An Instagram alternative with no ads in it.
Same formats you already post: photos, video, Stories, Shorts. The difference is who the ranking answers to, and the fact that nothing in the feed was paid for.
If what you want back is a feed of the people you actually follow, in an app that is not selling your attention to anyone, this is the part of Surf that matters to you.
Side by side.
| Surf | ||
|---|---|---|
| How it makes money | Advertising | Subscriptions |
| Ads in the feed | Yes | None, on any plan |
| Ranking weights published | No | Yes, every weight |
| Feed without ranking | A separate Following feed | One switch, in the main feed |
| Why a post reached you | Limited | On every ranked post |
| Tune the ranking yourself | No | Ten sliders, or a sentence |
| Encrypted direct messages | Default in one-to-one chats | Default, and in groups to 256 |
| Pay to promote one post | Yes | Not possible |
| Video editor built in | Editing tools | Full studio, no watermark |
Every row describing Instagram reflects publicly documented behaviour and can change. Where they do something well, it says so.
The feed you follow, back.
Three balance sliders decide how much of your feed comes from people you follow, and seven more set the character of what fills the rest. They move the weights the ranker reads, not a filter sitting on the result.
See the weightsPost it without the watermark.
Cut on a real timeline in the browser, caption it, score it from a licensed library, and export a clean file. No render queue, and no other app's logo burned into the corner.
Inside the studio
Where Instagram still wins.
Surf is new, and the things it does not have are worth knowing before you move.
- Nobody you know is here yet. Surf is pre-launch, and a social app with none of your friends in it is a worse app.
- There is no import. Your Instagram posts, followers and DMs do not come with you.
- Creator payouts run in the United States only for now.
- The mobile app installs from the browser to your home screen. There is no App Store listing yet.
Questions people ask.
- Is Surf actually free, or free until it gets popular?
- Free is the whole network, not a trial: every format, the full algorithm and its controls, and end-to-end encrypted messages. The paid tiers raise limits like upload quality and post length, and add creator payouts. The business is subscriptions, so there is no point at which advertising arrives to fund the free tier.
- Can I move my Instagram followers over?
- No. There is no import for posts, followers or messages, and we would rather say so than imply a migration path that does not exist.
- Does paying change how far my posts go?
- Yes, and the number is published. Posts and replies from a paying account carry a ranking multiplier of 1.5x on Sapphire, 2.5x on Pro and 4x on Ultra. It runs inside the same formula everyone gets, it cannot override a setting you chose, it cannot pass a block or a mute, and there is no way to pay to promote one specific post.
- What happens to my data?
- It is not sold, and there is no ad-targeting profile, because there is no advertising system to feed. Direct messages are end-to-end encrypted by default.
More in the help center, the algorithm page, and the full comparison.