Facebook and Instagram comment auto-reply 2026
The short answer
The ad worked, the post has four hundred comments, and three hundred and fifty of them ask the same question: how much? Your agent answers the first twenty and then the day ends.
Comment automation does two things at once: a public reply everyone else sees, which cuts the repeat question, and a private message to the asker that closes the sale. A platform that does one leaves half the job.
And the first thing to do has nothing to do with replying
Your customer types their mobile number under your ad so you will call them. Any competitor who opens that post takes it. This is not a risk — it happens every day on every successful ad in this market, and none of the platforms selling you "auto-reply" mentions it.
We detect a mobile number in the comment text, hide it automatically, and answer its author in the DM. The customer still sees their own comment — hiding on Facebook keeps it visible to its author — so nobody is upset, and nobody else can read it.
How it works, in order
- You pick the posts
All posts, or specific ad posts. And a post you connect is backfilled with the comments that arrived before you connected it.
- You set the keywords, or leave it to the AI
Keywords like "price" or "available" take a set reply. Or let the agent read the comment and answer from your catalogue and your files — and then "do you have an L?" gets a real answer rather than a canned one.
- It replies publicly and messages privately
At the same moment. The public reply is short and varies each time so it does not read as a machine, and the DM is what continues.
- And it hides the ones with a number in them
Automatically, before anyone else reads it.
The limits Meta imposes — the ones platforms stay quiet about
- A seven-day window for the private message
You may message someone who commented within seven days. After that the public reply still works and the DM does not — so a backfill on an old post replies publicly to everyone and DMs only the recent.
- One private message per comment
Meta allows one private message in reply to a comment. Anything after that must be a reply to the customer's own reply. A platform promising you a sequence off a single comment is describing something that will get your page restricted.
- And reports are what stop pages
Not technical rules. Anyone DMing everybody who wrote "gorgeous" collects reports. Which is why telling a question from a compliment is not a nicety.
And Instagram specifically
The same mechanism, different numbers. Across 73,751 conversations from 14 merchants: 47% of Instagram conversations have the customer's message last — against 27% on Facebook. Automation on Instagram catches roughly twice what it catches on Facebook.
The ArabyBot platform logssample 73,751 conversationsmeasured 4 September 2026 · the report and its limits
Frequently asked
Why is replying to the comment not enough?
Because the sale happens in the DM. The public reply tells everyone else the page answers — which matters, because it cuts repeat questions — but the private message is what closes the order. A platform that does one of the two leaves half the job.
And comments containing phone numbers?
This is the most dangerous part of the whole thing and nobody talks about it. Your customer typed their number under your ad, and any competitor opening the post takes it. That comment must be hidden automatically and answered in the DM. We detect a number in the comment text and hide it — the customer still sees their own comment, nobody else does.
Can it reply to an older comment?
On a post you have connected, yes — we backfill the comments that came before. But Meta caps the private window: you may message someone who commented within seven days. After that the public reply still works and the DM does not.
Does it tell a question from a compliment?
Yes — "how much?" is not "gorgeous 😍". A comment that is not a question gets a short public reply or nothing, depending on what you set, so you do not DM somebody who said "nice" and have them report you. Reports are the number-one cause of a page being restricted.
Does it work the same on Instagram?
Comments, story replies and DMs, yes. The practical difference is that Instagram's waiting share is much higher — 47% against Facebook's 27% in our measurement — so automation there changes more.
Where to go next
- The comment automation page
- The unified inbox — where these comments land
- Instagram · Facebook Pages
- The ready message templates