Bluesky's active user base shrinks as company shifts focus beyond the app
Bluesky's mobile app has lost over a quarter of its monthly active users year-over-year and more than half since its late-2024 peak, even as the company pivots toward expanding its underlying AT Proto protocol rather than the app itself.
Bluesky, the decentralized social network that gained a wave of new users after the November 2024 U.S. elections amid dissatisfaction with X, is now seeing its user numbers decline. According to digital intelligence firm Similarweb, Bluesky's mobile app had 10.4 million monthly active users worldwide in June 2026, down 27.2% year-over-year. Daily active users on mobile fell even further, dropping 25.6% year-over-year in July to around 3 million.
While registered accounts keep growing, regular usage is shrinking. Bluesky's app has lost more than half its monthly active users compared to its late-2024 peak, when quarterly averages stood around 22.1 million; by the second quarter of 2026, that figure had fallen to 10.7 million, a decline of about 52%.
A shift toward the protocol
Still, the users who remain are relatively engaged, with a stickiness rate — the ratio of daily to monthly active users — of about 29% in June, roughly matching Threads. For new CEO Toni Schneider, these figures may be less alarming than they appear, since the company's priority has shifted from growing the app itself to expanding the reach of its underlying AT Proto protocol across other apps and services. Projects like BlackSky and Eurosky are building on this foundation, and the video-focused app Skylight has seen early traction. Bluesky has also launched new products, including the AI research tool Attie, and is developing support for private data sharing.
Similarweb's data suggests former Bluesky users haven't necessarily returned to X, which also saw declines — monthly active users on mobile down about 3% year-over-year in June, and daily active users down 7% in July to 123.7 million, though X still retains around 302 million monthly active users overall. Meanwhile, Meta-owned Threads has been gaining ground, with daily active users up 21.3% year-over-year to 147 million in July. Bluesky reports nearly 46 million registered users but does not disclose specific daily or monthly active usage figures.
