Threads Pulls Ahead of X on Mobile as Bluesky's Audience Shrinks

The text-based social race that began when Twitter was rebranded as X has a clearer picture in late summer 2026. On mobile, Meta's Threads now has more daily users than X, and Bluesky, the breakout alternative of late 2024, has lost a large share of its audience. The figures come from the analytics firm Similarweb rather than from the platforms themselves, so they are best read as well-informed estimates.

What the numbers say

Similarweb estimated that Threads reached about 147 million daily active users on mobile in July 2026, up 21.3% year over year. X, by the same measure, recorded 123.7 million, a 7% decline. The crossover was first reported in January 2026, when Threads was cited at 141.5 million mobile daily users and was described as having overtaken X on that metric. Seven months later the gap has widened.

Bluesky's picture is starker. Its mobile app had 10.4 million monthly active users worldwide in June, a drop of 27.2% from a year earlier, and roughly 3 million daily users in July, down about 25.6%. TechCrunch's reporting, which Daring Fireball highlighted, notes that monthly usage has roughly halved from its late-2024 peak.

Why the measures disagree

Comparing these networks is slippery, because each reports differently, or not at all. Meta last gave official Threads figures in 2025: over 400 million monthly users in August and 150 million daily users in October. X is private and no longer publishes regular usage data; Elon Musk has claimed 600 million monthly users, while a Similarweb-based figure cited for June 2026 was about 302 million monthly app users. Bluesky's own registered-user count is far larger than its active audience, which is why third-party activity data is the more useful gauge.

Why it matters

The shift matters less as a scoreboard than as a lesson in distribution. Threads grew by being wired into Instagram, where an existing audience was one tap away, while Bluesky grew in bursts tied to news events and political moods. Bursty growth tends to decay, and the Bluesky decline looks like exactly that pattern. X, meanwhile, is still enormous. The same Similarweb dataset puts its app near 300 million monthly users, and it retains advantages in web traffic and as a real-time newsroom for journalists, politicians and traders.

Daring Fireball's framing is blunt: both Threads and X have hundreds of millions of active users, and Bluesky remains tiny by comparison. The practical consequence for publishers and brands is that audience building on any one network is a bet on a platform's mood. Cross-posting to all three is cheap, but engagement per post still concentrates where the people are.

It is also a reminder of how fragile third-party numbers are. Similarweb tracks app and web panels, not server logs, and the methodology can shift. The direction across several independent readings is consistent, but any single figure deserves a margin of error.

How the race got here

Threads launched in July 2023 as Meta's answer to the turmoil at Twitter, and its early growth was explosive but shallow. What changed was integration: it borrowed Instagram's graph and login, then spent two years adding the things heavy posters wanted, such as better search, trending topics and an API for developers. Meta's official count of more than 400 million monthly users in August 2025, followed by 150 million daily users two months later, set the baseline from which the 2026 mobile numbers read as continued growth rather than a spike.

X's trajectory is the mirror image. The platform has remained culturally central, but advertiser pullback, algorithm changes and the subscription push have coincided with a modest decline in mobile daily use. Bluesky's moment came in the weeks after the 2024 US election, when waves of users left X. The pattern since then, a shrinking active base against a large registered one, is common for networks born from a protest migration rather than a product advantage.

What to watch

• Whether Meta publishes fresh official Threads numbers on an earnings call, which would confirm or correct the Similarweb picture.
• If X's decline continues or levels off as it pushes new features such as payments.
• Whether Bluesky can stabilise with product changes or events, rather than relying on migration spikes.
• Web versus mobile: X still leads on web, so any single-surface headline can mislead.

Sources

1. Bluesky's Active User Base Is Shrinking, and Remains Tiny Compared to Threads and Twitter/X — Daring Fireball
2. Threads overtakes X with 141.5M mobile users — TechBriefly
3. Bluesky's active user count — Gigazine
4. Threads just beat X on daily mobile users, new data shows — Gulf News