Threads gives you no way to see who unfollowed you. There is no notification, no history, and no list — your follower count drops and the app tells you nothing else. The only reliable method is Meta's official data export, which does include your Threads followers, in a different folder from your Instagram ones.
This guide covers where that data lives, how to request it, how to read it, and a Threads-specific difference that causes a lot of tools to display the wrong names entirely.
Does Threads tell you who unfollowed you?
No, and it never has. Threads notifies you when someone follows you. Unfollows are silent — no push, no in-app banner, no entry in the activity tab. Nothing is logged for you to look up later.
Your own followers list is not much help either. It shows who follows you now. It does not mark anyone as recently departed, and Threads gives you no way to sort it by when someone followed you. If you never recorded your list before, the information about who left is simply gone. Nobody can reconstruct it, and a tool claiming to tell you who unfollowed you last month without having seen your data last month is not being straight with you.
What you can do is start recording from today. That is what the export is for.
Where is Threads follower data in the Meta export?
Threads accounts are tied to your Instagram account, so Threads data arrives inside the Instagram export — but in a completely separate tree. Your Instagram connections sit under connections/followers_and_following/. Threads sits under:
your_instagram_activity/threads/
Inside that folder:
followers.json— everyone following you on Threadsfollowing.json— everyone you followpending_follow_requests.jsonblocked_profiles.jsonrestricted_profiles.jsonfollow_requests_you've_received.jsonrecent_follow_requests.jsonrecently_unfollowed_profiles.json— accounts you unfollowed, not people who unfollowed you
The folder also contains content files like liked_threads.json and saved_threads.json, which have nothing to do with follower relationships. And as on Instagram, a category you have no data for produces no file at all — if you have never blocked anyone on Threads, there is simply no blocked_profiles.json. Missing is not the same as broken.
How do you download your Threads followers list?
You request it through Instagram's Accounts Center. Threads has no separate export tool.
- Open Accounts Center — Instagram app → profile → menu → Accounts Center.
- Go to Your information and permissions.
- Tap Export your information (older builds say Download your information) → Create export / Download or transfer information.
- Select the account, then Customize information — or Some of your information on older builds.
- Under Connections, select Followers and following. If your Accounts Center shows Threads categories separately, select those too — availability varies by account and region.
- Choose Export to device / Download to device.
- Set Date range to All time. A shorter range truncates your list, and every account outside the window will look like it disappeared.
- Set Format to JSON. The HTML export is for reading in a browser; no analysis tool parses it reliably.
- Tap Start export / Create files, then wait for Meta's email.
Meta has been renaming these screens, so your app may show either the older "download" wording or the newer "export" wording. The order of the steps is the same.
When the ZIP arrives, check that your_instagram_activity/threads/ exists. If it does not and you do have a Threads profile, request the export again with a broader selection — Threads data is not always bundled with the Instagram-only "Followers and following" category.
Why do some Threads unfollower tools show display names instead of usernames?
This is the single most common way Threads tools get things wrong, and it is easy to spot from the outside. Instagram and Threads label people differently in the export, so a tool that was built for Instagram and pointed at Threads without any further thought ends up listing display names — the free-text name someone types into their profile — where it should be listing usernames. On screen it looks fine. You see human names instead of handles and assume that is a feature.
It stops being fine at the second import. Display names change whenever their owner feels like it, so a comparison built on them reads a renamed account as two events: the old name disappeared, a new name arrived. It reports one unfollower and one new follower, and neither happened. On an active account this produces a slow, steady trickle of phantom unfollowers that are corrosive precisely because each one looks plausible. UnfollowPeek keys every Threads comparison on the account's true username, which does not change on a whim and is reported properly when it does — so a rename can never masquerade as somebody leaving.
How do you actually find your Threads unfollowers?
The mechanics are set arithmetic across two exports.
From a single export you can compute who does not follow you back: everyone in following.json who is absent from followers.json. That is available immediately, from the file you just downloaded.
Unfollowers require two exports taken at different times:
- Unfollowers = present in the older
followers.json, absent from the newer one - New Followers = present in the newer, absent from the older
- Broken Mutuals = followed you and was followed by you, now gone from both sides
There is no shortcut. The export contains no record of departures, so the comparison has to be built from snapshots you keep yourself. The sooner you take the first one, the sooner the second one is worth anything.
The free unfollow checker recognises a Threads export on its own and reads it as Threads data, usernames and all. Drop the ZIP in and you get your not-following-back list in the browser, with nothing uploaded.
For unfollowers over time, UnfollowPeek for iOS keeps a separate Threads ledger from your Instagram one. This matters more than it sounds: the same person can follow you on Instagram and not on Threads, and merging the two produces nonsense in both directions. Snapshots stay on your iPhone, there is no login because there is nothing to log into, and Unfollowers, New Followers, Not Following Back and Broken Mutuals are all free. The free tier keeps two snapshots — exactly one comparison — and Pro adds unlimited history, follow timestamps, CSV export, and username-change detection.
Related reading
The export request works the same way for Instagram, with the follower data in a different folder — see how to see who unfollowed you without a password. And if you are weighing a Threads tracker that asks for your Instagram password instead, do unfollower apps get you banned covers what Meta's terms actually say about that.
Check your Threads export now. The free unfollow checker detects Threads archives automatically and shows who doesn't follow you back — in-browser, nothing uploaded.
Then start a history. A Threads unfollow only shows up as the difference between two snapshots, so the first one is the one that matters. UnfollowPeek for iOS tracks Threads separately from Instagram, on-device. Free, no account, iOS 18+.