As part of an ongoing legal battle with the United States government, TikTok has revealed its total number of active users for the first time ever.
The hugely popular social app has been dominating the top charts of app stores for months, though it was never clear exactly how many people were using the app regularly.
In a new court filing as part of the company’s lawsuit against the US government, however, TikTok shared data about its daily active and monthly users.
Active US Users
TikTok receives as many as 100 million active users in the United States every month, with 50 million users returning to the site every day.
According to the company’s filing, that number represents an 800% increase since January of 2018.
Here are some major milestones in TikTok’s growth over the past few years:
- 11 million monthly US users in 2018
- 27 million monthly US users in 2019
- 91 million monthly US users in June 2020
Since June, the app says it has increased to finally reach 100 million active monthly users from the US.
Active Global Users
In addition to revealing the company’s active US users, TikTok disclosed its total number of downloads and active users around the world.
In total, TikTok’s app has been downloaded more than 2 billion times.
As of July 2020, the company is seeing 700 million active users around the world each month.
These highlights help show the overall growth of the app around the world:
- 54 million monthly active users in January 2018
- 271 million monthly active users in December 2018
- 507 million monthly active users in December 2019
While these numbers are certainly impressive compared to most social networks, TikTok still lags far behind Facebook’s 2.7 billion global active users each month.
Why TikTok Is Revealing This Now
While TikTok has steadily become one of the biggest online platforms around – especially when it comes to younger internet users – the app is in danger of being banned from the United States next month.
The Trump Administration has filed an executive order which would ban TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, from operating in the United States. This came following concerns the Chinese-owned app was being used to collect personal data on Americans.
TikTok has denied these claims and is fighting the executive order in court saying the company has been denied due process.
If the company loses in court, it is also possible TikTok’s US operations could be sold to an American company like Microsoft.