While Threads and X continue to fight it out for supremacy in the post-Twitter race, Bluesky also continues to add more users, albeit it a slower pace.
On Friday, Bluesky reported that the app is now up to 40 million users, rising from the 38 million that it reported back in August.
So Bluesky is still resonating with some users, despite seemingly falling out of the main race for a Twitter alternative. At one point, its similarities to Twitter seemed to establish it as the next-best thing, which seemed to be setting it up as the best alternative. But since then, Threads has used its connection to Instagram to catapault itself to 400 million monthly active users, while X has remained steady, based on its reported user figures.
Which has relegated Bluesky to also-ran status, though it has established a dedicated, passionate audience of intelligent contributors, who totally won’t come after me in the comments for daring to criticize their favorite app.
Though I will note that Bluesky’s growth has slowed considerably from its initial peaks.
Bluesky had been sitting on around 5 million users till August last year, before seeing an influx of interest, as users turned away from X.
Between September and November last year, Bluesky added an additional 15 million users, rising to 20 million users by the end of that month. Which was a major boost in growth momentum, and the sudden interest certainly piqued the interest of investors and the broader tech community.
But since then, Bluesky’s growth has largely returned to the mean.
It added another 10 million users between November 2024 and March 2025, taking it to 30 million total users. And now, it’s reached 40 million, after another 7 months.
So Bluesky went from adding around 5 million new users per month at peak, to adding approximately 1.4 million per month now. And while any growth is a positive, especially when we’re talking millions of people, it’s a notable shift in popularity, which is unlikely to be enough to sustain the app long-term, especially if it looks to hold out on advertising intake.
But for now at least, Bluesky is still working to build out the platform, and it’s added a range of new features in recent months, including improved image and video sharing, updated “social proximity” ranking, dislike posts, and more.
It also recently launched a new logo to reflect its evolving platform.
Bluesky also says that relative engagement in the app, across various community discussions, is rising, while it also reached 2 billion cumulative posts in October.
Which, when you average it out, equates to around 1.4 million posts per day in the app since its launch in 2021. Which is pretty significant, and when you also consider that it took a long time for Bluesky to catch on, that’s a lot of activity.
Though it also worth noting that posting activity in the app is steadily declining over time:
So should your brand be looking to build a presence on Bluesky?
Well, it depends on your target audience, and where they interact. It’s definitely worth taking a look, and seeing what’s happening in the app around your topics of focus, and considering what types of discussion may not only be happening on Bluesky, but stemming to other platforms from the app. The Bluesky user base is generally pretty dedicated, and focused on the topics they post about, and in this sense, they could also be influential, depending on the subject.
In terms of widest possible reach, no, Bluesky’s not it, but it has established its value for some groups and users, which could be of relevance.
And while there are no ads on Bluesky as yet, I’m tipping there will be sometime soon. Because that seed funding is gonna’ run out at some stage.
