Threads Users in 2026: Statistics on Growth, Active Users and Engagement

Threads has more than 500 million monthly active users. Meta announced the number on June 16, 2026 in a Meta Newsroom post that also launched new features, and Mark Zuckerberg repeated it on the second quarter 2026 earnings call of July 29, 2026, where he called Threads "the fastest growing conversation app ever." That is the latest number of Threads users Meta has put in writing.

The latest official daily figure is older. On the third quarter 2025 call of October 29, 2025, Zuckerberg said Threads "recently passed 150 million daily actives." Meta has not given a newer daily count since. So the short answer to how many people use Threads is: about half a billion people open it at least once a month, and at least 150 million did so every day as of autumn 2025.

Meta reported its third quarter 2026 results on October 21, 2026. The press release filed with the SEC gives a family wide figure, 3.64 billion daily active people across Meta's apps in September 2026, and no Threads number at all. On the call, according to 24/7 Wall St.'s report of October 22, Zuckerberg said Threads "has now overtaken X in monthly actives" without giving a new count. Treat that as a claim, not a statistic, until Meta publishes the figure behind it.

Outside trackers do not all agree with Meta. Similarweb estimated 141.5 million daily Threads users on iOS and Android in early January 2026, TechCrunch reported, which sits close to Meta's own daily count. Apptopia, on the other hand, wrote in May 2026 that its estimate of Threads' monthly audience fell from 400 million in January to 388 million in April. Both are modeled estimates, not counts of accounts. The sections below lay out every Meta number in date order, then each outside estimate next to what it actually measures, so you can pick the right figure for a slide, a pitch or a decision about where to post.

We started from the primary record. Meta posts a PDF transcript of every earnings call on its investor relations site, and we read the Threads passages in each one from the fourth quarter of 2023 to the second quarter of 2026, then the third quarter 2026 press release in Meta's SEC filing. Where a number came from a post by Zuckerberg or Adam Mosseri on Threads itself rather than a call, we used the news report that quoted the post on the day, and we say so in the row. All of it was read on October 28, 2026.

For anything Meta does not publish, such as users by country or mobile versus web, we used named measurement firms (Similarweb, Apptopia, Sensor Tower), the Pew Research Center's survey of American adults, and Buffer's published analysis of posts sent through its scheduler for engagement rates. Every one of these is an estimate from a sample, and each says so in its own way. We kept the publisher, the date and the definition next to every figure.

Three rules hold for the whole page. A number Meta stated as "more than" or "almost" keeps that wording. Anything we calculated is marked derived, with the arithmetic shown. And when two sources disagree, both appear, with the reason they differ, rather than an average that nobody measured.

In 2023 came the spike and the drop. Threads opened on July 5, 2023 in the Americas, per Meta's launch announcement, as a text app that signed people in with their Instagram account. The launch numbers were sign ups, not users, and they fell off fast. Sensor Tower told CNBC on July 13, 2023 that daily active users were down about 20% from the first Saturday and time spent per user had halved, from 20 minutes to 10. Similarweb put Android actives at 36.6 million on July 10. By October, Zuckerberg was describing "just under 100 million monthly actives," below the headline sign up count. Threads reached the European Union on December 14, 2023, according to an update on the same Meta launch post.

2024 was a year of steady quarters. Through 2024 Meta reported a new monthly figure almost every quarter: 130 million in February, 150 million in April, 175 million around the first anniversary, close to 200 million at the end of July, almost 275 million in October and 300 million in December. On the third quarter 2024 call Zuckerberg added that Threads had been "growing more than 1 million sign ups per day." December 2024 brought the first daily number, more than 100 million, which Meta had not disclosed before, TechCrunch noted. The same piece noted the rise from 275 million in November and tied it to the people who had left X a couple of months earlier.

In 2025 Meta gave fewer counts and talked more about engagement. Monthly users passed 320 million by January and 350 million by April. Then the calls changed tone. The second quarter 2025 call in July gave no user count at all and talked about ads and recommendation models instead; the 400 million milestone came two weeks later from Mosseri, on Threads rather than on a call. The third quarter call brought the 150 million daily figure and said ranking changes alone had lifted time spent on Threads by 10% in the quarter. Direct messages arrived in the third quarter too, so anyone on Threads could message anyone else in the app.

2026 brought half a billion. Meta's June 2026 post credited communities, which it called "one of the fastest growing features on Threads since it launched last year," and used the milestone to take communities out of beta, add local communities in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, and launch a feed control called Your Algo in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. In plain arithmetic (derived), Threads went from more than 130 million monthly users in February 2024 to more than 500 million in June 2026, nearly four times as many in a little over two years.

One pattern is worth noticing if you plan around these numbers. Meta reports a Threads count when it is a round milestone and stays quiet in between. The absence of a number on a call is not evidence of decline, and a milestone post is not evidence that growth is steady. It is a company choosing when to speak.

Monthly active users answer how many people touch Threads at all. Daily active users answer how many have made it a habit. For a brand deciding whether to post there every day, the daily number is the more honest one, and we found only two of them from Meta.

The first was more than 100 million daily users in December 2024, when monthly users stood at 300 million. That works out (derived) to about one in three monthly users coming back each day. The second was more than 150 million daily users on the October 29, 2025 call. The closest monthly figure at the time was the 400 million announced in August, which would put the ratio near 38% (derived, and rough, because the two numbers were measured about three months apart and the monthly count kept moving).

For comparison, Meta does not publish a daily to monthly ratio for Instagram either, but it does give both totals: Instagram reached 3 billion monthly actives by October 2025 and 2 billion daily actives by July 2026. That suggests (derived) roughly two thirds of Instagram's monthly users open it daily, a much stickier habit than Threads has shown in Meta's own numbers. Threads is big; it is not yet an app most of its users open every morning.

Time spent tells the same story from the other side. Meta keeps reporting that people spend more time on Threads, not that more people use it. Recommendation changes raised Threads time spent by 35% in the six months to April 2025, by 10% in the third quarter of 2025 and by 20% in the fourth quarter, per the January 2026 call. On the October 2026 call, chief financial officer Susan Li said time spent per user grew more than 20% from a year earlier, 24/7 Wall St. reported. Those are growth rates, not minutes. Meta has never published average minutes per Threads user per day.

Two firms publish regular estimates of Threads usage, and they point in different directions. That is the most important thing to know before quoting either.

Similarweb estimates app usage with its own model; it does not see Meta's account data. In June 2025 it estimated 115.1 million daily Threads users on iOS and Android, up 127.8% from a year earlier, against 132 million for X, per TechCrunch in August 2025. By January 7, 2026 its estimate had Threads at 141.5 million daily mobile users and X at 125 million, per TechCrunch on January 18, 2026. That is the source behind the widely shared claim that Threads passed X on mobile. Similarweb also said X still led Threads in the United States, though the gap had narrowed.

Apptopia also estimates app usage with its own model. Its May 14, 2026 analysis said Threads' global daily users had fallen every month for eight months, that its monthly audience slipped from 400 million in January 2026 to 388 million in April, and that Threads was down 21% globally and 27% in the US year on year in the first quarter of 2026. It put US daily users 61% below their October 2024 peak. It also said men make up about 54% of Threads' active users, against about 75% on X. Apptopia does not publish its sample or its exact definitions on that page.

Meta counts its own users, and in June 2026 it said 500 million people were active on Threads each month, well above Apptopia's 388 million for April. Meta does not say in its posts or calls how it defines an active Threads user. Some of the gap may be method: an outside model of app usage cannot see web use or every market equally, and a company's own count can include ways of using the product that an outside model misses. Some of it may be real churn in particular countries offset by growth in others. Nobody outside Meta can settle it with the public data.

Sensor Tower is the third name you will see. Its most quoted Threads numbers are from launch week, the 20% drop in daily users and the halving of time spent reported by CNBC. Treat any 2026 statistics page that cites Sensor Tower for a current Threads total with care unless it links to the Sensor Tower page.

The practical reading: for the size of Threads, quote Meta and name it as Meta's count. For direction of travel in a specific country, look at an independent tracker and say which one. For a decision about your own account, your own follower and reach numbers matter more than either.

On phones, Threads appears to have more daily users than X, by Similarweb's estimate: 141.5 million to 125 million in early January 2026. On the web, X is far ahead, with 145.4 million daily visits to Threads' 8.5 million, per the same TechCrunch report. Threads is mostly used in its phone app. X still draws far more of its use through the browser.

On monthly users, the honest answer is that nobody can check. Zuckerberg said on the October 21, 2026 call that Threads had overtaken X in monthly actives, 24/7 Wall St. reported, without a number. X has not published audited user figures since it went private. The same report says a SpaceX filing put X at about 550 million users in March 2026, without defining users. Earlier, X's then chief executive had claimed more than 600 million monthly users, a figure TechCrunch noted was never independently verified.

Apptopia adds a counterpoint: it says X grew daily users 22% globally and 28% in the US year on year in the first quarter of 2026 while Threads fell, and that X still beats Threads on time spent per user, sessions per user and churn, per its May 2026 analysis. So the Threads vs X race depends entirely on which measure you pick. Threads has more mobile reach by one panel; X keeps more depth and a much larger web audience by every measure we found.

For a business choosing where to post, the useful question is narrower. Where are your customers already reading? A consumer app with an Instagram following will usually find Threads easier to grow on, because Threads is built on Instagram accounts and Instagram followers can find you there. A developer tool or a news brand whose readers live on desktop may still find more of them on X. Spreadcast does not post to X, so we have no stake in that choice beyond saying it plainly.

Meta does not publish Threads users by country. None of the earnings calls or newsroom posts we read gives a country split, and Meta's Threads insights API offers follower demographics by country only for an individual profile, and only once it has at least 100 followers. Every "Threads users by country" table you find online is therefore an estimate, and many do not say whose.

What can be measured is website traffic. Similarweb's page for threads.com, which covered the three months to September 2026 when we read it, puts Taiwan first with 27.3% of visits, then Vietnam with 15.23%, the United States with 11.27%, Indonesia with 5.56% and Hong Kong with 4.93%. It counted 499.6 million visits over those three months and an audience that was 58.45% male. Remember that this is the website. Most Threads use happens in the app, and app use by country may look different.

Advertising data points the same way. A Campaign Asia report on the global rollout of Threads ads said data from We Are Social and Meltwater shows India as Threads' biggest ad market and Taiwan and Hong Kong with the highest reach among adults 18 and over. Meta's own June 2026 post launched local communities first in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, the markets where it chose to localize first.

The United States looks weaker for Threads than the global total suggests. Apptopia's May 2026 analysis says US daily users fell 61% from their October 2024 peak while global usage held up better, and Similarweb told TechCrunch that X still leads Threads in the US. Threads arrived late in the European Union, on December 14, 2023 per Meta's launch post update, and ads reached the EU, the UK and Brazil only in January 2026, per the fourth quarter 2025 call.

If you sell mainly to American customers, plan with US figures, not the global total. If you sell in East or Southeast Asia, Threads is closer to a mainstream network than its US reputation suggests.

The cleanest US number comes from a survey, not a tracker. The Pew Research Center asked a representative sample of 5,022 US adults from February 5 to June 18, 2025 which platforms they use, and 8% said they use Threads, per Pew's Americans' Social Media Use 2025 report and the table on its social media fact sheet. In the same survey 21% said they use X, 50% Instagram and 4% Bluesky. Pew wrote that Democrats and Democratic leaning independents were more likely than Republicans to use Threads and Bluesky.

Pew's 2026 survey, published October 19, 2026 from fieldwork between January 30 and June 18, 2026, did not include Threads at all, so there is no 2026 figure to compare. Anyone quoting a 2026 Pew number for Threads is quoting something Pew did not publish.

The trackers disagree on the direction in the US. Similarweb said in January 2026 that X still led Threads among US mobile users but the gap had narrowed, and that X's US daily users were about half of what they had been a year earlier, per TechCrunch. Apptopia said US daily Threads users were down 61% from October 2024 and down 27% year on year in the first quarter of 2026, per its May 2026 analysis. Meta does not break out US Threads users.

What this means in practice: an American consumer brand should treat Threads as a secondary network that is cheap to feed if it already posts on Instagram, not as a replacement for Instagram or TikTok. Eight percent of adults is still millions of people, but it is a long way from the 50% who use Instagram.

Demographic numbers for Threads are thinner than for any other large network, because Meta publishes none. Here is what the named sources actually say, and nothing more.

On gender, Apptopia's May 2026 analysis says men have consistently made up about 54% of Threads' active users, compared with about 75% on X. Similarweb's threads.com page shows a website audience that is 58.45% male. Both are modeled estimates, and both put Threads closer to an even split than X.

On age, Similarweb lists 25 to 34 year olds as the largest age group among visitors to threads.com. Pew's 2025 report does not break Threads use down by age in its text. Instagram, the app Threads was built on, is used by 79% of US adults aged 18 to 29 in Pew's 2026 data, which gives Threads a young pool to draw from even if Pew no longer measures Threads directly.

On politics in the US, Pew's 2025 report says Democrats and Democratic leaning independents are more likely than Republicans to use Threads and Bluesky, while Republicans are more likely to use X and Truth Social. For a brand that is a reason to read your own audience, not to guess it from the network's reputation.

For your own followers, the data is exact. Once a Threads profile has at least 100 followers, the insights API returns follower demographics by country, city, age or gender, one breakdown at a time. It is the only Threads demographic data that is not modeled, and it describes your audience rather than everyone's. Check it before you rely on any global split.

Instagram is about six times the size of Threads on monthly users. Meta said Instagram reached 3 billion monthly actives in October 2025, and Threads reached 500 million in June 2026. Derived: 500 divided by 3,000 is about 17%, or roughly one Threads monthly user for every six on Instagram. On daily users the gap is wider. Instagram passed 2 billion daily actives by July 2026, while the last daily Threads figure was 150 million in October 2025.

The two apps are tied together. Threads launched as an app you sign into with your Instagram account, per Meta's launch post, and it keeps drawing new users from Instagram, a link 24/7 Wall St. also pointed to in its October 2026 report. For a brand, that tie is the main argument for posting on Threads: your Instagram followers are the first audience Threads shows you to, and the visual you already made for Instagram can go to Threads with a shorter, conversational caption.

This is where most small teams stall. Posting on Instagram already takes a designed image, a caption, hashtags and a time slot. Adding Threads means a second caption in a different voice, the same image cropped or reused, and a second place to remember. If that sounds like your week, Spreadcast designs the post once in your brand and publishes it to Instagram and Threads together, with a caption written for each network. You approve it in one tap or let it run on autopilot.

Bluesky is much smaller and counts differently. Its own 2025 transparency report says Bluesky grew from 25.94 million to 41.41 million users during 2025, counting accounts on its own servers and on independently run servers. That is a registered account total; a large share of those accounts are not active in a given month. Threads' 500 million is a monthly active count. Even taken at face value, Threads has more than ten times as many people using it each month as Bluesky has accounts.

In the US the gap is smaller in surveys. Pew's 2025 survey found 8% of US adults use Threads and 4% use Bluesky, per the Pew fact sheet. Apptopia's May 2026 analysis says Bluesky's US daily users fell about 96% from January 2025. For Bluesky's full numbers by month, active users and how to read its public counters, see our Bluesky statistics page.

Size is not the only reason to be on a network. Some niches gather on Bluesky more than on Threads, and posting to both costs little if one tool sends the same post to each. Our guides on how to schedule Threads posts and how to schedule Bluesky posts cover the native options and the tools that post to both.

A median engagement rate of about 3.6% means a typical post sent through Buffer gets roughly 36 likes, replies, reposts or quotes for every 1,000 accounts that see it. That is respectable, below LinkedIn and Instagram in Buffer's 2025 data and above X. It is also falling: Buffer measured about 4.4% the year before. As more brands arrive and the feed fills with recommended posts, each post competes harder. To check your own rate against these medians, use our engagement rate calculator, and see social media KPIs for which numbers to track each week.

Replies matter more on Threads than on most networks. Meta's Threads insights count replies, reposts and quotes as separate metrics, and the app is built around conversation. The accounts that grow there tend to answer the replies under their posts, ask a real question now and then, and post short text more often than they post polished graphics. The graphics still work, especially for a product launch, an app update or a number worth sharing, but a feed of only ads gets ignored.

Timing helps at the margin. Buffer's study of 2.5 million Threads posts found weekday mornings strongest, with Thursday at 9 a.m. the single best slot and Saturday the weakest day. Treat that as a starting point and move toward the hours your own insights show.

Here is a small, realistic plan for a business account. Post three to five times a week: two short text posts with an opinion or a question, one designed image about something real (a new feature, a customer result, a milestone), and replies to anyone who answers. If you already post to Instagram, reuse the Instagram image on Threads with a shorter caption instead of designing a second one. That is exactly the job Spreadcast does: paste your App Store link or website, and it builds your brand kit, designs the image post and writes a separate caption for Threads and for Instagram, then publishes both. The Free plan makes 3 posts to download so you can see the quality first.

Five hundred characters is about three short sentences plus a link. That is shorter than an Instagram caption can be and longer than most people actually read, so the limit rarely bites for a business post. What bites is writing a different caption for each network: the Instagram caption with hashtags will not read naturally on Threads, and the LinkedIn version is too formal for either. Our social media character limits page lists every field across the networks, and the image sizes guide covers the pictures.

Carousels of up to 20 items mean the same carousel you make for Instagram can usually go to Threads unchanged. The 250 post daily cap on the API only matters to tools and agencies publishing at volume. If you want an AI assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT to post to Threads for you, our Threads MCP server guide explains the Meta developer app, the tokens and the hosted alternative, and the Spreadcast MCP server lets Claude or ChatGPT design and schedule a Threads post after an OAuth sign in, with no developer app of your own.

Spreadcast writes one caption per network that fits each limit, so the Threads version stays under 500 characters while the Instagram and LinkedIn versions get their own length and tone. Pro is $29 a month and covers 10 social accounts across any mix of networks; see pricing for the one time Post Pack and 30 Day Pass if you only need a launch month.

Global Threads users tell you whether the network is worth a look. Your own numbers tell you whether it is working. Threads gives every profile insights in the app, and the same figures are available to tools through Meta's insights API: views, likes, replies, reposts, quotes and shares for each post, and profile views, link clicks, follower count and follower demographics for the account.

A weekly check that takes ten minutes is enough for most small accounts. Write down four numbers every Monday: followers, total interactions on last week's posts (likes, replies, reposts and quotes added together), total views, and link clicks. Divide interactions by views for a rough engagement rate you can compare week to week. After a month you will know which kind of post earns replies, which earns clicks and which earns nothing.

Two quirks are worth knowing. Post insights leave out the metrics of nested replies, and the account level reply count includes only top level replies, so a busy conversation under one comment will look smaller in the numbers than it felt in the app. And the insights history does not reach back before April 2024, so very old accounts cannot pull their launch year from the API. Follower demographics also stay hidden until you pass 100 followers.

If you post to several networks, the weekly check multiplies. Spreadcast's analytics show followers and interactions per network, and likes, comments, reach and views per post, in one place for Threads, Instagram and the other networks you connect, so the Monday numbers are already there. Our social media KPIs page lists which of those numbers to put in a monthly report.

Threads went from no ads to ads everywhere in about eighteen months, and Meta has said each step would not move its revenue much. On the January 29, 2025 call Meta said it was beginning to test ads on Threads and did not expect them to be a meaningful driver of revenue in 2025. By the April 30, 2025 call Threads ads were open to all eligible advertisers in more than 30 markets, including the US. The July 2025 call added that advertisers globally could run image and video ads to Threads users in most countries from May.

The October 2025 call said ads were running globally in the Threads feed and that Meta was "optimizing the ads formats and performance before we ramp supply." In January 2026 Meta began expanding ads to all remaining countries, including the UK, the European Union and Brazil, per the fourth quarter 2025 call. On the July 29, 2026 call chief financial officer Susan Li said Meta had completed its global ads expansion on Threads.

Meta has never reported Threads revenue on its own. The third quarter 2026 results showed $64.6 billion of revenue for the whole company, per the SEC filing, and 24/7 Wall St. observed that nothing in the results shows a measurable contribution from Threads yet. For an advertiser, that means Threads is still a young placement inside Meta's ad system, and Meta's own words on the calls are about tuning formats and performance before it adds more ads.

For an organic poster, ads change the feed slowly. Meta said in July 2025 that ad supply on Threads remained low, and it is still tuning formats, so a well made organic post still reaches followers and recommended viewers without paying. That window tends to close as networks mature, which is one argument for building a Threads presence now rather than later.

The statistics above make one thing clear: Threads rewards showing up often, replying, and posting things worth talking about. The cost for a small team is not the idea. It is the production. Here is what that usually looks like by hand, and what changes with Spreadcast.

Before: Alex runs marketing for a small app alone. A new version ships on Tuesday. To announce it, Alex opens a design tool, finds the brand colors, drops a screenshot into a phone mockup, exports a square for Instagram and a portrait for Threads, writes an Instagram caption with hashtags, rewrites it shorter for Threads, writes a third version for LinkedIn, then logs into each app to post. That is most of an afternoon, and on a busy week it simply does not happen. Threads is often the first network to go quiet.

After: Spreadcast checks the App Store listing every day. When the new version goes live, it designs the post in the app's brand, with the real screenshot in an iPhone frame, writes a caption for each network, and publishes to Threads, Instagram and the rest on autopilot or after one tap of approval. For anything else, Alex types one line in Create, such as "a tip about the new widget," and gets a designed image post or carousel to approve. Businesses without an app start from a website or a short description of the brand instead.

Spreadcast publishes to Instagram, Facebook, Threads, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Bluesky, Mastodon, Telegram and Discord, with a calendar, drafts, approvals and analytics that show followers and interactions per network and likes, comments, reach and views per post. Pro is $29 a month for 10 social accounts with no cap on posts; Studio is $79 a month for 5 apps, each with its own brand, and 50 accounts. If you prefer to work from Claude or ChatGPT, the MCP server lets the assistant design, schedule and approve posts in the same chat. More detail on the features page, or start free with your App Store link and see three posts before you pay anything.

If you want to see how other apps announce updates on social, our app update announcement examples collect real posts, and how to automate social media posts compares the free and paid ways to stop doing it by hand.