TikTok Statistics 2026 & 2027 - Users, Revenue, Holiday Trends, TikTok Shop

TikTok is a hugely popular app that is still adding new users every day. Not only that, but its very nature continues to evolve; having gone from a lip-sync and dance app to a short-form video sensation, social commerce is now playing a massive part in its next chapter.

Whether you’re a marketer, creator, business owner, comms professional, or simply curious, it’s frustrating to search for TikTok statistics and find a raft of outdated answers. We’ve endeavored to put together a list of genuinely up-to-date stats, sourced from third parties alongside our own internal data. And we keep our content regularly updated.

This guide covers TikTok's user numbers, engagement, revenue, TikTok Shop sales and plenty more. I’ll also look at the numbers involved in TikTok’s 2026 holiday season, and what we can expect from the app as we move into 2027 and beyond.

Top TikTok Statistics

• TikTok has 2.21 billion users
• Worldwide, 44.5% of internet users aged 16-24 use TikTok
• 70% of teen girls and 65% of teen boys in the US are on TikTok
• TikTok users spend an average of 1hr 34m on the platform daily, higher than any other platform
• TikTok accounts with 1,000-10,000 followers average the highest engagement rates, at over 10%
• More than 1 in 5 brands are planning to use TikTok Shop as a sales channel for the 2026 holiday season
• Globally, TikTok Shop is on track for $100 billion gross merchandise value in 2026
• Buyers in the US spent over $500 million on TikTok Shop over the 4-day Black Friday and Cyber Monday period last year
• TikTok ad revenue is set to pass $50 billion in 2027

TikTok Users

TikTok has 2.21 billion users worldwide.

(That’s the total potential advertising reach, and not every user is necessarily a unique individual.)

There were 2.6 billion visits to TikTok in August 2026, a rise of 600 million year over year.

You also need to consider Douyin, the China-native sister app to TikTok. Douyin has 727.8 million daily active users.

Sources: Data Reportal (2026 mid-year update), Semrush, Data Reportal (Digital 2026 China)

TikTok Audience at a Glance

Gender

Overall, 52.8% of adult users are men, and 47.2% are women.

(It’s a similar story on Douyin, where men make up 51.9% of total users, and women make up 48.1%).

Age

TikTok is most popular among younger users. Worldwide, it’s used by 44.5% of internet users aged 16-24, dropping down to 17.35% among people aged over 65.

In the US, 68% of teens report using TikTok, including 58% of children aged 13-14. But in September 2026, Alabama became the first state to reach a settlement with TikTok that includes time limits and other restrictions for teen users.

Douyin, the Chinese version of the app, has strict time limits for younger users, as well as total content blackouts overnight.

Location

TikTok’s audience is highly distributed globally.

The single largest region is South-East Asia, which makes up almost a quarter of the total adult TikTok user base. North American users make up just 8.1%, while Western Europe is just 2.9%.

Sources: Data Reportal (2026 mid-year update), Data Reportal (Digital 2026 China), Pew Research (December 2025), Guardian (September 2026)

TikTok User Engagement

The average TikTok user spends 1 hour and 34 minutes on the platform every day, across an average of 9.7 app sessions. No other app has a higher average daily engagement time per user.

Here are the top five apps when it comes to daily user engagement times, based on Android app data:

App	Average daily time spent per user
TikTok	1hr 34m
YouTube	1hr 24m
Instagram	1hr 15m
Facebook	1hr 7m
WhatsApp	59m

TikTok user engagement in the US is marginally below the global average, at 1 hour and 21 minutes (8.5 app sessions). Users in Peru spend the most time per day on the app, at 2hrs 22m (15.6 sessions).

When it comes to actively engaging with posts (liking/commenting/sharing rather than just viewing), TikTok is again ahead of competing platforms. The baseline on other social platforms is often 1-2%, whereas successful accounts on TikTok often maintain an engagement of anywhere from 4-18%.

Average engagement rate varies by the size of the account posting content. Smaller accounts are most likely to get higher engagement, followed by the very biggest accounts (1M+ followers).

Here’s a breakdown of TikTok engagement rate by account size:

TikTok account size	Average engagement rate
100-1,000	10.01%
1,000-10,000	10.07%
10,000-100,000	8.22%
100,000-1,000,000	7.8%
1,000,000+	9.13%

Sources: Data Reportal (2026 mid-year update), Adobe (August 2026), TokPortal (October 2026)

TikTok Shop

TikTok Shop is growing extremely rapidly in the US. In the first half of 2026, gross merchandise value (GMV) rose 103% year-over-year, reaching $11.8 billion.

Globally, H1 2026 saw TikTok Shop GMV surpass $50 billion. This represented a 92% YoY increase. And with the holiday season coming up, GMV is comfortably on track to surpass $100 billion for the whole of 2026.

There are multiple places within the TikTok app from which you can make a purchase. Native discovery (e.g. from the For You Page) is a big part of the appeal of social commerce. But interestingly, the “Shop” tab is on the rise, with US consumers increasingly going to TikTok specifically to shop:

• H1 2026 purchases from “Shop” tab: 51.4%
• H1 2026 purchases from “Video” tab: 40.4%
• H1 2026 purchases from “Live” tab: 8.2%

By contrast, live shopping has far more traction in Asian markets. Live sales are the top channel in places like Thailand and Vietnam. And in Singapore, sales from live video are up 70% YoY, with live viewership up 150%.

Interestingly, the United Kingdom has also proved to be quite fertile ground for “Asia-style” live shopping on TikTok. 57% of Millennials and Gen Z watch live shopping streams, and UK startup P Louise once made more than $2 million from a single 12-hour TikTok stream.

Searches for “live shopping” are up by 159% globally in the last 5 years.

All in all, more than 5,700 TikTok Shop stores surpassed $1 million GMV in H1 2026, an 8x YoY increase. Over 500 stores surpassed $10 million.

Sources: Net Influencer (August 2026), Content Grip (June 2026), Asian Business Review (October 2026), The Economist (September 2026), Exploding Topics

2026 Holiday Season on TikTok Shop

The holiday season is especially big on TikTok.

Last year, TikTok Shop broke records with $500 million in US GMV over the 4-day Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) period.

The number of US consumers buying something on TikTok during BFCM was up by almost 50% YoY. Livestream sales were up 84%.

In the UK, TikTok Shop sold 27 items per second on Black Friday.

And with the 2026 holidays around the corner, more records are likely to be broken.

Creators gear up for big holidays months in advance. In August, #Halloween was already the subject of 37.4 million TikTok posts, growing 93% week-over-week.

Moreover, 58% of consumers who are likely to buy gifts on TikTok Shop intend to spend more on holiday shopping this year than they did last year. And 21% of brands are planning to use TikTok Shop as a sales channel during the 2026 holiday season, versus just 6% planning to use any other social commerce channel.

More and more established brands are embracing TikTok Shop. For example, Sephora and Best Buy have both joined the platform just in time for the holiday sales period.

TikTok is set to begin its official holiday event on November 14.

Sources: eMarketer, Digiday, Business Wire, Retail Dive, Modern Retail, Vogue

TikTok Revenue and Economic Impact

TikTok makes the majority of its revenue from advertising. Ad revenue alone is expected to top $50 billion in 2027.

The US accounts for 40% of ad revenue, despite making up only 10% of users.

TikTok Shop is also an increasingly significant revenue stream. With a fixed commission of 6% on each sale in the US, revenue on this front should surpass $1 billion this year.

TikTok’s revenue in Europe, Africa and Latin America jumped by 45.7% last year to $9.1 billion, with international operations turning a profit for the first time.

Sources: Shopify (December 2025), TikTok Seller Center, Forbes (August 2026)

TikTok’s Impact on US Businesses

Last year, TikTok helped to generate $81 billion in US GDP, supporting 410,000 jobs.

47 million US adults found a local business through TikTok in the past 12 months, while 27 million visited an independent shop, cafe, or restaurant for the first time. In total, this generated $4.7 billion in local spending.

Meanwhile, 93% of US businesses report increased sales after promoting themselves on TikTok. 84% say the platform helps them reach customers they would not otherwise be able to reach.

As such, it’s no surprise that an original Exploding Topics survey on marketing budgets found that 53.87% of US marketing departments are allocating more budget to TikTok. It’s the biggest winner ahead of YouTube (52.08%), Google Search (42.16%), and Instagram (40.97%). Barely 1 in 4 departments are allocating more budget to X.

On the other hand, 35.52% of departments are actually reducing TikTok budgets, which is also higher than any other platform. Facebook, Google Search, and X are the next-biggest budget losers.

Platform	% of marketing depts increasing budget	% of marketing depts decreasing budget
TikTok	53.87%	35.52%
YouTube	52.08%	28.67%
Google Search	42.16%	29.27%
Instagram	40.97%	29.17%
Facebook	38%	32.54%

Sources: 2026 TikTok Economic Impact Report, Exploding Topics

TikTok Creator Payments

As well as any affiliate/TikTok Shop revenue, TikTok creators can earn some money through the Creator Rewards Program. This provides payouts for high-quality content that performs well on the platform.

Previously, top creators would get a share of a fixed “Creator Fund,” valued at $2 billion at the time it shut down. The current program is more flexible, but eligible creators can expect to earn anywhere from 40 cents to a dollar per 1,000 qualified views.

Musical artists can also benefit economically from TikTok through licensing payments, although they tend to work out at a very low rate of approximately $0.007–$0.013 per 1,000 qualified streams.

However, given the scale at which TikTok operates, music streaming payments can start to add up. Katy Perry’s “The One That Got Away” was streamed 55 billion times across 42 million videos in the summer of 2026.

Sources: SoundCamps, TikTok Newsroom (September 2026), FourthWall (August 2026)

Start making the most of TikTok

TikTok is here to stay, both as part of the social scene and the E-commerce landscape. Brands simply cannot afford to disregard it in 2026 and 2027.

You can see it in the string of well-established businesses making their way onto TikTok Shop. What once seemed experimental now seems mainstream, with a potential global audience that runs into the billions.

The TikTok Insights add-on from Exploding Topics makes it easier than ever to keep track of what’s trending and selling on the platform. You get a clear dashboard of what’s begun to trend upward in the past 7 days or 30 days, which you can sort by total views, total posts, growth in views, or growth in posts.

And when you see a trend that interests you, then you only need to click on it, and you’ll be able to view the top recent relevant TikTok posts from within the Exploding Topics web app. You’ll also be able to see how many views and likes the top-performing videos have received, alongside overall totals.

With the holiday season around the corner, there’s no better time to start really investing in TikTok for your business.