Profile Performance and Post Performance Reports Showing Different Numbers in Sprout? Try This Fix!

Ever wondered why your Profile Performance and Post Performance reports don't show the same numbers? Don't worry. My name is Bethany and I'll quickly explain why in this Sprout Bites video. In Sprout, we have two types of data: profile level, sometimes referred to as reporting period data, and post level, often called lifetime data. Profile level data — which you'll see in reports like Facebook Pages, Instagram Business Profiles, or LinkedIn Pages — focuses on what happened during a selected reporting period. That means it tracks any actions like impressions, clicks, likes, and comments that took place only within that date range, even if the posts were published before it. For example, if you're viewing data for the month of May, it might include engagement from posts published in March or April, as long as people interacted with those posts in May. Post level data works a bit differently. Reports like the Post Performance report track the lifetime of a post, meaning they include all interactions on posts published within your selected date range, regardless of when those interactions happened. So if you're viewing posts published in May and someone likes one of those posts in July, that interaction will still count toward the post's lifetime performance and show up in the Post Performance report for May. By comparison, it wouldn't show up in your profile performance report for May because it falls outside the reporting period. Most reports in Sprout use reporting period data, but a few — like Post Performance and Sent Messages — use lifetime data. Since lifetime metrics update as engagement continues, you may see those numbers change over time. Because these reports look at data in different ways — one by when the engagement happened, and the other by which post it belongs to — the numbers won't match exactly. So the next time your numbers don't line up, just remember it's two different ways of looking at the same story. Try exploring both report types together to get a full picture of your performance.