Bluesky Surpasses 20 Million Users Amid Mass Exodus from Musk's X and Closes Gap with Instagram Threads

Bluesky has just hit a big milestone: it now has over 20 million users. This growth comes as many people leave the platform formerly known as Twitter, owned by Elon Musk.

Recent data shows that Bluesky is quickly closing the gap with Instagram Threads, another competitor. They're competing on important metrics like daily active users and website visits.

Right now, Bluesky's user base is still much smaller than Threads, which boasts over 275 million monthly active users. However, market intelligence firm Similarweb believes that if Bluesky keeps growing at this rate, it might catch up.

Before the U.S. elections, Threads had five times more daily active users than Bluesky. But as of November 15, that lead has shrunk to just 1.5 times. Meanwhile, X remains the dominant player, with more than ten times the daily active users of Bluesky.

Interestingly, Bluesky has surpassed Threads in daily website visits in both the U.S. and the U.K. This suggests strong interest from potential new users. Globally, Bluesky is very close to matching Threads in daily visits as of mid-November.

The adoption of the Bluesky mobile app is also on the rise. Following the elections, app usage in the U.S. grew by a staggering 519% compared to the first ten months of the year. The U.K. saw a similar increase, with usage up by 352%.

Globally, on Android devices, Bluesky app usage has jumped over 360% since the first half of the year. This spike is partly due to an influx of Brazilian users when X was banned in Brazil, which temporarily boosted Bluesky's daily active users on Android.

Since opening to the public in February after a long invite-only phase, Bluesky's growth has been impressive. It has more than doubled its user base since September when it had over 9 million users. After the U.S. presidential election, the app started gaining around 100,000 users each day. That pace picked up even more when the company announced on November 12 that it added a million users in just one week.

While Elon Musk's campaigning for President-elect Donald Trump may be driving some users away from X, others might be leaving due to changes like the new blocking feature or the policy allowing the sale of user data to AI companies.