Beauty influencers on Instagram: 40 creators with measured engagement (2026)

This is a list of 40 beauty influencers on Instagram, split into skincare, makeup, hair, nails and K-beauty, with numbers we measured ourselves. For each one you get the follower count, the engagement rate of their typical post, how often they post, one recent post and a note on which brands they suit. We picked them from 2,439 beauty creators that Virev's crawler read between August 19 and September 30, 2026, and checked every account on Instagram on October 6.

The pages that rank for "beauty influencers" are name lists. Influencer Marketing Hub's 32 and Collabstr's top 100 give names and follower counts, with no engagement numbers. Hypefy's list tells brands to skip nano creators under 5% engagement, but does not say what a beauty creator gets. In our data, 59% of nano beauty accounts are under that bar. None of these pages says what a sponsored beauty post gets. So this list has 27 creators under 100,000 followers, splits beauty into five sub-niches, and measures 4,919 real sponsored posts.

How to read the numbers

• Typical ER is likes plus comments on the creator's median post, divided by followers. We use the median post because one viral Reel can lift an average far above what a sponsored post will get.
• Posts/wk is the pace across their 12 most recent posts.
• Recent post links to a post close to their typical numbers, with the date and the likes we read on Instagram on October 6. Instagram rounds counts above 10,000.
• Followers come from Virev's last read of each account, between August 24 and September 29, 2026.

To check a beauty account that is not on this list, paste the handle into the Instagram engagement rate calculator. It shows the average and the median-post rate side by side. For TikTok creators, use the TikTok engagement rate calculator.

For context, the median beauty creator's typical post gets 2.37% for nano, 1.19% for micro, 0.67% for mid and 0.54% for macro accounts. 39 of the 40 creators below beat the median of their tier.

Skincare influencers

• Munira Karim (@munirakk), Toronto. A medical aesthetician who runs her own skin studio, @lumiraskinn, and posts facials, spa visits and motherhood. The smallest account here and the highest typical post in the group, 8.12%. Fits facial tools and Toronto clinics.
• Sarah T (@stirona), Sydney. A former beauty marketer, now a host and DJ, with facial visits and posts about her curly hair. Her July post on learning to like her curls got 52 comments on 155 likes. Fits curl care and Sydney skin clinics.
• David Arias (@paul.davidarias), Los Angeles. "Appearance strategy": skincare, oral care and grooming advice for men and women, five posts a week, with 107,000 followers on TikTok. No labeled ads in 96 posts this year. Fits devices and men's skincare.
• Joshua Gbelawoe (@joshgb_), Washington, DC. Men's grooming, including a three-round BioRePeel peel series in which he talks about breakouts, dark marks and men's mental health. Fits med spas and men's skincare.
• Kylie Brianna (@kylieebriannaa), Massachusetts. Self-care and body care with a soft pink feed. Her two sponsored posts this year got 0.69 times her usual response. Fits bath, body and fragrance.
• Ntokozo Coka (@ntokozo.cokaa), South Africa. A 20-year-old student with short routines and drugstore skincare, three posts a week. Her 13 sponsored posts this year, mostly SHEIN, got 0.59 times her usual. Fits drugstore skincare for young South African women.
• Sarah James (@whoorl), New York. "Beauty and style, 50+, low tolerance for hype", with 20 finds every Friday. Her posts end with a comment word ("Comment CHEEKS"), which is why her July blush tip has 812 comments on 1,906 likes. Fits makeup and skincare for mature skin.
• Cynthia Victor (@shawtysin_), New York and Dallas, represented by DBA and UTA. Body care and makeup at 3.7 posts a week. Her seven sponsored posts this year, for Dove, a Korean cushion and body care among others, got 0.43 times her usual; one perfume post got 6.4 times. Price on the lower figure.
• Aniqa Arsalan (@aniqasardar), Dubai. 38 of her 99 posts this year are ads, for skincare, Temu, jewelry and Dubai property. They still got 1.11 times her usual response. Fits mass skincare launches in the Gulf.

Makeup influencers

• Deanna Maree (@deannamaree__), New Zealand. A makeup artist who lists every product in her captions: Rhode, Tower 28, MCoBeauty and Shiseido. Fits brands sold at Mecca and Sephora in New Zealand.
• Georgia Hobbs (@allbeautydestroyedmua), Boston. Hair, makeup and prosthetics for film and TV, including characters for Supergirl. Typical post 9.35%, under one post a week. Fits special-effects makeup, adhesives and Halloween.
• braulitomua, San Jose. A full-time makeup artist with eight years of work who also sells one-on-one classes. The September class post got 60 comments on 158 likes. Fits pro brushes, complexion and education brands.
• Madison (@makeupbymadisonco), Cleveland. A bridal makeup artist taking 2027 bookings, with behind-the-scenes Reels almost five times a week. Fits long-wear complexion and Ohio wedding businesses.
• Anthony Versace (@anthonyversaceee), Atlanta. A traveling freelance artist with client glam in Milwaukee, Houston, Miami and Los Angeles. Under one post a week. Fits glam products and wig brands.
• Kayla Perez (@kaylaaperez_), Sydney. Celebrity and red-carpet makeup: glam for Latto's "Okayy" video with Doja Cat, and for Tems at an awards show. Typical post 6.22% on 101,923 followers. Fits complexion brands with deep shades.
• Laura Summers (@thelaurasummers), UK. Over-40 style and makeup, close to six posts a week. 69 of her 95 posts this year carry an affiliate link or code, and her captions ask people to comment SHOP. Her one sponsored post this year got 0.19 times her usual. Offer an affiliate deal, not a flat fee.
• McKenna Goddard (@makeupbymckenna__), Mississippi. Her bio names her Mississippi's best bridal makeup artist of 2025 and 2026, and she lists products and shades under every look. Her seven sponsored posts got 0.10 to 4.19 times her usual: two Glow Recipe posts and a KISS lashes post beat it, a skincare post got a tenth. Fits skin-prep and complexion brands.
• Yasmin Basi (@beautybyyasi), Toronto. Sephora Squad 2025, hijabi beauty and modest fashion. Her typical post is 1.89%, but one viral post lifts her average to 28%. Her eight sponsored posts this year, for brands including Aestura, Caudalie, Beauty of Joseon and Dolce & Gabbana, got 0.08 to 0.23 times her usual 8,462 likes and comments. Price on that.
• Ritu Pamnani (@ritupamnani), Dubai. Vegan beauty and fashion, six posts a week, with a twin page. Her two Pantene Arabia posts got 1.28 times her usual. Fits vegan beauty and hair care in the Gulf.

Hair influencers and barbers

• Emily Zoff (@emilyzoffhair), Toronto. A curl specialist with lived-in colour, working from a salon suite. Fits curl products and salon tools.
• Braydyn Malloy (@b9inecutz), Havre de Grace, Maryland. A barber and youth leader who sells merch and streams on Twitch. Typical post 9.21%, three posts a week. Fits clippers and men's hair products.
• Josh (@by__josh), Sydney. Bridal and mobile hair stylist with a salon in Marrickville, booking Europe for 2027. Fits styling products and bridal brands.
• Steph (@cutzwsteph), Fairfield, California. An award-winning barber with three discount codes in the bio, for Spill, Clipdupco and For Hair Products. Fits barber tools, but check which codes still run.
• Tai (@taiiibeauty), Minnesota. Protective styles, braids and wig installs, taught step by step, 3.7 posts a week. Her typical post is 3.37%; one viral video lifts her average to 22%. Fits braiding hair, edge control and wig brands.
• Lexi (@gallery_oflexi), Atlanta. Glam selfies and her own hair work, with "paid promo only" in the bio. Typical post 8.75% on 61,108 followers. Fits wigs and extensions.
• Jose Velasco (@jv_dabarber), US. A barber turned business coach who sells a barber course and his own grooming brand. Fits barber software and tools; skip competing grooming products.
• Toni Laites (@tonilaites), UK. Co-host of Love Island: The Debrief, with hair tool and lip ads (GHD, NYX). Her July NYX post got 21,000 likes, close to her usual. Fits hair tools and makeup launches.

Nail influencers

• Ashleigh Mae (@ashleighhnailedit). A salon owner and nail educator at Glosse House, closed to new clients, with themed sets four times a week. Fits gel systems and nail courses.
• Elinails (@elinails.co). Hand-sculpted 3D nail art with nail clays, like a "lechon nail". Fewer than one post a week, typical post 5.21%. Fits nail art supplies.
• fla_tips, Orlando. A nail tech who owns @theluxepack and runs codes for Blue Streak Crystals and Toe BBL Goat. Fits crystals, tips and supplies.
• Zola Ganzorigt (@nailsbyzola), Los Angeles. OPI global ambassador and celebrity manicurist. Her typical post is 0.85%, about 3,000 likes and comments. Her 12 sponsored posts this year got a median of 2.19 times her usual, and the split shows why. Her photo posts of the nails she did for Sabrina Carpenter, Hailey Bieber and Ariana Greenblatt at the Grammys, the Oscars and the Met Gala, with the OPI shades listed, got 2.0 to 7.7 times her usual. Her Reel tutorials recreating a look with OPI products got 0.18 to 0.57 times.

Nails is the smallest group we measured. Among accounts whose main niche names nails, 28 are individual creators and 22 are salons or nail businesses. Most nail accounts on Instagram are businesses, so expect to book a salon as often as a creator.

K-beauty influencers

• toastjam (@toastjam10). A "K-beauty corporate girly" who demos skincare like a bartender mixing drinks, in English. Her August post was her first ad. Fits Korean brands entering the US.
• Yakgwa (@_yak._.gwa), Korea. Lip combinations for warm skin tones. The 12 ads on this account this year got 0.28 times its usual post. Fits lip tints, priced on the ad figure.
• Dr. Lee Ha-eun (@dermakitty), Korea. A board-certified dermatologist with a clinic and a YouTube channel. Fits derm-tested skincare that wants a doctor's voice.
• Sangon Ko (@kpharmacist_story), Korea. A pharmacist who rates and compares K-beauty products in English, such as retinol against retinal. No labeled ads in 88 posts this year. His typical post is 0.95%, below the micro median; the one creator on this list under it. Fits ingredient-led brands that can take a rating, good or bad.
• Lee Bo-ryeon (@ryeonism__), Seoul. MC, show host and reporter who works in English too. Her May post filmed a K-makeover for an American visitor at a Cheongdam salon. Fits beauty tourism and Seoul salons.
• nazzsong, Seoul. Monthly favorites and hair care, with few labeled ads. Fits hair oils and fragrance.
• tineeezii, Korea. Makeup tutorials and nail vlogs, five posts a week, typical post 5.12% on 56,293 followers. Fits color cosmetics.
• Yeonsu (@2_58.am_), Korea. Skincare routines and Olive Young challenges with her husband, like a full face for 30,000 won (about $21). Her bio lists group-buy dates. Fits Olive Young brands.
• Yerang (@yea_rang), Busan. Beauty, travel and food; a voice major and music teacher. Invited to brand events such as a Rejuran Cosmetics night in Haeundae. Fits Busan launches and events.

K-beauty accounts post more ads than any other group. In 2026, 27% of their posts carried a paid label or an ad tag, against 1% to 5% for the other beauty groups. We left out several Korean accounts where nine in ten posts are ads.

Beauty creators against all creators

We compared the 2,439 beauty creators with the 53,934 individual creators in our Instagram engagement rate benchmarks. Both groups use the same rule: likes plus comments, averaged over the 12 most recent posts, divided by followers.

Paid label: share of creators with Instagram's paid partnership label on at least one of their last 12 posts.

• Beauty trails the field below 500,000 followers. The gap is largest for nano accounts: 4.07% against 5.09%. Above 500,000 followers beauty is level with the field.
• Small beauty creators carry paid labels more often. One in ten nano beauty creators had a paid label in their last 12 posts, three and a half times the rate for all nano creators. Fitness nano creators, measured the same way, were at 1.9%.
• They post at the same pace. Beauty creators post 1.25 to 2.24 times a week, close to the field at every size.

Skincare, makeup, hair, nails and K-beauty

Each creator's Virev profile names a main niche, such as "Beauty and skincare", "Bridal makeup artistry" or "Hair styling and color". We grouped them into five sub-niches. Accounts that name only "beauty" or "beauty and lifestyle" (265) sit in a general group that is not on this list. K-beauty is any creator in Korea or any profile that names K-beauty or Korean skincare.

Paid label: share with Instagram's paid partnership label in their last 12 posts. Sponsored: median sponsored post against the creator's usual post. Nails has 18 nano and 19 micro accounts and 33 sponsored posts, so read that row as a rough guide.

• Skincare creators carry the most labels outside Korea. 17.8% had a paid label in their last 12 posts, twice the makeup and hair share.
• Makeup artists who book clients get less. 371 of the 941 makeup creators describe themselves as working makeup artists, often bridal. Their micro accounts get 2.09%, against 2.67% for makeup creators who post for an audience. A bridal artist's followers are past and future clients.
• Hair ads lose the most. A sponsored post by a hair creator or barber got 0.61 times the usual, the lowest of the five. Many hair accounts are barbers and stylists who mostly post client work.
• K-beauty accounts post the most ads. 42% of K-beauty creators marked more than a quarter of their 2026 posts as ads, and 22% marked more than half. In every other group it is under 6%.

Sponsored beauty posts get 0.83x the usual response

We found 4,919 sponsored posts on 658 beauty creator accounts, posted between January 1 and September 26, 2026. A sponsored post here has Instagram's paid partnership label or an ad tag such as #ad, #sponsored, #PR or the Korean #광고, the same rule as our study of 175,104 sponsored posts. For each one we compared its likes and comments with the median of the same account's posts that carry no ad marker, code or giveaway. The median sponsored beauty post got 0.83 times the usual response, and 61% got less than usual. Across all creators the figure is 0.69.

• Beauty loses less than the average niche. 0.83x is close to the beauty row of the flagship study (0.81x). Beauty followers come for product advice, so a product post is close to what they expect. Without K-beauty the figure is 0.81x on 3,019 posts.
• Size matters less than in other niches. The median sponsored post got 0.80 times the usual for nano creators, 0.87 for micro, 0.72 for mid-tier, 0.80 for 500,000 to 1 million followers and 0.62 above 1 million. The flagship study found 0.91, 0.75, 0.60, 0.52 and 0.50.
• Reach holds up. Sponsored Reels got 0.94 times the creator's usual plays, on 3,988 Reels. People see the ad; fewer of them like or comment.
• Codes cost almost nothing. The 920 posts with only a discount code or affiliate link got 0.98 times the usual response, and makeup code posts got 1.17 times. Laura Summers puts an affiliate link in most of her posts.
• Single creators range from 0.1x to 7.7x. Yasmin Basi's eight sponsored posts got a tenth of her usual response; Zola Ganzorigt's OPI posts with a celebrity got up to 7.7 times. Read a creator's own sponsored history before you price them.

Price a beauty creator on the lower figure. If a micro creator's typical post gets 1,000 likes and comments, plan for about 830 on a sponsored post, and about 980 if they post with their own code.

Case: L'Oréal Paris

L'Oréal Paris is the beauty brand named by the most creators in our sponsored beauty posts this year: 79 posts by 44 creators in 17 countries, from January 23 to September 4, 2026, for hair care, skincare and makeup. 23 of the posts carry the tag of L'Oréal's creator program, #lorealistar, 19 of them from Poland. On October 6 we re-read the likes and comments on all 79 posts on Instagram; one had been removed. We sorted the other 78 by the product named in the caption.

What the posts show:

• Makeup posts got half. The 30 makeup posts, for Infallible setting spray, cushion foundation, Lumi and lip products, got a median of 0.52 times the creator's usual response, and 27 of the 30 got less than usual.
• Hair care and skincare matched the usual post. The 26 hair-care posts got 1.09 times and the 19 skincare posts 1.02 times. More than half of them beat the creator's usual post.
• One creator's serum posts got four times her usual. Smridhi Oberoi, a New Delhi creator with 137,945 followers, posted the Extraordinary Oil Serum five times between January and May: in a travel essentials post, a Valentine's GRWM and an ASMR hair routine. Her first three got 4.1 to 4.5 times her usual post, about 3,300 likes and comments against her usual 753.
• Labeled posts got less than #ad-only posts. Posts with Instagram's paid partnership label got 0.57 times the usual (37 posts). Posts tagged only #ad, #publi or #reklama got 1.03 times (41 posts); 22 of those are Polish posts tagged #reklama or #lorealistar.

Across the 78 posts the median was 0.78 times the usual post, and together they got 66,886 likes and comments against about 103,000 for the same creators' usual posts. For a beauty brand with several product lines, a lower-risk first test is hair care or skincare. A makeup product shown in a tutorial lost half the response here.

How to use this list

1. Start with the typical post. Compare it with the beauty median for the creator's tier above, not with a generic 5% bar.
2. Check the gap between average and typical. A large gap (Yasmin Basi, Tai, Georgia Hobbs) means one viral post lifts the average.
3. Read the comment count with the caption. Sarah James and Laura Summers ask for a comment word to send a link, so their comment counts run high.
4. Read the creator's own sponsored posts. Beauty creators range from 0.1 to 7 times their usual on ads. Read how to check a creator's sponsorship history before you send an offer.
5. Match the deal to the sub-niche. Barbers and stylists lose the most on a labeled ad, makeup creators lose almost nothing on a code, and many Korean accounts already post more ads than anything else.

How we built this list

1. Find candidates. We took every public Instagram account with 1,000 or more followers that Virev read between July 1 and October 2, 2026. We kept accounts whose Virev creator profile is an individual creator and whose main niche names beauty, makeup, skincare, hair, nails, lashes, brows, fragrance, barbering, grooming or dermatology. Pageants, cosmetic dentistry, aesthetic medicine without dermatology, hair transplants and tattoo accounts were left out.
2. Measure. For each account we used up to 12 recent posts from its own feed, at least three days old when read, not pinned. 2,439 creators had six or more such posts. We checked a random 30 of them by hand: 20 post mainly about beauty. The other 10 mention beauty in their profile but post mostly lifestyle, events, business or entertainment.
3. Pick. We favored creators who posted in the last eight weeks, beat the median of their tier, and gave a spread across sub-niches and tiers, with English-language creators in the US, UK, Canada and Australia first and Korean creators for K-beauty. The beauty creators Virev crawls are spread wide: 341 are in India, 262 in Brazil, 122 in Korea and 119 in the US.
4. Check by hand. On October 6, 2026 we opened 86 accounts on Instagram and read the bio and recent posts. We removed 23 accounts as off-niche, second accounts or not a beauty creator: a heptathlete, a radio host, a doctor, an author, two daily vloggers, a family account, a fan archive of another creator, a "finsta" and several lifestyle accounts with no beauty in the bio. We also left out Korean accounts where nine in ten posts are ads. After about 50 profile pages, Instagram showed a log-in page for profiles, so for the rest we opened a recent post page, which showed the account, caption and counts. None looked AI-generated.
5. Example posts. We re-read one post per creator, and all 79 L'Oréal Paris posts, on Instagram on October 6.

Sponsored posts: we read every post from January 1 to September 26, 2026 on the 2,439 accounts and kept posts at least three days old with like counts shown. A post's usual response is the median likes plus comments of the same account's posts without a paid label, ad tag, gifted tag, code, affiliate link or giveaway; accounts needed four such posts, and 2,404 had them.

Limits: Instagram does not show saves, shares or story views, so they are not in these rates. The 2,439 beauty creators are the accounts Virev crawls, which lean toward accounts brands search for, not a random sample of Instagram, and few of them are in the US. The sub-niche comes from each creator's profile, so a creator who posts both makeup and skincare sits in one group. We list only public business details. Contact creators through the channels on their profiles.

Find more beauty creators

The 40 creators above are a starting point. Virev creator search for "beauty" lists every beauty creator we track, with the same engagement numbers, and lets you filter by follower count, country and engagement rate. The beauty influencer marketing page explains how brands use it, and our live ranking of top beauty influencers sorts the largest accounts by followers. To save a creator's Reel for a brief, use the Instagram downloader.

For other niches measured the same way, see the lists of fashion influencers and fitness influencers. For Korean creators beyond beauty, see 36 Korean influencers. For the numbers behind the comparisons, read the sponsored post study and the Instagram engagement rate benchmarks.