With over 2 billion monthly active users, Instagram is one of the most popular social media channels. The platform hosts a wide variety of individuals and businesses, making it super useful for content marketers and content creators worldwide. However, to grow an engaged following, it’s important to connect with your audience by writing appealing Instagram captions.

Sometimes, though, thinking up a worthy caption can seem like a Herculean task. We’ll share some practical tips to make the process easier — and show you 6 AI Instagram caption generator tools that’ll take the burden off.

How to write Instagram captions that connect with your audience

Should you write a long caption or a short one? Should you be funny or sassy? Here are some of our top Instagram caption tips and tricks.

Front-load your captions

Instagram only shows the first one or two lines of your caption, so it’s crucial to grab your audience’s attention in those first few words. Your hook can be an incentive (e.g. 10K GIVEAWAY!) or a short thought-provoking question that your audience can empathize with. 

You can also share the “Problem” or “Agitate” part of a Problem-Agitate-Solution (PAS) Framework to entice readers who may be dealing with that issue.

Vary your intent

Don’t be that brand on Instagram that’s always asking their followers to do something, but giving nothing in return. It also gets boring if every post is a lengthy “how-to” guide. Vary your post intent. Try alternating between the following options:

• Inspire: An inspiring post could be anything from a quote to an aesthetically pleasing image with a short caption.
• Connect: Bond with your followers over a shared problem, share a personal anecdote, or something else to foster connection.
• Promote: This is a great time to use the PAS Framework. Highlight a pain point, agitate, and then share a solution you’ve created.
• Educate: Teach your followers a hack, share a quick tip, or share something interesting you found recently.

Break up lengthy text

Walls of text are never fun to read, especially on an easy-breezy platform like Instagram. If readers can’t engage, they’ll keep scrolling past your posts, which is bad news for your page and Instagram’s algorithm. So break up your text and add line breaks as needed. You can do this by writing your post first on a different platform and then copying and pasting. There are also several tools to help incorporate line breaks, some of which we’ll share later.

Since some Jasper templates like AIDA Framework break text into paragraphs by design, you’ll know exactly where to place your line breaks. 

Do use emojis

Emojis work a bit like proper line breaks — they break up the text and bring life to your message. You can use them to express emotion or visually represent an idea. For example, using checkboxes to show that you checked something off your to-do list. So ‌sprinkle emojis throughout your captions, while being careful not to overdo them. 

Add personality

It’s okay to be human on Instagram. Despite all the filters and airbrushed selfies, there are still so many people drawn to authenticity and human nature on Instagram. So, don’t be afraid to use a conversational tone and experiment with being funny, sassy, or serious as the post demands. 

Add a CTA

Marketing 101: always include a call-to-action. Depending on your post’s intent (which you should vary), your CTA could ask for responses to a question, ask readers to share something about themselves, or tell them to click a link in your bio. 

Whether in the form of time spent, comments or saving, engagement heavily influences Instagram’s algorithm to keep ranking your posts. So always encourage followers with a CTA.

Use hashtags

One last thing! Hashtags are still a thing and can help Instagram users find your post and engage, especially if you use relevant ones. Finding them requires a process similar to keyword research, including identifying popular terms that aren’t too competitive and checking search intent. 

Once you’ve identified the right hashtags, add them at the end of your caption or even in a new comment slot if you want to keep them out of readers’ way.

Need help with hashtags? Try our Instagram Hashtag Generator.

How AI Instagram caption generators can save you hours

Instagram captions pull a lot of weight and can influence people to spend more time on your posts. But even with a good understanding of their value and how to create an impressive caption, it can be tough to write them at a high volume. 

Keeping a brand Instagram account alive and thriving can require posting at least 2-3 times every single day. That’s where Instagram caption generators save the day. Here are some ways they save time:

• Require little input: Often, all they need is a keyword, image or a few sentences to understand the intent of your post.
• Generate multiple ideas: With one click, you can get up to 10 different ideas with some caption generators.
• Include emoji suggestions: No need to spend time deciding which emoji to use — you’re covered!
• Generate output in different languages: If you’re not bilingual but want to reach a multilingual audience, this is priceless.
• Vary tone as needed: Witty, informative, persuasive — whatever you need, done!

6 Instagram caption generators for crafting catchy content

It’s time to meet our favorite tools for the best Instagram captions! Some of these recommendations are AI writing apps that write captions and even your Instagram bio from scratch, while others help make your captions shine by including hashtags or helping you plan content.

1. Jasper

Jasper is an AI writing wonder with over 52 writing templates including some for social media content. Its Photo Post Captions template is perfect for creating short, relevant, and actionable Instagram content that draws readers in. Here’s this example promoting a new freelancer invoicing template.

With Jasper, you can vary the tone of your caption just by letting the AI know. Here’s an example of the same caption in two different tones.

Witty:

Inspiring:

Neat, huh? Jasper is available in more than 25 languages and generates as many outputs as needed in less than a minute (emojis and hashtag suggestions included)! And since you can instruct the artificial intelligence and give it custom details to incorporate, you’re always just a step away from personalized, attention-grabbing captions. 

Stuck captioning for other social media networks? Try Jasper’s Pinterest Pin Title & Description, Facebook Ad Headline, and Facebook Ad Description templates to get started.

Pricing: Jasper’s Starter plan begins at $29 per month with the more robust Boss Mode plan starting at $59 per month.

2. CaptionPlus

CaptionPlus is an Instagram caption generator and hashtag source available to use on your browser and as an Android app. You can either upload an image and get suggested captions and hashtags or browse caption categories to pick one that suits your content.

However, many of the caption suggestions are motivational, “inspiring” quotes by famous poets or public figures. There don’t seem to be many calls-to-action yet or even conversational phrases to connect with your target audience so keep this in mind depending on the kind of content you need. 

Pricing: There’s a free option, as well as a monthly plan for $1.49 and a yearly plan for $12.99.

3. Captions for Instagram

As shown by its 5,000+ nearly 5-star ratings on Google Play Store and Apple App Store combined, Captions For Instagram is one of the better options for coming up with captions and relevant hashtags quickly. 

You can search for captions by category, although the choices are currently limited. Or, even better, you can ‌search for a keyword related to your post to see all relevant options. 

Many of the captions are brief—no more than a sentence or two—and meant to be inspirational. So, if that style fits your brand, this could be a great tool for you. 

Pricing: Free to use. 

4. Preview

Preview is an all-in-one social media content planner and Instagram caption generator. The tool allows you to use more than 3,000 pre-written caption templates, prompts, and CTAs, which you then have to customize. It won’t write creative captions for you but ‌provides script options you can choose from, as shown below.

You can plan an unlimited number of Instagram posts for free. The platform also allows you to plan Reels and Instagram Stories — even setting up Swipe Up links in advance. You can then set your content to post at specific times and Preview will automatically post for you.

No need to stress about hashtags because Preview has researched and hand-selected hashtags relevant to your post. The app also offers photo editing capabilities and analytics. Preview is available for iOS and Android.

Pricing: The Pro and Premium plans cost $7.99 and $14.99 per month respectively. There’s also a free plan.

5. TagWag

This online tool generates different types of captions and hashtags for your Instagram photos by analyzing the picture. You can also select a caption manually by opening the app and browsing various caption categories from selfie captions to motivational captions.

However, manual captioning seems to work best as the automatic option generates irrelevant or unspecific captions that sound more robot-generated than human. The categories are also limited.

If you’d like to explore their database, you can search their store of hashtags to find one that works for your image. TagWag can be used on browsers with limited functioning, but there are iOS and Android apps available.

Pricing: The app is free to use.

6. InCopy: Captions & Hashtags

The InCopy Android app is an up-and-coming contender with many good ratings. Like many similar tools, it allows you to upload an image to generate captions and hashtags from an image, browse popular categories or search for a keyword. 

The neat thing about InCopy is that you can refine your search and get more relevant results by searching several keywords simultaneously. While its hashtag suggestions need some work and often require some editing so that they’re relevant, this is still an app worth trying. 

Pricing: Free to use. 

Instagram caption examples generated using Jasper

As you can see, there are several Instagram caption generator apps to choose from. So what makes Jasper the leading option? See for yourself! Let’s find out how Jasper would caption a handful of real posts from real brands. 

Feedfeed

First up is Feedfeed—a food and recipe brand with 2 million followers on the gram. Its straightforward post on a pasta dish racked up over 13,000 likes. How would Jasper re-caption this post? Here are a few of the outputs. 

These are solid alternatives because they: 

• Are more fun and punchy and, therefore, likely to get people excited to check out the recipe
• Allude to the benefits and desires of Feedfeed’s audience, including comfort food and easy weeknight meals 
• Give hashtags and emoji ideas to make the captions more engaging and increase their reach
• Remove the redundancy in the original caption so that every word counts

The Photo Post Captions template is great for short, catchy captions like these, which you can then add to if you need to direct followers to the link on your bio, for example. 

HubSpot

HubSpot wrote a pretty straightforward caption to announce the launch of its Facebook Marketing Strategy course. But let’s see if Jasper could make it more compelling and more lively (without losing the company’s brand voice). 

What does Jasper’s caption do better? It: 

• Grabs attention by alluding to a pain point (i.e. not getting the results you want)
• Highlights a more concrete, desirable outcome — increased ROI
• Mentions how easy the information is to apply, which can reduce followers’ hesitation to sign up

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And it took less than a minute to fill out the AIDA Framework template and generate this caption! So, even if you wanted to edit it slightly, you’d need to spend no more than a few minutes to create a caption that converts.   

Opendoor

To promote Opendoor Complete, Opendoor posted a brief description of its core feature and benefit, along with a video success story. What would an alternate caption generated by Jasper look like?

A few things this alternative does well are: 

• Making the brand feel more personal and human by starting off with “we” and expressing excitement about the recent success
• Explaining the features and benefits through the story, which could spark interest in watching the full video (and potentially do a better job of selling the offer than a direct call-to-action)
• Connects the benefits and features back to potential buyers or sellers so that they get emotionally invested in the story and understand what Opendoor can do for them

And notice that we used the Facebook Ad Primary Text template for this. In many cases, templates are interchangeable, so don’t be afraid to try different ones to see how they can help with writing captions! 

Canva

There’s a lot to be learned from Canva’s strategic caption for its post announcing the top color palette of 2021. The brand didn’t just make a bland announcement; instead, it used a vivid description to heighten the interest of its followers. And this almost certainly made the “swipe to see how you can use this” call-to-action more effective.

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But what if Canva wanted to lean more into the descriptive aspect? Here’s an alternate caption generated in Jasper and lightly edited. 

Things this version does well include: 

• Starting with the description to reel IG users in so that they’re already hooked when the brand info is introduced
• Emphasizing the impact of the palette using words like “soothing,” “peace,” and “relaxation” so that it resonates more with people trying to create that vibe in their Canva designs 
• Giving examples of what the Ocean Dream palette could be used for, sparking followers’ imagination and showing how the info in the post could be relevant to them

You can use similar techniques and the Creative Story template for your own captions.

Speed up your social media marketing with Jasper 

Writing an Instagram caption that drives engagement is a skill few have mastered. And to be honest, there aren’t that many excellent AI Instagram caption generators available. Many options are glitchy, have extremely limited functionality, and struggle to provide relevant caption and hashtag suggestions.

That’s why Jasper is our top recommendation. This AI tool generates compelling captions for your photo posts, includes appealing CTAs, and adds emojis to infuse personality — ingredients for effective social media marketing. Your hunt for the perfect caption is over.

What are you waiting for? Sign up for Jasper now to start creating cool captions that convert.