Bluesky's active users keep shrinking as it bets on the protocol

Decentralized social network Bluesky was one of the bigger beneficiaries of the exodus from Elon Musk’s X in November 2024, following the U.S. elections. Nearly two years later, the social network and would-be X competitor is struggling to hold on to that momentum. According to data from digital intelligence provider Similarweb, Bluesky’s mobile app had 10.4 million monthly active users worldwide in June 2026, down 27.2% year over year. Mobile daily active users continued to decline too, falling 25.6% year over year in July to around 3 million.

These declines indicate that even though Bluesky’s app keeps adding registered accounts, fewer people are using it regularly, and that some who joined after the 2024 election haven’t stuck around long-term. The bigger takeaway is that Bluesky’s post-election bump has kept shrinking well past the initial surge: its quarterly average was around 22.1 million monthly active users in the fourth quarter of 2024, per Similarweb, declining to 10.7 million in the second quarter of 2026 — a drop of around 52%.

Those who stuck around are committed, though: the app’s stickiness rate (the ratio of daily to monthly active users) sat at roughly 29% in June, about the same as Threads. For new CEO Toni Schneider, these numbers may not be especially concerning, since Bluesky is no longer entirely focused on the app itself but on making the underlying AT Proto protocol power a growing number of social apps and services — a shift already underway as projects like BlackSky and Eurosky grow, and AT Proto apps like video-focused Skylight find early traction. The company has also launched new products, like the AI-powered research tool Attie, and is working on adding support for private data to Bluesky, which could draw a different kind of user less interested in the public square.

Similarweb’s data doesn’t necessarily suggest Bluesky users have returned to X, either: X’s worldwide monthly active users on mobile were down around 3% year over year in June, and its mobile daily active users dropped 7% in July to 123.7 million — though X remains sizable, with around 302 million monthly active users on its app as of June 2026 and web visits up 5.3% year over year in July to 4.7 billion. If anything, Threads looks like the app to watch: the Meta-owned app’s daily active users were up 21.3% year over year to 147 million in July 2026, and its website visits were up 112% year over year to 471.6 million. Bluesky’s own public stats show the company now has nearly 46 million registered users, though it doesn’t share specific daily or monthly usage data.

Why it matters

Bluesky’s leadership is betting that the AT Proto ecosystem, not the flagship app’s engagement numbers, is the right measure of success — a bet that will only look justified if projects built on the protocol start pulling real usage away from Threads and X.