Between 48 hours and 3 weeks for a false positive with a well-prepared appeal, and 2 to 6 weeks if the account has been hijacked, with the email or phone number changed by someone else. If the first appeal is denied and the case needs escalating, that adds several more weeks. There’s no fixed commercial deadline, because the platform — Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or LinkedIn — controls its own review queue, not the agency or the account holder.
Why the reason for the suspension changes the timeline so much
A false positive is a suspension by mistake: the account hasn’t actually broken any policy, but an automated system flagged it anyway. In that case, the work consists of preparing a clear case file proving no breach occurred and filing it through the official appeal channel — this is the scenario that resolves fastest, in 48 hours to 3 weeks.
An account hijack is different: someone has changed the linked email or phone number, so ownership has to be proven before anything can be appealed. That extra identity-verification step is what stretches the process to 2 to 6 weeks. If the platform denies the first appeal — this happens even with well-prepared case files, because the initial review is usually automated — the case needs escalating through a different route, which adds several more weeks to the total.
What doesn’t change the timeline, even though it seems like it should
Neither paying more, nor having a large following, nor knowing someone inside the platform shortens the review queue. That kind of promise is, in practice, exactly why many cases take longer than they need to: promising a shortcut that doesn’t exist delays the one thing that actually works — a well-argued case file against the specific reason for the suspension.
Before a case is even accepted
Not every suspension reason is recoverable — some are genuine policy breaches that the platform won’t reverse, no matter how well the appeal is written. That’s why the first step is always a free viability assessment, before accepting the case or charging anything for the work.
Full detail on the service, including the difference between a false positive and a hijacked account, is at social media account recovery. If the problem isn’t a social account but a suspended Google Ads or Meta Ads account, the timelines are different — see reinstating a suspended ad account. For the full picture of digital protection, see the digital protection guide. Tell us what happened with your account.