Hajra Naz
A new report from market intelligence firm Similarweb suggests that Meta’s Threads has quietly overtaken Elon Musk’s X in daily mobile usage. While X still holds a clear lead on the web, Threads is winning where it matters most for social apps today: iOS and Android.
According to Similarweb, Threads reached 141.5 million daily active users on mobile as of January 7, 2026, following steady growth over several months. By comparison, X logged 125 million daily active users on mobile devices during the same period.
This shift appears to reflect long-term usage trends, rather than a short-term reaction to recent controversies surrounding X. In recent weeks, users were found exploiting X’s integrated AI chatbot, Grok, to generate non-consensual nude images of women, sometimes involving minors. The backlash has triggered investigations by California’s attorney general, following similar probes in the UK, EU, India, Brazil, and other regions.
Read More: Threads launches new communities, experiments with member badges
The turmoil on X has also benefited rivals beyond Threads. Decentralized social platform Bluesky has seen a noticeable spike in app installs amid the fallout.
Still, Threads’ mobile growth seems to be driven less by controversy and more by Meta’s distribution power and product strategy. The company has heavily promoted Threads across Instagram and Facebook, pushing the app to hundreds of millions of existing users. At the same time, Threads has leaned into creators and shipped features at a rapid pace.
Over the past year, Threads has rolled out interest-based communities, improved content filters, direct messages, long-form posts, and disappearing content, and has even been spotted testing games. Together, those additions appear to be turning Threads into a daily habit, not just a secondary social feed.
Meta’s own metrics back up that momentum. The company said in August 2025 that Threads had crossed 400 million monthly active users and later reported in October that the platform had reached 150 million daily active users.
Similarweb data shows this growth has been building for some time. By late June 2025, Threads had posted 127.8% year-over-year growth on mobile, significantly narrowing the gap with X.
The U.S. remains one of X’s strongest markets, but even there, Threads is closing in. A year ago, X had roughly double the daily active users in the U.S. compared to Threads. That lead has since shrunk substantially.
On the web, however, X still dominates. Similarweb estimates X sees around 150 million daily web visits, with 145.4 million visits recorded as of January 13. Threads, by contrast, remains largely a mobile-first product, drawing just 8.5 million daily web visits across Threads.com and Threads.net combined.
Read More: Threads Users Can Now Filter and Approve Replies for Safer Chats
The takeaway is clear: Threads is becoming a mobile-first social habit, while X’s strength increasingly lies on the web. And as usage patterns continue to shift toward mobile, that gap may matter more than ever.
