WhatsApp: number of monthly active users 2020

As of March 2020, WhatsApp had two billion monthly active users, up from over 1 billion MAU in February 2016. The service is one of the most popular mobile messaging apps worldwide and was acquired by social network Facebook for 19 billion U.S. dollars in February 2014.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp is a cross-platform instant messaging service for smartphones that relies on the internet for the transmission of messages. Based on a low-cost subscription model, WhatsApp is a cheap alternative to carrier-billed text messaging via SMS, especially for international or group messaging. The mobile messaging app enables users to share text, image and video messages. In the United States, the WhatsApp audience amounted to 68.1 million users in 2019 and is set to grow to 85.8 million users in 2023.

WhatsApp is especially popular in markets outside the United States while facing strong competition from Asia-based social messenger apps such as WeChat, LINE or Kakaotalk. WhatsApp’s popularity in emerging mobile markets is not only based on their low-cost business model but on many of its features.

Number of monthly active WhatsApp users worldwide from April 2013 to March 2020 (in millions)

Characteristic	Number of monthly active users in millions
Mar '20	2,000
Dec '17	1,500
Jul '17	1,300
Jan '17	1,200
Feb '16	1,000
Sep '15	900
Apr '15	800
Jan '15	700
Aug '14	600
Apr '14	500
Feb '14	465
Jan '14	430
Dec '13	400
Oct '13	350
Aug '13	300
Jun '13	250
Apr '13	200

Loading statistic...

Download

Source

Show detailed source information?

Already a member?

Sources

Use Ask Statista Research Service

Release date

April 2020

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

April 2013 to March 2020

Supplementary notes

After a long period of not disclosing WhatsApp user figures, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in Facebook's Q1 2020 earnings call: "The other question was monetization on WhatsApp. I think there's a huge opportunity on WhatsApp, if for no other reason than that it has 2 billion people using it and we haven't done significant work on building out the business yet."

Data regarding April 2013 was taken from an April 2013 interview with WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum.

Citation formats