Windsor.ai Instagram “follower_count” Error: Data Missing for Today

If you’re pulling Instagram data through Windsor and see an error mentioning that the follower_count (or follower_count_1d) metric “only supports querying data for the last 30 days excluding the current day,” or you notice that today’s row for that field is simply missing from your results, this is a restriction on the underlying Instagram data itself, not a Windsor bug.

Before anything else: follower_count / follower_count_1d is not your total follower count. It’s the number of new followers gained on a given day. If you want your current total, use followers_count instead, which works completely differently (see below).

Instagram’s own reporting only finalizes a day’s new-follower count once that day has ended. Windsor’s Instagram Organic connector reflects that same limitation: follower_count and follower_count_1d (new followers gained in a day) can return values for any of the last 30 completed days, but not for the current, still-in-progress day, because Instagram hasn’t finalized that number yet.

There’s a second, separate restriction on the same field: follower_count_1d is not available at all for accounts with fewer than 100 followers. If you’re troubleshooting a small account and the field is missing entirely, not just for today, this is likely why, not a connector bug.

One more thing worth knowing: “today” here means today in your account’s reporting timezone, not necessarily your own local timezone. If those two differ, the missing row for “today” can appear to shift by a few hours around midnight, until the account’s completed day becomes available.

This shows up two ways depending on how you query:

• If you explicitly request today’s date for follower_count or follower_count_1d, you’ll get the “only supports querying data for the last 30 days excluding the current day” error.
• If you use a rolling date preset like date_preset=last_30d, you won’t get an error, but today’s row will simply be blank or absent for that field, while other metrics in the same request may still populate normally.

follower_count_1d and followers_count are two different fields that look almost identical but measure opposite things:

• follower_count / follower_count_1d (“New followers”): how many new followers you gained on a given day. This counts new follows only, it does not subtract unfollows. It’s a historical, day-by-day metric, but it excludes today for the reason above, and it isn’t available at all for accounts under 100 followers.
• followers_count (“Profile followers”): your profile’s current total follower count, a live snapshot. Windsor’s own field reference notes this field does not provide historical data and only provides the count for today. If you request followers_count across a date range, don’t expect a value for every day: today’s row is the only one that’s meaningful, since Instagram doesn’t expose past totals for this field.

If you’re building a follower-growth-over-time chart, use follower_count_1d for gross new follows per day. If you need net movement (new follows minus unfollows), use follows_and_unfollows instead, if your reporting setup supports it. followers_count on its own won’t give you a trend: it’s only useful for “what’s my follower count right now,” and you’d need your own daily snapshots of it to build a trend from scratch.

1. Don’t request follower_count or follower_count_1d for today’s date specifically. The most reliable fix is an explicit end date one day back rather than a rolling preset: use date_to set to yesterday instead of date_preset=last_30d whenever your dashboard or query includes today.
2. For example: fields=date,user_name,follower_count_1d&date_from=2026-07-26&date_to=2026-08-24 ends the range yesterday and avoids the gap entirely.
3. If you’re using a rolling preset and building a dashboard, treat a blank or missing value for today’s follower_count_1d as expected, not as a data gap. The value should appear after Instagram finalizes the completed day and Windsor refreshes the query. If your setup uses a scheduled refresh, that already bypasses Windsor’s short-term query cache and pulls fresh data on its own schedule. If you’re checking manually and still see a stale result, Windsor’s query cache holds a response for 6 hours per exact Connector URL; you can clear it manually, but only once every two hours.
4. If you need same-day follower movement for reporting, pull the most recent complete day’s follower_count_1d instead of today’s, and note in your dashboard that the figure reflects yesterday, not right now.
5. If you actually want today’s total follower count rather than day-over-day growth, use followers_count instead, and don’t expect it to backfill historical dates.

If a date well outside today (more than a day or two old) is also missing a follower_count_1d value, that’s a different issue than the one described here. Contact support with:

• The account/profile name.
• The exact fields you selected.
• The date range you requested.
• Your destination or Connector URL, with the API key removed.
• A screenshot or the exact error text.
• Whether the Instagram account has fewer than 100 followers.

That’s enough for support to check it separately.