While Meta’s Threads continues to challenge X in total users, and gain more traction as the place to be for in-the-moment news updates, Bluesky has lost some of its growth impetus, though it is still gaining users, and building its own dedicated community of fans.
As confirmed by Bluesky chief Jay Graber, Bluesky is now up to 38 million monthly active users, rising from 30 million which it reached back in March.
Which is a positive, for sure, adding 8 million more users is a good sign for its evolution, and its enduring popularity in the broader social media space.
Though as noted, Bluesky’s growth momentum has slowed significantly.
Bluesky had been sitting on around 5 million users till August last year, before seeing an influx of interest, as users turned away from X.
Between August and November, Bluesky added an additional 15 million users, rising to 20 million MAU by the end of that month. Which was a major rise in growth momentum, and the sudden interest certainly grabbed the attention of investors, as well as the broader tech community.
But since then, Bluesky’s growth has largely returned to the mean.
It added another 10 million users between November 2024 and March 2025, taking it to 30 million total actives.
And now, it’s reached 38 million, after another 5 months.
So Bluesky has gone from adding around 5 million new users per month at peak, to adding 1.6 million per month more recently.
Which, again, is still growth, and with so many apps struggling to gain users, any increase, especially of a million or more per month, is significant. But it’s no longer looking like Bluesky will become a real challenger to X (currently on 600 million users) and Threads (350 million) as a key platform for in-the-moment engagement.
So who is using Bluesky, and should you be on it?
Well, that depends.
Based on its current trending topics display, there’s a range of trending topics being discussed in the app, though the conversation volume is fairly limited.
Which makes sense, because the data also shows that Bluesky’s overall post volume is declining, despite it adding more users.
Indeed, some reports have suggested that many have abandoned Bluesky due to the overall lack of activity, and it could be that there’s just not enough there to make it a key focus, at least not as a significant driver of engagement.
But there’s no central repository of Bluesky trends, and as such, the only way to know for sure is to search for your focus topics, and see what’s being said in the app. If there’s a lot of engagement, it may be worth your time.
But the data would suggest that, for most topics, that’s probably unlikely.
Bluesky certainly has a dedicated core fanbase, and again, it is still seemingly adding users. But that core group isn’t building major momentum as yet.
That could change, especially if Bluesky can get more exclusive content into its app, though with overall post volume declining, it’s seemingly going in the opposite direction for now.
And with costs mounting, eventually, Bluesky will have to reassess its approach. Which will likely include paid add-ons, that its core user base will pay for in support.
But will that be enough to keep the lights on long term?
