Bluesky reported more than 43 million registered users in March 2026, up from 13 million at its October 2024 Series A - roughly tripling in 18 months (Bluesky, Series B announcement 2026). The rest of the decentralized social web tells a very different story: FediDB tracked about 12 million registered fediverse users but only around 2 million monthly active ones in 2026, and Mastodon’s monthly actives had slipped under 1 million by late 2025 (FediDB, 2026; Mastodon, 2025). Threads, the largest app on the ActivityPub protocol, dwarfs both with more than 400 million monthly users, yet its federation feature sees almost no real crossover traffic (Adam Mosseri, 2025; The Fediverse Report, 2025). In the United States, 4% of adults use Bluesky against 8% for Threads and 21% for X (Pew Research Center, 2025). This analysis consolidates data from Bluesky, Pew Research Center, FediDB, DataReportal, Similarweb, PLOS, and 9 other primary sources to size the decentralized social landscape in mid-2026.
TL;DR
- Bluesky reported over 43 million registered users in March 2026, up from 13 million in October 2024 (Bluesky, 2026).
- Bluesky crossed 40 million users on October 31, 2025 (Bluesky, 2025).
- In November 2024, Bluesky grew by about 1 million users a day for several days during the post-election surge (Jay Graber via TechCrunch, 2024).
- FediDB tracked more than 12 million registered fediverse users and roughly 2 million monthly active users in 2026 (FediDB, 2026).
- Mastodon has about 10 million accounts but under 1 million monthly active users, down from a 2.6M+ peak in 2022 (Mastodon, 2025; PLOS, 2025).
- Threads passed 400 million monthly active users in August 2025, making it the largest ActivityPub app (Adam Mosseri, 2025).
- Meta says Threads has interacted with over 75% of all fediverse servers (Meta, 2025).
- 4% of U.S. adults use Bluesky, versus 8% for Threads and 21% for X (Pew Research Center, 2025).
- Bluesky’s AT Protocol holds about 20 billion public records across 1,000+ apps (Bluesky, 2026).
- Bluesky raised a $100M Series B led by Bain Capital Crypto at a reported ~$700M valuation (Bluesky, 2026; TechCrunch, 2026).
- Among news influencers, Bluesky account ownership roughly doubled from 21% to 43% after the 2024 election (Pew Research Center, 2025).
- bsky.app web visits peaked at 118.69 million in January 2026 (Similarweb, 2026).
1. Bluesky’s Growth: From Invite-Only to 43 Million
Bluesky is the fastest-scaling name in the decentralized field, and its growth has come in election-driven waves rather than a steady climb. The platform grew from 13 million users at its October 2024 Series A to more than 43 million by March 2026, roughly tripling in about 18 months (Bluesky, Series B 2026). The sharpest spike came in November 2024, when a post-election exodus from X pushed Bluesky past 20 million and, at its peak, added roughly a million accounts a day. Growth has since normalized to a slower, milestone-driven pace.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Registered users (Mar 2026) | 43M+ | Bluesky, 2026 |
| Registered users at Series A (Oct 2024) | 13M | Bluesky, 2026 |
| Users milestone (Oct 31, 2025) | 40M | Bluesky, 2025 |
| Peak growth rate (Nov 2024) | ~1M new users/day for several days | Jay Graber via TechCrunch, 2024 |
| Users Nov 13 -> Nov 25, 2024 | 15M -> 22.5M | TechCrunch, 2024 |
| User growth across 2024 | +763% | Windows Central / Bluesky, 2024 |
| App downloads, November 2024 | 7.85M | Sensor Tower, 2024 |
| Registered users (cross-reference) | ~42M (about 10x since 2024) | DataReportal, Digital 2026 |
Source: Bluesky, 2025 $100M Series B blog; TechCrunch, Bluesky tops 20M users, narrowing gap with Threads.
Context note: Bluesky topped 20 million on November 19, 2024, when Threads still had 275 million monthly active users - but Threads’ daily-active lead over Bluesky in the U.S. had narrowed to 1.5x, down from 5x before the election (TechCrunch, 2024). This wave arrived as users left X; our X (Twitter) statistics roundup tracks the other side of that migration.
2. Engagement and the AT Protocol Ecosystem
Registered accounts overstate a platform’s real footprint, and Bluesky is no exception. Against 43 million registrations, independent trackers put Bluesky’s daily active users near 4.5 million and monthly actives above 5.3 million in late 2025 and early 2026 (Business of Apps, 2026; PLOS, 2025). The more durable signal is developer activity on the underlying AT Protocol: the network holds roughly 20 billion public records, and more than a thousand third-party apps now build on it, a breadth no other decentralized network matches.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Public records in the AT Protocol network | ~20B | Bluesky, 2026 |
| Third-party apps on atproto (weekly use) | 1,000+ | Bluesky, 2026 |
| Monthly SDK downloads | 400,000+ | Bluesky, 2026 |
| Daily active users (Jan 2026) | ~4.5M | Business of Apps, 2026 |
| Monthly active users (late 2025) | 5.3M+ | PLOS, 2025 |
| bsky.app web visits, peak (Jan 2026) | 118.69M | Similarweb, 2026 |
| bsky.app web visits (Sep 2025) | 118.67M (-16.67% vs Apr 2025) | Similarweb, 2026 |
| Skylight (atproto TikTok-style app) users | 380K+ | TechCrunch, 2026 |
Source: Similarweb, bsky.app Traffic Analytics; Bluesky, 2025 $100M Series B blog.
Divergence note: monthly and daily active figures for Bluesky come from third-party trackers, not audited company disclosures, and estimates vary; treat them as directional. The developer-side records and app counts come from Bluesky itself. For how decentralized identity fits broader privacy trends, see our digital privacy statistics roundup.
3. Bluesky Demographics and Geography
Bluesky’s audience is concentrated, young-adult heavy, and male-skewing - a profile that resembles early-era X more than a mass-market network. The United States alone drives about half of bsky.app web traffic, and users aged 18 to 34 account for well over half of visitors (Similarweb, 2026). In the U.S. population at large, adoption is still small: Pew Research Center measured 4% of adults using Bluesky in 2025, behind Threads at 8% and X at 21%.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. share of bsky.app web traffic (Jul 2025) | 50.13% | Similarweb, 2026 |
| Japan share of bsky.app web traffic | 6.03% | Similarweb, 2026 |
| Male share of audience | 63.32% (36.68% female) | Similarweb, 2026 |
| Visitors aged 18-24 | 31.55% | Similarweb, 2026 |
| Visitors aged 25-34 | 26.09% | Similarweb, 2026 |
| U.S. adults who use Bluesky (2025) | 4% | Pew Research Center, 2025 |
| News influencers with a Bluesky account (Mar 2025) | 43% (up from 21% pre-election) | Pew Research Center, 2025 |
| Left-leaning influencers who adopted Bluesky | 69% (vs 15% right-leaning) | Pew Research Center, 2025 |
Source: Pew Research Center, Bluesky has caught on with many news influencers; Similarweb, bsky.app Traffic Analytics.
Divergence note: Similarweb’s country splits measure website traffic, not registered users; other panels report a slightly higher U.S. share (around 52%) and rank Japan as Bluesky’s second- or third-largest market. The Pew adoption figures come from a survey of 5,022 U.S. adults fielded February to June 2025. For the full platform ranking, see our social media statistics roundup.
4. Bluesky’s Funding and Business Model
Bluesky’s scale is not yet matched by revenue, which is the central tension of its 2026 story. The company disclosed a $100 million Series B led by Bain Capital Crypto - closed in April 2025 but announced only in March 2026 - at a reported valuation near $700 million (Bluesky, 2026; TechCrunch, 2026). As of early 2026 its only meaningful revenue stream was custom-domain hosting, with optional subscriptions and user-to-user payments still under consideration rather than shipped.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Series B raised | $100M | Bluesky, 2026 |
| Lead investor | Bain Capital Crypto | Bluesky, 2026 |
| Reported post-round valuation | ~$700M | TechCrunch, 2026 |
| Series A round | October 2024 | Bluesky, 2026 |
| Meaningful revenue streams (early 2026) | 1 (custom-domain hosting) | TechCrunch, 2026 |
| CEO transition date | March 9, 2026 | CNBC, 2026 |
Source: TechCrunch, Bluesky announces $100M Series B after CEO transition; CNBC, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber steps back.
Context note: co-founder Jay Graber moved to chief innovation officer in March 2026, with Toni Schneider (former parent-company chief of WordPress.com maker Automattic) named interim CEO and Rose Wang as COO (CNBC, 2026). The additional Series B investors included Alumni Ventures, Anthos Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Knight Foundation, and True Ventures (Bluesky, 2026).
5. Mastodon and the ActivityPub Fediverse
Mastodon remains the fediverse’s flagship, but its numbers describe a plateau, not a boom. Mastodon holds roughly 10 million registered accounts across more than 10,000 independent servers, yet monthly active users had fallen under 1 million by late 2025 - and one tracker put them below 690,000 (Mastodon, 2025; PLOS, 2025). Active usage peaked above 2.6 million in November 2022 during the first post-Musk Twitter exodus and has drifted down since. In November 2025 the project restructured as a nonprofit and founder Eugen Rochko stepped down as CEO.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Registered accounts (late 2025) | ~10M | Mastodon, 2025 |
| Monthly active users (late 2025) | Under 1M | Mastodon, 2025 |
| Monthly active users (Oct 2025) | Fewer than 690,000 | PLOS, 2025 |
| Monthly active users peak (Nov 2022) | 2.6M+ | PLOS, 2025 |
| Monthly active users pre-Twitter deal (2022) | ~200,000 | Eugen Rochko via TechCrunch, 2025 |
| Independent servers | 10,000+ | Mastodon, 2025 |
| Full-time employees | 14 | Mastodon, 2025 |
| Founder one-time payment on transition | ~EUR 1M | TechCrunch, 2025 |
Source: TechCrunch, Mastodon CEO steps down as the social network restructures; PLOS, A Mastodon migration from Bluesky would be different.
Context note: Mastodon funds itself largely through donations - a EUR 2.2 million gift from Jeff Atwood and family was among its largest - and the org lost its German nonprofit status in 2024 before establishing a U.S. 501(c)(3) (TechCrunch, 2025). The gap between 10 million accounts and under 1 million actives is the defining fediverse measurement problem: registered totals can overstate a network by an order of magnitude.
6. The Wider Fediverse and the Threads Federation Reality
Beyond Mastodon, the fediverse is a long tail of specialized networks, and its combined active base is smaller than most single mainstream apps. FediDB tracked over 12 million registered fediverse users but only about 2 million monthly active ones in 2026 - while Threads alone, the largest ActivityPub app, claims more than 400 million monthly users (FediDB, 2026; Adam Mosseri, 2025). Threads federates on paper: Meta says it has touched 75%+ of fediverse servers, but real crossover is minimal, with only 800 Threads users following any mastodon.social account in early 2025.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| FediDB registered fediverse users (2026) | 12M+ | FediDB, 2026 |
| FediDB monthly active fediverse users (2026) | ~2M | FediDB, 2026 |
| Pixelfed monthly active users (Jun 2026) | ~100,000 (680-750 servers) | FediDB, 2026 |
| Lemmy total users / monthly actives | ~390,000 / ~45,000 | FediDB, 2026 |
| Lemmy MAU surge during 2023 Reddit API dispute | ~1,000 -> 66,000 in weeks | Wikipedia, 2025 |
| Threads monthly active users (Aug 2025) | 400M+ | Adam Mosseri, 2025 |
| Fediverse servers Threads has interacted with | 75%+ | Meta, 2025 |
| Threads users following a mastodon.social account (Jan 2025) | 800 (of 25,000 federated Threads accounts) | The Fediverse Report, 2025 |
Source: FediDB, Fediverse Network Statistics; TechCrunch, Threads now has more than 400 million monthly active users.
Context note: Lemmy fills the link-aggregation niche that Reddit occupies in centralized social media, which is why its usage spikes tracked Reddit’s 2023 API controversy (Wikipedia, 2025); our Reddit statistics roundup covers that platform directly. Historical trackers underline how contested these totals are - as far back as January 2024, FediDB, Fediverse Observer, and the-federation.info reported active-user counts ranging from 1.25 million to 7.4 million depending on methodology (federated.works, most recent snapshot 2024). Micro.blog founder Manton Reece predicted fediverse monthly actives would plateau around 2 to 3 million (Manton Reece, 2025).
Summary: Bluesky And The Fediverse by the Numbers
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Bluesky registered users (Mar 2026) | 43M+ | Bluesky, 2026 |
| Bluesky registered users at Series A (Oct 2024) | 13M | TechCrunch, 2026 |
| Bluesky 40M milestone | Oct 31, 2025 | Bluesky, 2025 |
| Bluesky peak growth (Nov 2024) | ~1M users/day | TechCrunch, 2024 |
| Bluesky daily active users (Jan 2026) | ~4.5M | Business of Apps, 2026 |
| Bluesky monthly active users (late 2025) | 5.3M+ | PLOS, 2025 |
| AT Protocol public records | ~20B | Bluesky, 2026 |
| Bluesky Series B (valuation) | $100M ($700M) | TechCrunch, 2026 |
| bsky.app web visits peak (Jan 2026) | 118.69M | Similarweb, 2026 |
| U.S. adults using Bluesky | 4% | Pew Research Center, 2025 |
| News influencers with Bluesky (Mar 2025) | 43% (from 21%) | Pew Research Center, 2025 |
| FediDB registered fediverse users (2026) | 12M+ | FediDB, 2026 |
| FediDB monthly active fediverse users (2026) | ~2M | FediDB, 2026 |
| Mastodon registered accounts | ~10M | Mastodon, 2025 |
| Mastodon monthly active users (Oct 2025) | <690,000 | PLOS, 2025 |
| Mastodon MAU peak (Nov 2022) | 2.6M+ | PLOS, 2025 |
| Mastodon independent servers | 10,000+ | Mastodon, 2025 |
| Threads monthly active users (Aug 2025) | 400M+ | Adam Mosseri, 2025 |
| Fediverse servers Threads has reached | 75%+ | Meta, 2025 |
| U.S. adults using Threads / X (2025) | 8% / 21% | Pew Research Center, 2025 |
Methodology and Sources
Data was gathered by prioritizing official disclosures from Bluesky and Mastodon (funding announcements, milestone posts, restructuring statements) and platform operators (Adam Mosseri, Meta) for company-reported figures, then cross-referencing user, activity, demographic, and traffic numbers against fediverse trackers with disclosed methodology (FediDB) and independent primary research (Pew Research Center, the PLOS blog Absolutely Maybe, Similarweb); third-party estimates of active users are labeled as such because most decentralized networks publish no audited totals.
- Bluesky - 2025 $100M Series B announcement and milestone posts (March 2026, October 2025): bsky.social
- Pew Research Center - Americans’ Social Media Use 2025 (November 2025) and Bluesky/news-influencers report (May 2025): pewresearch.org
- FediDB - Fediverse Network Statistics (2026): fedidb.com
- DataReportal (Kepios) - Digital 2026 Global Overview Report: datareportal.com
- Similarweb - bsky.app traffic analytics (2026): similarweb.com
- PLOS, Absolutely Maybe (Hilda Bastian) - A Mastodon migration from Bluesky would be different (October 2025): absolutelymaybe.plos.org
- TechCrunch - Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads reporting (2024-2026): techcrunch.com
- CNBC - Bluesky CEO transition (March 2026): cnbc.com
- Adam Mosseri / Meta - Threads 400M monthly active users and fediverse integration (2025): threads.com
- The Fediverse Report (Laurens Hof) - Threads fediverse integration usage (2025)
- Business of Apps - Bluesky revenue and usage statistics (2026)
- Sensor Tower - Bluesky app download data (2024)
- Windows Central - Bluesky 2024 growth reporting
- Wikipedia - Fediverse and Lemmy adoption history (2025)
- federated.works, Fediverse Observer, and the-federation.info - fediverse tracker snapshots (most recent comparative snapshot 2024)
- Manton Reece (Micro.blog) - fediverse predictions (December 2025)
Data watch: Pew Research Center releases its Americans’ Social Media Use series annually, with the next edition expected in late 2026; DataReportal publishes its Digital global overview each January with a mid-year update; FediDB and Similarweb refresh their panels continuously; and Bluesky discloses milestones irregularly around funding and product news. Because most fediverse software publishes no audited active-user totals, watch operator announcements (Bluesky, Mastodon, Meta) for the firmest numbers.
Last updated: July 16, 2026. We review and update this page quarterly as new data is published.