Instagram subscriptions and gifts: who can use them

Subscriptions let fans pay a recurring monthly fee for extras, and gifts let viewers buy Stars and send them on your Reels. Both are real Instagram tools, and Instagram’s Help Center lists India among the countries for both. Neither is open to every account. Gifts need a professional account, age 18 or over, at least 500 followers and a payout account; Subscriptions need a professional account with at least 10,000 followers and age 18 or over. The Subscriptions pages warn that the product may not be available to you yet, and the Gifts page says gifts are available to eligible creators at this time, so your professional dashboard has the final word. No income figure is given here, and most accounts earn little from either tool.

Instagram’s page lists six ways to earn: Subscriptions, Gifts, Badges, Bonuses, Partnership ads and Creator Marketplace. Only the first two are the subject of this post. A quick map of all six helps you see where they sit.

On Instagram’s Gifts help page, fans buy Stars and send virtual gifts on your Reels to show appreciation. Followers and non-followers can both send them, and only you can see the specific gifts you receive. Instagram then pays you a monthly revenue share from the Reels that received gifts, equal to US$0.01 for every Star, so, as an example only, 10,000 Stars would be US$100. The number of Stars a viewer sends is up to them, and a gift is a small act, which is why the tool works best for creators with a regular audience who watch to the end.

Eligibility, as the Help Center gives it: a professional account, age 18 or over, at least 500 followers, Instagram’s Partner Monetization Policies, compliance with its Community Standards and Content Monetization Policies, agreement to the Instagram Gifts Creators Terms, and a payout account. Without a payout account you can see who sent you a gift but cannot receive earnings from it. You must also live in a listed country, and India is on the list. Collaborative posts and accounts that primarily post content focused on children are not eligible.

Instagram’s Gifts page advises creators to keep making what they would share anyway, to post consistently so supporters have chances to react, to tell their audience that gifting exists and to use the gift data when planning content. It also describes a heart icon you can tap to let supporters know you saw and recognised their gift. Your approximate earnings show under Gifts in the professional dashboard.

A subscription is a monthly fee a fan pays for something extra from you. The idea is a smaller, closer audience inside your wider one: the people who would pay for more of you. Instagram’s Help Center describes the extras as subscriber-only Lives, Stories, posts and Reels, subscriber social and broadcast channels, and a subscriber badge that shows in comments and messages. Followers pay through an in-app purchase, you set the monthly price in the professional dashboard, and a later price change applies only to new subscribers.

Instagram’s eligibility page asks for a professional account with at least 10,000 followers, age 18 or over, compliance with its Partner Monetization Policies, Community Standards and Content Monetization Policies, and agreement to the Subscriptions Terms of Use. Accounts that primarily post content focused on children are not eligible. India is on the list of countries where Subscriptions are offered. If you are eligible, Instagram says you will see an option to set up subscriptions in the professional dashboard. The page also notes that the product may not be available to you yet.

Tip: Do not design a subscription offer until you have seen the option in your own dashboard. The Help Center says it may not be available to you yet, and 10,000 followers is the entry point, so many small accounts will not see it.

1. Switch to a professional account (Creator or Business) if you have not. Gifts and Subscriptions need one, and Instagram’s earning tools are found in the professional dashboard. Switching is free and keeps your posts and followers, but the Help Center says a private account becomes public.
2. Open your professional dashboard. The Help Center says your earnings from gifts show under Your tools, then Gifts, and that if you are eligible for Subscriptions you will see an option to set up subscriptions there. Menus move between app versions, so use the search in the app’s settings if you cannot see it.
3. Open each tool you see and read what it says about eligibility before you plan around it.
4. Read the monetisation policies shown during set-up before accepting them. They govern what content you can earn from and what Instagram can do if you break them.
5. If a tool is not listed for your account, wait. Eligibility changes, and Bonuses in particular are by invitation for limited periods.

Payouts only go to business and creator accounts. Without a payout account you can earn up to $500 per monetization tool, with a maximum of $1,500 across 3 tools, and if you haven’t added one within 6 months you forfeit and waive all rights to the earnings. Instagram releases payouts for most tools around the 21st of each month for the previous month’s earnings. Outside the US the minimum balance is $100 for wire transfers and $25 for other payout methods, and a smaller balance carries over to the next month. Updating your payout account puts a 5-day hold on it, and payouts can take 1 to 7 business days, or up to 10 days internationally. You must also submit and verify tax information. Check the payout settings in your own dashboard for the figures that apply to you, and note the date you read them.

On tax, money from Instagram is income, and tax can apply whether the money arrives in rupees or dollars. This is general information, not advice; our guides to income tax and GST for creators explain the principles, and a chartered accountant can tell you what applies to you. Keep a record of each payment with its date, amount and any deduction.

The rules behind the money are strict. You may only earn from content that you made, helped make or appear in, with commentary or creative edits where the material is not original. Accounts cannot be bought, sold or transferred, and asking other people for their logins is banned. Instagram can remove content and disable access, which is why “growth services” that want your password are a bad bet.

Being locked out of subscriptions or gifts does not stop you earning from the same loyal followers. The earlier routes in our guide to monetising a small Instagram account need no platform approval.

• Sell the extras yourself. A paid community, a members-only guide or a monthly Q&A call can do what a subscription does, with your own price and payment link.
• Sell something one-off. A digital product answers a question people already ask in your comments.
• Take paid work. Services and 1-on-1 calls need no threshold.
• Work with brands through Partnership ads, Creator Marketplace or direct pitches, and disclose free products and paid posts the way ASCI’s guidelines ask.

DMFast is our product, so weigh this accordingly. For creators in India its store can sell digital products, give away a lead magnet for an email address and take paid or free 1-on-1 bookings, with payments through Razorpay. DMFast takes no fee on sales, though Razorpay’s own fee still comes out of each payment. Its comment-to-DM feature can answer a comment such as “link?” with a DM, and the first message is plain text asking the person to reply. It works with Instagram professional accounts and Facebook Pages only, not WhatsApp or personal accounts, and the store is for India only.

• Your dashboard actually lists the tool, and you have read what it says about eligibility.
• You are 18 or over, on a professional account, with a payout account connected.
• You have saved the payout details you could see, with the date you read them.
• Your content is your own, so your account is safe from a monetisation policy problem.
• You have a second income route that does not depend on a platform switch.