Most Popular Messaging Apps (2025)

Messaging apps are a part of many people’s daily lives.

Their popularity has grown significantly in recent years and they show no sign of slowing down.

Read on for the latest data on instant messaging services including specific stats related to the most popular apps.

Contents

• Top Messaging App Statistics 2025 (Editor’s Picks)
• Most Popular Messaging Apps
• How Many People Use Messaging Apps?
• Regional Messaging App Stats

Top Messaging App Statistics 2025 (Editor’s Picks)

• WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app with 2 billion monthly users
• There are over 3 billion active users on messaging apps
• Snapchat generates more revenue from in-app purchases than any other messaging app, bringing in $18.07 million per month
• WhatsApp is the leading messaging app in over 60 countries

Most Popular Messaging Apps

WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app, boasting approximately 2 billion monthly users. That’s over 600 million more than the second most popular messenger app, WeChat (1.34 billion).

Here’s a breakdown of the most popular messaging services by active monthly users:

Rank	Messaging Service	Number of Active Monthly Users
1	WhatsApp	2 billion
2	WeChat	1.34 billion
3	Facebook Messenger	1.01 billion
4	Telegram	900 million
5	Snapchat	800 million
6	QQ	554 million
7	Discord	200 million

In terms of monthly downloads, Telegram now leads the way with almost 50 million.

WhatsApp Messenger is a close second with just over 45 million downloads per month.

WhatsApp Business (23.67 million) receives around half as many downloads as WhatsApp Messenger.

WhatsApp Business is growing at a rapid rate. It boasts over 200 million monthly active users, up from 50 million in 2020.

Here’s a breakdown of monthly downloads for messaging apps:

No messaging service generates more revenue per month in in-app purchases than Snapchat ($24.77 million).

Together with second-placed LINE ($12.92 million), the two messaging apps generate more in-app revenue ($37.69 million) than the rest of the top 10 messaging apps combined ($31.65 million).

Here’s a closer look at the top messaging services for in-app purchase revenue:

Source: Data Reportal, Business of Apps, AppMagic, AppMagic (2)

WhatsApp

With around 3 billion unique mobile users, WhatsApp is unrivaled as the top messaging service. And according to GWI, only Instagram (16.5% of the vote) is a more popular social media platform among 16 to 64-year-olds than WhatsApp (16.1%).

The app delivers approximately 1 billion messages daily.

According to DataReportal, around 1 in 4 people (24.7%) now use WhatsApp. That number is close to 1 in 3 (31.6%) when accounting for only over 13s.

Male users make up 52.3% of all users, while female users account for 47.6%.

On average, WhatsApp users partake in 929.9 app sessions per month – an increase on 2023's 922.6 sessions.

Users in Argentina open the app the most, making 1,502.4 visits per month. In the US, the average number of sessions per month is 242.4. UK users average 373.7 sessions per month.

Here’s how often users in selected countries use WhatsApp:

The US is the leading country in terms of Whats App iOS downloads (5.18 million) with over 2x more downloads than any other nation in Q2 2024.

Here are the top 10 nations for WhatsApp iOS downloads:

And here’s a breakdown of WhatsApp downloads via the Google Play Store in the same quarters:

WhatsApp Business has seen significant growth over the past few years.

In 2018, just under 40 million people downloaded WhatsApp Business.

As of 2023, that figure had increased almost 8x, reaching 316.16 million downloads.

Below, is the number of WhatsApp Business downloads by year:

Year	Number of WhatsApp Business Downloads
2018	37.87 million
2019	98.82 million
2020	170.46 million
2021	210.09 million
2022	283.51 million
2023	316.16 million

Sources: Mobilesquared, TechCrunch, DataReportal, AppMagic, AppMagic (2), AppMagic (3)

Facebook Messenger

Despite commanding a significant proportion of the global messaging app market, Facebook Messenger has seen downloads drop from 794.61 million in 2015 to 262.53 million in 2023 – a fall of more than 66%.

These are the figures for Facebook Messenger downloads since 2015:

Year	Facebook Messenger Downloads	Change Over Previous Year
2015	794.61 million	-
2016	743.03 million	↓ 51.58 million
2017	768.37 million	↑ 25.34 million
2018	782.31 million	↑ 13.94 million
2019	702.09 million	↓ 80.22 million
2020	485.63 million	↓ 216.46 million
2021	336.57 million	↓ 149.06 million
2022	329.28 million	↓ 7.29 million
2023	262.53 million	↓ 66.75 million

In terms of nations, India has the largest potential ad reach with 121.6 million people.

By comparison, Vietnam has 54.5 million, making up around 56% of its population.

Here are the top countries by Facebook Messenger ad reach:

*based on ad reach

Sources: AppMagic, Data Reportal, Worldometers

Snapchat

The number of daily active users on Snapchat has steadily grown over the last decade.

In fact, since Q1 2014 (46 million) the number of Snapchat users has increased more than 9x (432 million in Q2 2024).

Here’s a breakdown of active Snapchat users over time:

India has the most total Snapchat users with over 202 million.

Combined, India (202.51 million) and the US (106.7 million) have more Snapchat users (309.21 million) than the rest of the top 20 countries put together:

Sources: Snap Inc., Snap Inc. (2), Data Reportal

Telegram

As of April 2024, there are approximately 900 million Telegram users – that figure accounts for around 11.1% of the world’s population. Only taking into account those aged 16+, that’s 15.1% of the global population.

Males make up 57.6% of all Telegram users.

Instant messaging app Telegram has seen a steady increase in quarterly downloads over time.

In Q4 2023, Telegram received 114.55 million downloads – more than double Q1 2020’s 55.81 million.

Regionally, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa lead the way with 46.17 million combined downloads in Q4 2023. That figure was closely followed by Asia-Pacific’s total of 44.45 million downloads.

Here’s a look at Telegram’s download figures over time:

In the US alone, Telegram was downloaded 7.25 million times in Q3 of 2023. Brazil recorded the second-highest number of downloads in the Americas in the same period, with 5.81 million.

Here’s a closer look at Telegram download figures for selected countries in North and South America:

Rank	Country	Number of downloads (Q3 2023)
1	USA	7.25 million
2	Brazil	5.81 million
3	Mexico	3.65 million
4	Colombia	2.16 million
5=	Argentina	1.26 million
5=	Peru	1.26 million
7	Chile	0.69 million
8	Canada	0.47 million

The most popular channel category on Telegram is news with 85% of users following a news channel.

At least half of Telegram users also use entertainment (62%), educational (58%), and political (50%) channels.

Here are the most popular Telegram channel categories:

Rank	Telegram Channel Category	Popularity
1	News	85%
2	Entertainment	62%
3	Educational	58%
4	Political	50%
5	News from own industry	48%
6	Personal channels of friends	45%
7	Special military operation	36%
8	Bloggers and celebrities	31%
9	Internal channels of companies	19%
10	Brands/companies	17%
11	Products and discounts	16%
12	Channels with job offers	14%
13	Channels for adults	13%
14	Darknet-channels	4%

Sources: Data Reportal, AppMagic, TGStat

WeChat

As of April 2024, WeChat has 1.34 billion monthly users.

That figure makes up 16.6% of the global population (21.1% when discounting under 13s).

There are slightly more males than females using WeChat with 52.3% of the user base identifying as such.

Source: Data Reportal

Tencent QQ

The latest data shows that there are approximately 554 million monthly active QQ users in Q1 2024, which is a drop of 4 million since the previous quarter.

That’s 6.8% of the global population or 8.7% if discounting under 13s.

Just under half (48%) of QQ users are female.

Source: Data Reportal

Discord

There are around 200 million monthly active users on Discord.

Discord users make up 2.5% of the world’s population. If only counting those aged 13+, that figure grows to 3.1%.

Males outnumber females by over 2:1 on Discord (67.3% vs 31.5%).

Source: Data Reportal

How Many People Use Messaging Apps?

More than 3 billion people actively use messaging apps. A previous estimate has predicted that the figure could rise to over 3.5 billion in 2025.

Here’s a breakdown of how that figure has changed over time:

Year	Messaging App Users	Change Over Previous Year
2016	2.11 billion	-
2017	2.38 billion	+270 million
2018	2.52 billion	+140 million
2019	2.81 billion	+290 million
2020	3.19 billion	+380 million
2021	3.32 billion	+130 million

Sources: Business of Apps, eMarketer

Regional Messaging App Stats

WhatsApp is the leading messaging app in 63 countries including:

• Brazil
• Egypt
• France
• Germany
• India
• Indonesia
• Ireland
• Italy
• Mexico
• Nigeria
• Pakistan
• Russia
• Saudi Arabia
• South Africa
• Spain
• UK

Facebook Messenger is the most popular messaging app in 16 nations including:

• Australia
• Canada
• New Zealand
• Philippines
• Sweden
• US

Telegram is the top messaging app in 10 countries.

Viber is top in 4 countries.

Line is the most popular messaging app in Japan and Thailand.

WeChat is number one in China, KakaoTalk is top in South Korea, and Zalo is the market leader in Vietnam.

Source: SimilarWeb

Key Takeaways

Messaging apps continue to go from strength to strength with WhatsApp firmly leading the way.

For more related content, take a look at our other blog posts: Top Social Media Platforms and Top 20 New Social Media Networks.

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