What Is the Fair Entry Limit in Instagram Giveaways?

How Are Comments Counted in a Giveaway?

The comment count and the participant count are not the same thing. An account that posts 5 comments enters the giveaway 5 times.

An account that posts 200 comments has 200 rows on the list. The winner is picked at random among those rows, so the distribution of odds breaks.

• Comment: One row on the list. Every comment becomes its own row, even when it comes from the same person.
• Participant: The account that wrote the comment. How many times it shows up on the list depends on how many comments it posts.
• Odds of winning: As high as the number of times the account shows up on the list. An account with 5 rows has 5 times the edge of an account with one.

What Does the Limit Do?

The Fair Participation Limit sets the maximum number of times each participant can be included in the giveaway. Set the field to 100 and a user who made thousands of comments takes part with 100 comments at most.

Comments above the limit are not deleted, they are only left out of the participation. Alongside users with disproportionate entries, the other participants keep a fair chance of winning.

How Is the Fair Entry Limit Set?

The limit is set on the rules step while you create the giveaway.

• Open the Fair Entry Limit field: After you give the post link, the Set Fair Participation Limit toggle appears on the rules screen.
• The system calculates the upper limit: The highest value you can enter is one fifth of the total entries on your post.
• Pick the value: You change the value with the plus and minus buttons. If you enter a number above the upper limit, the field pulls you back to the limit.

Your post's entry distribution decides where the limit lands. If most entries pile up on a few accounts, a low value fits better; if entries are spread evenly, a value close to the upper limit does.

Fair Entry Limit or a Single Entry?

The rules screen has three settings that look alike:

• Fair Entry Limit: At most the number of comments you set counts as valid from one user. It removes the advantage of a heavy commenter without removing the account from the list.
• Count Every User Once: However many comments a user makes, they enter the giveaway once. While this toggle is on, the Fair Participation Limit field is hidden, as the two rules do not work together.

  

• Count Identical Comments Once: Comments carrying the same tags from a user are counted only once. Comments tagging different friends keep being counted separately.

  

If you want to give everyone equal odds, Count Every User Once fits, and if you want to leave some room for multiple entries, the fair entry limit fits.

The Excessive Entry Warning on the Draw Step

Once the comments are collected, a warning appears on the start screen if some accounts have noticeably more entries than the rest. The warning also shows the accounts with the highest entries.

When you pick the limit in the field inside the warning and press the Apply Limit button, the rule is written into the giveaway right away. The comments do not need to be retrieved again.

After that, starting the countdown and picking the winner is all that is left, and every step is in the comment giveaway guide.

Common Mistakes

Most of the confusion around the limit comes from misreading what the rule does.

• Taking the limit for a single entry: The Fair Participation Limit does not cut entries down to one. If you want one entry each, you turn on Get Unique Users.
• Expecting the comments to be deleted: Comments above the limit stay on the post and are only left out of the participation.
• Confusing it with the word filter: The word filter looks at what the comment says, while the fair entry limit looks at how many comments there are.
• Not stating it on the post: When you do not write how many comments are counted, participants keep posting comments in a row.