Monthly trends report · April 2026

What’s actually winning on TikTok and Instagram right now.

Live cuts from 1,439 videos analyzed this month. Updated on the 1st. Built for creators who want signal, not vibes.

1,439

videos this month

Hot Take

most consistent hook

Skit

top format (102K median)

-39%

median reach vs March

data as of April 25, 2026

01 · Hook leaderboard

Hook archetypes ranked by median views

vs. March 2026

  • Proof Drop

    n=25

    New
  • Hot Take

    n=296

    30%
  • Experimenter

    n=30

    36%
  • Investigator

    n=326

    57%
  • Contrarian

    n=227

    40%
  • Fortune Teller

    n=112

    63%
  • Story

    n=44

    81%
  • Teacher

    n=235

    47%

The story: reach compressed across every archetype this month. Hot Take held strongest (-30%), Story collapsed (-81%). Proof Drop is the new median leader but with a small sample (n=25) so treat as directional. If you're choosing what to film this week, Hot Take and Investigator are the safest workhorses.

02 · Format leaderboard

The format gap is enormous this month

The story: Skit content (102K median) and any Greenscreen-augmented format are pulling ~40-50x what plain talking-head content gets (2.3K median, n=404, the most common format and the worst-performing). If your account leans heavily on plain talking head, the cheapest single move available to you this month is adding a greenscreen layer.

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Next edition: May 1, 2026

Methodology

How this report is generated

Pulled from 1,439 TikTok and Instagram videos posted in April 2026that we’ve analyzed across hook archetype, format, runtime, and emotional trigger. Buckets shown only when n ≥ 20 to avoid noise.

Median views (not average) is the headline metric. A handful of celebrity virals can pull averages 10-20x higher than what a working creator should expect. Median is the honest summary.

Pulled from our analyzed video dataset on April 25, 2026.