Updated
What makes a video go viral? Data from 1,272 TikToks and Reels
Short videos that ended with "let me know below" drew 39% fewer views than the same account's typical video.
Sample: 1,272 videos from 160 accounts
TikTok saves and shares: what people save, share and comment on
Which posts earn TikTok saves, shares and comments? Postdom measured each one per 100 likes across 1,278 TikTok posts: 656 videos, 565 photo carousels and 57 high-view posts.
Sample: 1,278 TikTok postsCharts to embedDownload the dataHow to cite
Key findings: TikTok saves, shares and comments
- Funny videos reached 2.7 times their account's usual views (median, 24 videos), the highest of any tone. They drew 4 saves per 100 likes, against 11 for all videos.
- Tutorials drew 41 saves per 100 likes, about 10 times the rate for funny videos. Listicles drew 36. Videos with numbered items drew 35, against 10 for videos without them.
- Photo carousels drew 51 saves per 100 likes, 4.5 times the video rate. 73 of 565 carousels had more saves than likes. 4 of 656 videos did.
- Carousels are quiet: 0.65 comments per 100 likes, against 2.3 for videos.
- Warning hooks drew 6.7 comments per 100 likes (28 videos) and stat or fact hooks 7.0 (16 videos), against 1.1 for POV and relatable hooks.
- Captions asking for a comment keyword went with 4.5 comments per 100 likes, against 2.1 with no call to action (63 and 450 videos).
- Among 57 viral posts, money and rights checklists drew 33 saves per 100 likes and itinerary guides 28. POV memes drew 5.
Charts to embed
Every chart is free to use with a link back to this page. The embed code includes the link.
Download the data
- Group-level summary (CSV) postdom-save-share-comment-summary.csv. Every group in the results table with n, medians and counts. Post-level files contain creator handles and are shared with journalists on request.
Aggregate figures only. The files name no accounts. Free to reuse with a link to this page.
Method and full data tables
Method
Data
| Set | Posts used | Drawn from | Collected | What it measures |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Video research sample | 656 TikTok videos with 100+ likes | 1,120 TikTok videos from 140 accounts | late Sept – early Oct 2026 | saves, comments, shares per like; views vs the account's median |
| Carousel research sample | 565 TikTok photo carousels with 100+ likes | 1,018 TikTok photo posts from 129 accounts | late Sept – early Oct 2026 | the same |
| High-view sweep | 57 TikTok posts, 73.5K to 15.8M views | format-by-format TikTok searches | counts read 4 Oct 2026 | saves, comments, shares per like |
| Total | 1,278 |
Video sample. 140 accounts, 105 of them brands or businesses, in four categories: relocation and immigration, local and professional services, software and apps, and consumer brands. Accounts were found with 91 TikTok searches, then screened for brands and businesses that post in the platform's native style (in-app text over real footage). Each account needed at least 10 eligible videos: non-ad, at least 7 days old, 3 minutes or shorter. From each account the top 3, bottom 3 and the one-third and two-thirds ranks by views were sampled.
Carousel sample. 129 accounts, 72 of them brands or businesses, covering consumer apps, software and productivity, consumer brands, local and professional services, and lifestyle creators. Posts had to be at least 7 days old. Sampling followed the same top-and-bottom design.
High-view sweep. TikTok searches by format (memes, walls of text, hook clips, montages, talking presenters, green screen, before/after, single images). Counts were read from each post's public data on 4 Oct 2026. Each post was coded by format by hand. Search ranks by relevance and engagement, so these are top-of-niche winners, not a random sample.
Measures
- Saves, comments and shares per 100 likes: for each post, saves ÷ likes (and so on), then the median within a group, times 100. Likes are the denominator because every public post shows them and they track how many people engaged at all.
- Reach: each video's views ÷ the median views of all eligible videos on the same account, then the median within a group. This controls for account size.
- Noise floor: posts with fewer than 100 likes were dropped from the two research samples (464 videos, 453 carousels), because ratios on tiny counts swing wildly.
- Instagram: Instagram hides save counts, so the 152 Reels and 105 carousels collected alongside are not used for saves. Comment rates from 75 Reels with 100+ likes are quoted once, as a cross-check.
Labels
Tone, story arc, hook type, numbered items and caption calls to action were labeled by AI models from 8 frames per video (on-screen text read by gpt-4.1-mini, speech transcribed by gpt-4o-mini-transcribe), the transcript, on-screen text and the caption, without seeing any performance numbers. Group definitions:
| Group | Rule |
|---|---|
| Funny / humorous tone | tone = humorous |
| Entertainment | value type = entertainment |
| POV / relatable hook | hook type = pov_relatable |
| Personal story | arc = story |
| Day-in-the-life vlog | arc = day_in_life_vlog |
| Listicle | arc = listicle |
| Tutorial / how-to | arc = tutorial_demo |
| Numbered items | numbered items on screen = true |
| Warning hook | hook type = warning |
| Stat or fact hook | hook type = stat_or_fact |
| Question hook | hook type = question |
| Comment-keyword CTA | caption asks for a keyword in the comments |
| Caption asks to save or share | caption CTA = save_share |
| Short clip, long caption | 20 s or less, caption of 400+ characters, under 30% talking |
Limits
- Correlation, not causation. A post that asks for comments may differ in other ways from one that doesn't.
- Oversampled extremes. Each account's best and worst posts were deliberately included, so the samples exaggerate contrasts. Trust the ranking of groups more than the exact size of each gap.
- Small groups. Funny (24), stat or fact hooks (16), recipe carousels (22), short clips with long captions (5) and every sweep group are under 30 posts. Read them as directional.
- Mix of accounts. The video sample leans toward brands and businesses using native-style text, which is not all of TikTok.
Full results
| Dataset | Group | Posts | Median views | Saves / 100 likes | Comments / 100 likes | Shares / 100 likes | Views vs account median | Posts with more saves than likes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Video | All | 656 | 28,690 | 11.3 | 2.33 | 4.8 | 1.79x | 4 |
| Video | Funny / humorous tone | 24 | 97,830 | 4.2 | 1.00 | 5.4 | 2.72x | 0 |
| Video | Entertainment (value type) | 59 | n/a | 4.4 | 1.13 | 3.9 | 2.38x | n/a |
| Video | POV / relatable hook | 54 | 56,333 | 6.6 | 1.11 | 4.1 | 2.14x | 0 |
| Video | Personal story | 102 | 39,583 | 7.4 | 2.12 | 3.5 | 2.18x | 0 |
| Video | Day-in-the-life vlog | 66 | 32,878 | 6.2 | 1.08 | 3.3 | 0.43x | 0 |
| Video | Listicle | 58 | 39,204 | 36.1 | 1.92 | 8.7 | 2.48x | 1 |
| Video | Tutorial / how-to | 78 | 24,583 | 41.1 | 2.94 | 8.4 | 1.65x | 3 |
| Video | Numbered items on screen | 55 | 29,198 | 35.2 | 2.42 | 8.6 | 2.61x | 1 |
| Video | No numbered items | 601 | n/a | 10.2 | 2.33 | 4.6 | 1.75x | n/a |
| Video | Warning hook | 28 | 45,289 | 18.8 | 6.72 | 12.1 | 1.91x | 0 |
| Video | Stat or fact hook | 16 | 24,866 | 12.4 | 6.98 | 15.4 | 1.74x | 0 |
| Video | Question hook | 57 | 27,538 | 13.5 | 3.50 | 4.6 | 1.98x | 0 |
| Video | Comment-keyword CTA | 63 | 38,936 | 19.7 | 4.55 | 8.4 | 2.62x | 1 |
| Video | No CTA | 450 | 25,145 | 9.0 | 2.14 | 4.3 | 1.65x | 2 |
| Video | Short clip, long caption | 5 | n/a | 12.4 | 4.56 | 4.5 | 4.24x | n/a |
| Video | Short clip, short caption (<100 chars) | 23 | n/a | 9.0 | 0.48 | 4.8 | 1.94x | n/a |
| Carousel | All | 565 | 46,361 | 51.0 | 0.65 | 5.4 | 2.14x | 73 |
| Carousel | Relatable tone | 41 | 19,639 | 10.3 | 1.45 | 2.7 | 1.63x | 0 |
| Carousel | Personal story | 47 | 17,505 | 11.1 | 1.48 | 2.4 | 1.92x | 0 |
| Carousel | Inspiration moodboard | 71 | 22,174 | 38.9 | 0.55 | 5.0 | 1.59x | 1 |
| Carousel | Listicle | 269 | 78,755 | 62.6 | 0.52 | 5.9 | 2.37x | 50 |
| Carousel | Step-by-step | 78 | 87,688 | 68.0 | 0.71 | 5.7 | 2.39x | 15 |
| Carousel | Recipe / tutorial | 22 | 65,384 | 74.7 | 0.55 | 16.0 | 2.62x | 4 |
| Carousel | Numbered items | 112 | 82,302 | 70.5 | 0.71 | 5.8 | 2.52x | 28 |
| Carousel | Caption asks to save or share | 53 | 97,976 | 78.9 | 0.49 | 9.3 | 2.61x | 19 |
| Carousel | Comment-keyword CTA | 29 | 42,945 | 57.4 | 1.62 | 5.2 | 2.01x | 7 |
| Carousel | No CTA | 377 | 55,184 | 45.7 | 0.64 | 4.8 | 2.18x | 34 |
| Sweep | Money and rights checklists (talking) | 6 | 2,400,000 | 33.1 | 1.45 | 20.0 | n/a | 0 |
| Sweep | Selfie with on-screen text | 4 | 325,800 | 28.7 | 2.14 | 4.9 | n/a | 0 |
| Sweep | Itinerary and place-guide montages | 5 | 1,100,000 | 27.5 | 0.56 | 19.6 | n/a | 1 |
| Sweep | Other talking explainers | 7 | 973,300 | 17.7 | 2.25 | 14.7 | n/a | 0 |
| Sweep | Green-screen news reactions | 8 | 615,350 | 8.6 | 1.81 | 10.2 | n/a | 0 |
| Sweep | Single-image posts | 3 | 165,500 | 6.9 | 0.42 | 5.6 | n/a | 0 |
| Sweep | Before / after | 4 | 3,900,000 | 6.0 | 0.97 | 16.4 | n/a | 0 |
| Sweep | Walls of text | 5 | 1,000,000 | 5.4 | 2.48 | 2.1 | n/a | 0 |
| Sweep | POV memes and POV montages | 12 | 2,700,000 | 4.9 | 0.39 | 4.7 | n/a | 0 |
| Sweep | Hook clip + story caption | 3 | 2,000,000 | 4.4 | 0.16 | 0.2 | n/a | 0 |
Instagram cross-check (comments only, 75 Reels with 100+ likes): comment-keyword CTA 5.09 comments per 100 likes (17 Reels) against 2.23 with no CTA (46 Reels).
Examples cited in the story (public posts, counts read 4 Oct 2026)
| Description | Views | Likes | Saves | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gym-trainer POV meme | 9.0M | 643,000 | 22,006 | 1,838 |
| Talking-head budget-split explainer | 2.8M | 112,900 | 102,520 | 1,646 |
| Lisbon place guide (montage) | 325,000 | 19,900 | 22,313 | 122 |
| Product creator, 7-second "please please read the caption" clip | 15.8M | 2.4M | 161,819 | 47,500 |
Creators are described, not named. Links are available to journalists on request.
Read this before you cite it
- Funny videos are only 24 posts and stat or fact hooks 16. Read both as directional.
- Saves per 100 likes is a rate per like. It is not the share of people who liked a post and then saved it.
- Captions asking for a comment keyword went with twice the comments. The data does not show they caused them.
- The average sampled video beat its account median (1.79x) because each account's best and worst posts were oversampled.
How to cite
Postdom. (2026, October 5). TikTok saves and shares: what people save, share and comment on. https://postdom.com/research/tiktok-saves-and-shares
This page is updated in place as new data arrives, and the link stays the same. Cite the date of the version you used.