How many likes does an average Facebook post get?
Lower than you'd guess — and the median matters more than the average.
Posteriks finds posts that beat their own account baseline in your niche and helps you build your own version — not a copy. Check your own post free →
Averages mislead on social media: a single breakout can drag the mean up so far that it describes no real post. The median — the middle post — is the honest benchmark. Across our study of 19,624 posts, the median engagement per post broke down by format like this:
| Format | Median engagement | Share of posts |
|---|---|---|
| Video | 50 | 17.7% |
| Image | 21 | 75.4% |
| Text | 12 | 6.9% |
Engagement here means reactions, comments and shares combined. The real point isn't the absolute number — it's your own median. A post that beats your page's median by 5x outperformed; one with more raw likes that barely clears your median did not. Test any post against its baseline in the Baseline Beat Checker, or see what over-delivers by viral posts by topic. More in Answers.
FAQ
Should I compare my post to the average or the median?
The median. Averages are inflated by a few outliers, so the median describes what a typical post actually gets.
Why is video engagement higher?
Video has a higher median and is about twice as likely to break out as an image, yet it's under-used relative to how it performs.