TikTok Shadowban: How to Check If Your Reach Is Limited

How do you check for a TikTok shadowban?#

Start inside your own account. TikTok doesn't use the word "shadowban" and doesn't publish a ban flag for anyone. What it does do is tell the creator when a post is ineligible for the For You feed: the notice, the reason and an Appeal button sit in that post's Analytics, once analytics is turned on in TikTok Studio. If none of your recent posts carry that notice, TikTok hasn't restricted them, and a drop in views has another cause.

If you want a second opinion from outside, or you're looking at an account you don't run, compare its recent views with its own earlier ones. The free TikTok shadowban checker does exactly that from the 10 latest public videos and gives a reach score from 0 to 100. It needs no login.

What TikTok calls a "shadowban"#

People say "shadowban" when their videos suddenly stop reaching anyone beyond their followers. On TikTok's side there are a few separate things that can cause that:

• A post that is ineligible for For You. The video stays on your profile and followers can still find it, but TikTok won't recommend it to new people. TikTok's Safety Center says the creator gets told about this in the post's Analytics.
• A removed post or a strike. These come with an in-app notification, so they are not hidden at all.
• No restriction, just fewer views. A topic that's cooling, a gap in posting, or one older video that travelled unusually far all make recent numbers look weak by comparison.

Only the first one fits what people mean by a shadowban, and it's the one TikTok does report to the creator.

Where to look in your own account#

1. Turn on analytics in TikTok Studio, if it isn't on yet.
2. Open the Analytics of each of your last few posts, starting with the ones whose views fell.
3. Look for a notice that the post won't be shown in the For You feed. If it's there, it names the reason and offers an Appeal.
4. Check your notifications for removed posts or strikes over the same period.

If none of the posts carry a notice, they are eligible for For You, whatever the view count says.

How to read a drop in views from outside#

Nobody outside the account can see TikTok's notices, this site included. What anyone can see is public play counts and the follower count. Our checker reads those for the 10 latest videos and weighs four signals:

Each signal scores 0 to 100, where higher looks more like limited reach, and the weighted sum lands in one of three bands: under 30, 30 to 59, or 60 and over. The weights and thresholds were set by hand. They weren't fitted to a set of accounts known to be restricted, because nobody outside TikTok has such a set.

Why a high score doesn't prove a shadowban#

The score describes reach, not a decision by TikTok. A few things push it up on accounts that are perfectly fine:

• Size. Plays per follower scores 100 whenever recent videos average under 2% of followers. For a huge account that's an ordinary result. TikTok's own account, @tiktok, scored 46 when we checked it on 28 September 2026, and 30 of those points came from this one signal.
• The 10-video window. If views fell more than 10 videos ago, the drop sits in both halves and doesn't show as a drop.
• Missing data. Some lookups come back without upload dates or with every like count at 0. Pinned videos then count as the newest, and likes per play is fixed at 35.

Treat a score of 60 or more as a reason to open your post Analytics, not as an answer.

What to do if TikTok says a post isn't eligible for For You#

• Appeal from the notice. The Appeal button is right next to the reason in the post's Analytics.
• Read the reason. It points to the part of the Community Guidelines the post ran into, which tells you what to avoid in the next videos.
• Keep posting normally. A notice on one post doesn't apply to the others; check each one.

If there's no notice and views still fell, the cause is on the content side: topic, hook, length, or how often you post. That's also where timing comes in. The TikTok best-time heatmap shows which weekdays and hours an account's recent videos drew the most plays, and our guide to the best time to post on TikTok explains how to read it.