Social Networks Ranked by Number of Users: 2026 League Table

Why a ranking of social networks needs official numbers

Rankings of social networks are published every month, but many of them mix company filings with estimates, mix monthly with daily users, and repeat numbers that the companies never stated. This league table takes a stricter approach. Every figure comes from a company document: a quarterly report, a filing with a securities regulator, a transcript of an earnings call, a court filing or an official announcement. Each figure is shown with the type of user it measures and the date it applies to.

The result is a ranking with fewer platforms but more confidence. It shows a clear top tier of three Meta apps, a second tier of networks with around 1 billion monthly users, and a long list of platforms with between 100 million and 1 billion. For the overall number of people using social media and how the industry earns its money, see our wider report on social networks and our social media facts and figures.

The ranking by monthly active users

Monthly active users, or MAU, are the most common way to compare the reach of social networks: the number of distinct accounts or people that used the service at least once in a month. Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook all sit at or above 3 billion. Meta stopped reporting monthly users for individual apps after 2023, when Facebook had 3.07 billion, but its executives have since confirmed that Instagram reached 3 billion monthly actives in 2025 and WhatsApp more than 3 billion.

A clear top tier: three Meta apps are each about twice the size of WeChat, the largest network outside Meta.

Below the top three, the second tier is led by WeChat, the Tencent super-app, with 1.439 billion combined monthly users of Weixin and WeChat at the end of June 2026, up 2 percent in a year. Messenger, Telegram and TikTok have each claimed over 1 billion users a month, although none publishes an exact figure. Snapchat is close behind at 971 million, followed by the Chinese short-video app Kuaishou at 797 million.

The lower half of the ranking shows how varied the market is: Pinterest, a visual discovery network, has 640 million monthly users; Weibo, the Chinese microblog, 561 million; QQ, the older Tencent messenger, 520 million on mobile devices; Threads, which Meta introduced in July 2023, more than 500 million; and Bilibili, a Chinese video community, 371 million. Audience splits by gender are covered in our gender distribution by platform data.

The full league table of social networks

Reddit is included at its weekly figure, because it does not publish monthly users. A monthly count would be higher than the weekly one, so its true rank by monthly users may be above Threads. LinkedIn reports more than 1.3 billion members, but members are registered accounts, not active users, so it is listed separately. Bluesky had more than 43 million registered users in March 2026. The ranking of individual accounts on one platform is a different list, covered in our report on the most followed TikTok accounts.

Two well-known networks are absent. YouTube has not published an official monthly user count for years; its last company statement, from 2013, was more than 1 billion monthly unique users, and its current audience is clearly larger. X has made public claims about its user numbers but publishes no filings or audited reports. Both would rank high on any estimate, but neither can be placed with an official number.

The ranking by daily active users

Daily active users, or DAU, are a tougher test, because they count only people who return every day. Meta reports a combined measure for all its apps, Family Daily Active People, which averaged 3.60 billion for June 2026, 3 percent higher than a year earlier. On its July 2026 earnings call, Meta said Facebook and Instagram each had more than 2 billion daily actives, and it said the same of WhatsApp in January 2026.

Daily use is even more concentrated: the three biggest Meta apps each have about four times as many daily users as Snapchat.

Snapchat has the largest daily audience outside Meta among networks that report it, with 493 million in Q2 2026, up 5 percent. Kuaishou follows with 412.3 million, then Weibo with 254 million. Threads reported 150 million daily actives in the third quarter of 2025, and Reddit had 130.3 million daily active uniques in Q2 2026. Discord says it has more than 90 million daily users.

The ratio of daily to monthly users shows how habitual each service is. Snapchat converts about 51 percent of its monthly users into daily users, Kuaishou about 52 percent and Weibo about 45 percent. For Facebook and Instagram, more than 2 billion daily users against roughly 3 billion monthly suggests a ratio of about two thirds. How long people spend on these apps each day is tracked in our time spent on social media each day data.

How each network counts its users

Because there is no common standard, user numbers are only comparable with care. Most companies count monthly active users, but they define activity differently. Some count logged-in accounts, others count unique devices, and Reddit counts unique visitors whether logged in or not. In 2024 Meta stopped reporting monthly users for each app and now reports only a family-wide count of people, which removes duplicates when one person uses several Meta apps.

Adding the monthly users of all networks therefore gives a figure much larger than the number of people online, because the typical internet user is active on several platforms. The total number of people using social media is tracked separately in our report on the number of social network users worldwide.

The race to 1 billion users

The dates on which the largest networks first announced 1 billion users show how quickly the market has scaled. Facebook did it first, in October 2012, eight years after it was founded. YouTube followed in March 2013, WhatsApp in February 2016, and Instagram and WeChat in 2018. TikTok announced 1 billion monthly users in September 2021, and Telegram in March 2025.

TikTok was twice as fast: it reached 1 billion users in about four years, against seven or eight for the other giants.

The speed of the newer networks reflects how many more people were online when they launched. When Facebook opened to the public in 2006, there were far fewer smartphone users than when TikTok expanded internationally in 2017. Growth since 1 billion has also been faster: Instagram added its second and third billion in about seven years. TikTok audience data by country are in our ranking of the countries where TikTok has the most users.

Facebook: from 1.06 billion to 3.07 billion monthly users

Facebook is the only top network with a long, consistent public record of users, published every quarter from its 2012 stock market listing until the end of 2023. At the end of 2012 it had 1.06 billion monthly users and 618 million daily users. By the end of 2023 those numbers had risen to 3.07 billion and 2.11 billion.

Three billion and growing slowly: Facebook nearly tripled its monthly users in 11 years, but growth slowed to low single digits after 2020.

The fastest growth came in the middle of the decade, when Facebook was adding more than 200 million monthly users a year as smartphones spread across Asia, Africa and Latin America. The year 2020 stands out, with 300 million additions as the pandemic pushed more people online. After that, growth fell to 3.9 percent in 2021, 1.7 percent in 2022 and 3.7 percent in 2023. Meta passed 3 billion monthly Facebook users in the second quarter of 2023.

The ratio of daily to monthly users rose from 58 percent in 2012 to 69 percent in 2023, which means Facebook became more of a daily habit even as its growth slowed. The founder behind these numbers features in our list of the richest social media entrepreneurs.

The Meta family: 3.60 billion people every day

Since 2024 the only user number Meta reports each quarter is Family Daily Active People, a measure it introduced in 2019: the number of unique people who use Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Threads or Messenger on an average day. The count has risen every year, from 2.26 billion at the end of 2019 to 3.58 billion at the end of 2025 and 3.60 billion by mid-2026.

Up 1.34 billion in six and a half years: more than four in ten people on Earth use a Meta app every day.

This figure shows why Meta dominates the ranking. Its apps reach more people every day than the monthly audience of any network outside Meta. Within the family, Threads is the newest and fastest-growing: it went from launch in July 2023 to 350 million monthly actives in early 2025 and more than 500 million by July 2026. The gender split of the Instagram audience is in our report on the distribution of Instagram users by gender.

Snapchat: 493 million daily users

Snap is the largest independent Western social network that reports daily users. Its daily audience has tripled since its 2017 listing, from 158 million at the end of 2016 to 474 million at the end of 2025 and 493 million in Q2 2026. Its monthly users reached 971 million in the same quarter.

Tripled in under ten years: Snapchat added 335 million daily users after 2016, despite a flat 2018.

Almost all of that growth has come from outside North America. In Q2 2026 Snapchat had 92 million daily users in North America, 98 million in Europe and 303 million in the rest of the world, which now accounts for 61 percent of the total. Its North American audience, at 92 million, is now the smallest of the three regions.

Pinterest: 640 million monthly users

Pinterest reported 640 million monthly users in Q2 2026, up 11 percent in a year. Its history shows how the pandemic distorted user numbers: monthly users jumped from 335 million at the end of 2019 to 459 million at the end of 2020, then fell to 431 million in 2021 as lockdowns ended, before growing again every year since.

Growth comes from abroad: almost six in ten Pinterest users are outside North America and Europe, the fastest-growing region.

Reddit: the fastest growth among listed networks

Reddit, which listed its shares in 2024, publishes daily and weekly active uniques, including visitors who are not logged in. Its daily figure rose from 73.1 million at the end of 2023 to 101.7 million a year later, 121.4 million at the end of 2025 and 130.3 million in Q2 2026, up 18 percent. Weekly uniques came to 514.6 million, a 24 percent rise.

Up 78 percent in two and a half years: Reddit has grown faster than any other listed Western social network.

As with Snapchat and Pinterest, the growth is international. In Q2 2026 Reddit had 53.2 million daily uniques in the United States, up 6 percent, and 77.1 million internationally, up 28 percent. International users now make up 59 percent of the daily audience. Advertising across these networks is tracked in our report on worldwide spending on social media ads.

Chinese networks: WeChat, Kuaishou, Weibo, QQ and Bilibili

Five of the 15 networks in the ranking are Chinese, all listed companies that report users every quarter. WeChat is by far the largest, with 1.439 billion combined monthly users, and works as a messaging, payments and services platform. Kuaishou, the main rival to Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, had 797.3 million monthly and 412.3 million daily users in Q2 2026, with monthly users up 11.5 percent.

A mature network: Weibo grew from 236 million to almost 600 million monthly users by 2023, and has eased slightly since.

Weibo shows what happens when a large network matures. Monthly users rose steadily to a peak of 598 million in 2023, then slipped to 567 million at the end of 2025 and 561 million in June 2026, while daily users held at about 250 million. QQ, which once rivalled WeChat, now has 520 million mobile monthly users. Bilibili, popular with younger viewers, had 371 million monthly and 116.5 million daily users, with daily users up 7 percent.

Douyin, the largest short-video app in China, is owned by ByteDance, which does not publish user numbers for it, so it cannot be placed in this ranking. Country-level reach of social networks is compared in our data on social networking penetration by country.

The social network ranking in eight numbers

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