FYPNow Data Study · June 2026
TikTok Engagement Rate Benchmarks: 2,966 Videos Analyzed
Across 2,966 viral TikToks, the median engagement rate is 7.49%, and the top 10% of videos clear 13.59%. News & Politics has the highest engagement of any niche at 11.67%, more than double Fashion at 5.02%. Engagement rate = (likes + comments + shares + saves) ÷ views.
Engagement rate by niche
Median engagement rate for each niche, ranked highest to lowest. The “pretty” niches people admire (fashion, automotive, sports) sit at the bottom, while niches that spark comments and saves (news, relationships, business) lead.
n = number of videos in each niche. Niches with small samples (e.g. News & Politics, n=30) are directional; Finance (n=1,444) and Motivation (n=719) are the most statistically robust.
What counts as a good engagement rate?
Above the 7.49% catalog median is genuinely good, and the top 10% of videos clear 13.59%. But the average shifts hard by niche, so benchmark against your own: a 7% fitness video is solid, while a 7% news video is below par. A Fashion creator hitting 6% is beating their niche; a News creator at 8% is underperforming theirs.
Two more signals worth engineering for: Relationships content has the highest save rate (0.99%), and Motivation has the highest share rate (0.42%). Saves and shares are the actions the algorithm reads most strongly, so make business content savable (lists, frameworks) and relationship content shareable (someone needs to send it to a friend).
Methodology
- 2,966 viral TikTok videos analyzed by FYPNow, deduplicated per video.
- Engagement rate = (likes + comments + shares + saves) ÷ views, per video.
- Figures are medians, not averages, so a few mega-viral outliers do not skew them.
- Niche assigned per video by content classification; only niches with 20+ videos are shown.
- Data current as of June 2026.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good engagement rate on TikTok?
Across 2,966 analyzed videos the median engagement rate is 7.49%, so anything above ~7.5% is solid and the top 10% of videos clear 13.59%. The more useful comparison is against your own niche: 7% is below average for News & Politics but well above average for Fashion.
Which TikTok niche has the highest engagement rate?
News & Politics has the highest median engagement at 11.67%, followed by Relationships (9.96%) and Business (9.35%). Controversy and discussion drive comments, which lifts engagement.
Which TikTok niche has the lowest engagement rate?
Fashion has the lowest median engagement at 5.02%, with Automotive (5.10%) and Sports (5.30%) close behind. These are visually appealing but tend to be admired rather than saved, shared, or debated.
How is TikTok engagement rate calculated?
Engagement rate = (likes + comments + shares + saves) divided by views, expressed as a percentage. It measures how strongly the people who saw a video reacted to it.
Why use the median instead of the average?
TikTok performance is power-law distributed, so a few mega-viral videos inflate the mean. The median represents the typical video and is not skewed by outliers, which makes it a more honest benchmark.
See how your videos stack up against your niche
FYPNow grades every one of your TikToks against your niche’s benchmark, so you know whether a 6% video is good or not, for your niche.
Try FYPNow free for 7 daysFree engagement-rate calculator (no signup): fypnow.com/tools/engagement-calculator
Related: analytics by niche · the full write-up · how to read TikTok analytics