creator, same quality, same everything: the Tuesday version gets double the engagement rate of the Saturday version. That's wild.

Sunday is an anomaly. It has the highest raw engagement (377 avg likes, 69 avg comments) but a mediocre engagement rate. Fewer people post on Sunday, so there's less competition. But the total active audience is smaller, which drags the rate down. Sunday is the "quiet restaurant" of LinkedIn: fewer tables occupied, but the ones that are occupied are having a great time.

If you can only post three days a week, make them Tuesday, Monday and Thursday.

Pro tip: If you're currently posting on Saturday or Sunday because that's when you have time to write, try a different approach. Write on the weekend. Schedule the post for Tuesday morning. Most LinkedIn scheduling tools (including the native one) let you set a specific publication time. You get the benefit of weekend writing time plus Tuesday distribution. It's the best of both worlds.

Engagement Rate vs. Raw Engagement: Know the Difference

This distinction trips people up constantly, and getting it wrong leads to bad strategy decisions.

Engagement rate = total engagement divided by impressions (or follower count). It measures how well your content converts attention into action. Think of it as your batting average.

Raw engagement = total likes + comments + shares. It measures absolute volume. Think of it as your total hits.

These two metrics can tell opposite stories:

• Personal Development: 1,222 avg likes (huge raw engagement), 0.39% rate (low efficiency)
• Software Engineering: lower total likes, 2.57% rate (extremely efficient)

Which is "better"? Depends on your goal. If you want brand awareness and visibility, raw numbers matter more. A post with 1,222 likes was seen by a lot of people, even if the engagement rate was low. If you want to build a deeply engaged niche audience that trusts you enough to buy from you, rate matters more. A 2.57% engagement rate means your audience is intensely interested in what you're saying.

Most business creators should optimize for engagement rate. A smaller, more engaged audience converts better than a large passive one. The person who gets 200 likes from 50,000 impressions (0.4% rate) is reaching a broad but disengaged audience. The person who gets 100 likes from 5,000 impressions (2% rate) has a tight, attentive following that actually reads what they post.

Pro tip: Track both metrics, but weight your strategy decisions toward engagement rate. If your rate is climbing even while your raw numbers stay flat, that's progress. It means your content is resonating more deeply with the people who see it. The raw numbers will follow as the algorithm rewards that deeper engagement with wider distribution.

The Engagement Rate Trap

One caution: don't obsess over engagement rate so much that you start posting only to your existing superfans. If your rate is 3% but you're only reaching 500 people, you have an engagement rate problem disguised as a success metric. You need both: a healthy rate AND growing reach. They should rise together over time.

How to Set Realistic Goals by Follower Count

Your follower count directly affects what "good" looks like for you. A post that gets 50 likes from someone with 1,000 followers is a completely different achievement than 50 likes from someone with 100,000 followers. Context is everything.

There's no universal likes-per-follower formula, but here's a rough framework:

Under 5,000 followers: Getting 20-40 likes and 3-5 comments per post is solid. You're building from a small base. Focus on consistency and comment quality over raw numbers. If you're getting 20 likes from a 2,000-person network, that's a 1% like rate on your total following, which is actually excellent.

5,000-25,000 followers: 40-100 likes and 8-20 comments puts you around or above the median. You should be aiming for at least the P50 benchmarks consistently. At this stage, you have enough of an audience that format and timing optimizations start showing real results.

25,000-100,000 followers: 100-300 likes and 20-50 comments. You have enough reach that the algorithm gives you decent distribution. Hitting the average (288 likes) regularly means you're performing well. You should also be seeing consistent DMs and connection requests from people who discovered you through your content.

100,000+ followers: 300+ likes and 50+ comments should be your baseline. With a large audience, the algorithm gives you a bigger test group. Consistently hitting P75+ territory (150+ likes) is expected. If you're regularly below this, something is off with your content strategy.

These are directional, not exact. Your niche, content quality and posting consistency all affect results. But they give you a sanity check. If you have 3,000 followers and you're disappointed with 25 likes, you shouldn't be. If you have 80,000 followers and you're getting 25 likes, something is wrong.

Pro tip: Calculate your "engagement per 1,000 followers" for a quick health check. Take your average likes per post and divide by your follower count in thousands. If you have 10,000 followers and average 50 likes, that's 5 likes per 1,000 followers. Track this metric monthly. If it's declining, your content quality may be drifting or your follower base may include too many inactive connections. If it's rising, you're building real momentum.

The Framework: Are You Actually Doing Well?

Here's a simple way to evaluate your LinkedIn performance that takes about 5 minutes and gives you an honest picture:

Step 1: Look at your last 10 posts. Find your median likes and comments (the 5th highest of the 10).

Step 2: Compare to the overall median (40 likes, 8 comments). Above it? You're outperforming half the creators in our dataset. Below it? That's your target. No shame in it.

Step 3: Check your content format. If you're posting images, compare to 468 avg likes. If text, compare to 191. Don't judge your text posts by image post standards or vice versa.

Step 4: Find your category benchmarks above. A 200-like AI post is below the category average (339). A 200-like Sales post might be above it. Same number, completely different interpretation.

Step 5: Track your trend over 4-8 weeks. Are you improving? Staying flat? Declining? The trend matters more than any single post. One great post followed by a month of mediocrity is not a good sign, even if that one post felt amazing.

Step 6: Compare your engagement rate, not just raw numbers. If you know your approximate impression count (LinkedIn shows this on each post), divide your total engagement by impressions. How does it compare to the 0.50% text average or 0.93% image average?

If you're consistently above the median across 10+ posts, you're doing better than most LinkedIn creators. Period. You can stop feeling bad about not getting 1,000 likes now.

Pro tip: Do this analysis once a month. Not every day (that way lies madness) and not once a year (that's too infrequent to make adjustments). Monthly gives you enough data to see trends without driving yourself crazy over individual post performance. Set a calendar reminder. Treat it like checking your bank statement: not the most fun activity, but essential for knowing where you actually stand.

What the Top 1% Does Differently

The top 1% threshold in our data is 3,959 likes per post. For comments, it's 649. These are massive numbers. Getting 649 comments means 649 individual humans took time out of their day to write something in response to your post. That's a packed auditorium of people raising their hands to talk to you.

What separates these posts from the rest?

Looking at the viral hits in our dataset, patterns emerge:

• Funding announcements from founders (built-in social proof + network amplification). When a founder announces they raised $5M, every investor, employee, friend and former colleague shares and comments. It's a network event, not just a post.
• Family and personal stories tied to professional journeys (emotional resonance). The "I missed my kid's soccer game for a meeting that got canceled" posts. These hit because everyone on LinkedIn has felt that tension between work and life.
• Industry predictions especially about AI and marketing (people love debating the future). Nothing generates comments quite like telling 200,000 professionals that their industry is about to change. Everyone has an opinion.
• Short, relatable humor like "Classic" with a photo (2,965 likes) or "I can retire now" (2,415 likes). These work because they're refreshingly un-LinkedIn. They cut through the sea of "5 lessons I learned from losing everything" posts with something genuinely funny.
• Insider knowledge like the ex-LinkedIn employee post about algorithm changes (2,144 likes, 688 comments). Scarcity of information drives engagement. When someone with actual insider access shares what they know, people pay attention.

The common thread: these posts generate strong emotional reactions. Whether it's excitement, nostalgia, humor or controversy, the top performers make people feel something. Nobody leaves a comment because they felt "mildly interested." They comment because they felt something strongly enough to stop scrolling and type.

You can't manufacture this consistently. But you can create the conditions for it by sharing genuine stories, taking real positions and being specific about your experience. Specificity is the underrated ingredient here. "I grew my startup" is vague. "I grew my startup from $0 to $1.2M ARR while living in my parents' basement for 18 months" is specific, visual and emotionally resonant.

Stop Chasing 1,000 Likes

If there's one thing to take from this data: recalibrate your expectations. Seriously. Print out the P50 number and tape it to your monitor if you need to.

Forty likes is normal. Eight comments is normal. Most posts by most creators on most days land somewhere around those numbers. Your post with 45 likes and 6 comments? That's a perfectly fine post. It's within spitting distance of the median. It reached real humans who read it and reacted. That's the whole point.

The path to better performance isn't copying viral posts. It's posting consistently, understanding which format works for your content, picking the right days and writing for genuine engagement rather than empty reactions. It's boring advice. It's also true.

If you can move your median from 40 likes to 80 likes over three months, you've roughly doubled your LinkedIn impact. That matters far more than one lucky viral post that inflates your ego and then you're back to 30 likes the next day. The ego-cycle of viral posts is real: you get 2,000 likes, feel incredible, post the next day expecting similar results, get 35 likes and feel like a failure. Steady growth at P75 is both more sustainable and more valuable than occasional spikes.

Pro tip: The most successful LinkedIn creators I've studied don't even look at individual post metrics until the end of the week. They batch their analysis. This prevents the emotional rollercoaster of checking likes every 20 minutes (we've all done it, no judgment) and keeps the focus on weekly and monthly trends rather than individual post performance. Post it, engage for the first hour, then close the tab. Come back to analyze the numbers later.

Consistency beats virality. The benchmarks above give you a target. Now go track against them.

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All benchmarks in this article are from ViralBrain's dataset of 10,222 LinkedIn posts across 494 creators. Want to see where your posts fall in these benchmarks automatically? ViralBrain tracks your engagement against real data, so you always know where you stand.