55+ Twitter (X) Statistics & Trends [2026 Update]

X (formerly Twitter) has been through one of the most dramatic transformations in social media history. Elon Musk purchased the platform for $44 billion in October 2022, slashed roughly 50% of staff, introduced paid verification, and in July 2023 rebranded Twitter to X, retiring the iconic bird logo.

The ownership story didn't stop there. In March 2025, Musk's AI company xAI acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued X at around $33 billion in equity. Then, in February 2026, SpaceX absorbed xAI (and with it X) into a combined entity valued at over $1 trillion. X now doubles as a real-time data source for training xAI's Grok models.

It's been a lot. Despite the turbulence - and a sharp drop in advertising revenue - X remains a major platform with over 600 million monthly active users, and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. So, let's take a look at the platform's statistics and facts for 2026.

Chapter 1

General Twitter Statistics

How many X accounts are there in 2026? There are a total of 1.3 billion accounts ever created, but only around 600 million are monthly active users.

There are over 105 million X users in the United States as of 2026 - the largest national audience. The second highest is Japan, with around 74.5 million users.

In 2026, X's number of monetizable daily active users (mDAUs) is around 245 million, up from 211 million mDAUs in the third quarter of 2021.

The United States remains X's largest single advertising market, accounting for the majority of the platform's revenue.

X's annual revenue is around $2.9 billion as of 2026, well below Twitter's pre-acquisition peak of roughly $5 billion in 2021, as advertising income fell sharply following Musk's takeover.

500 million tweets are published each day. 350,000 tweets are posted every minute.

Every year, around 200 billion tweets are posted.

In terms of users, Twitter is the 12th most popular social media platform in the world. The top five social media platforms by daily users are Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, and WeChat.

The most popular tweet of all time (as of December 2022) was the announcement of Chadwick Boseman's passing. It garnered 7.1 million likes.

Three years, two months, and one day passed between the first and the billionth tweet.

In 2023, šŸ˜‚ Crying with laughter, 🤣 Rolling on the floor laughing, and ā¤ļø Red heart was the most widely used emojis on Twitter.

More than one in five (21.54%) tweets include an Emoji

The average Twitter user has 707 followers. However, this average is grossly inflated due to popular figures having tens of millions of followers.

80% of all Twitter accounts have less than ten followers.

391 million Twitter accounts have no followers at all.

Globally, X users spend an average of around 32 minutes per day on the app.

Twitter estimates that around 11% of its accounts are actually bots.

One of the most-liked tweets from Elon Musk himself is his meme tweet, "People who have Twitter but never post anything," which achieved over 1.5 million likes.

83% of the world's leaders are on Twitter.

One of the most-followed world leaders on X is India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, alongside US President Donald Trump and Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Journalists make up 24.6% of verified Twitter accounts.

Between October 27 – November 1, 2022, 877,000 accounts were deactivated, and 497,000 were suspended. This accounts for 1.3 million lost Twitter profiles in the days that Elon Musk took over the company.

55% of Americans say that they regularly get news from Twitter. This makes it the most popular platform for sourcing current events.

80% of active Twitter users access the site via mobile.

People watch 2 billion videos on Twitter every day.

Chapter 2

Twitter User/Usage Statistics

Around 64% of X users are male compared to roughly 36% female, making it one of the most male-skewed major platforms.

In the US, about 25% of adult men use X compared to 17% of adult women.

Most X users are aged between 25-34 (around 37.5% of the global audience), followed by the 18-24 age bracket (around 32%). Together these two groups make up nearly 70% of the user base. The platform is used least by 13 – 17-year-olds (you can find this age group on TikTok).

Twitter says that 80% of its users are "affluent millennials."

23% of teens claim they never use Twitter in 2022. This is compared with 33% in 2014 -2015.

Globally, Twitter has seen its user base grow, particularly in Western Europe, where it increased by 3.8%. However, Central and Eastern Europeans are less enamored with the platform, where its user base shrank by 7%. Users also decreased in North America by 0.5%.

Only 12% of Americans who make under 30k a year use Twitter. 29% of Americans making $30,000-$49,999 per year use the platform along with 34% of Americans who make 75k or more.

Informative, relevant, and engaging are the top three preferred types of tweets. Users like creative, inspirational, and personable tweets the least.

80% of all Twitter activity takes place on a mobile device.

Only 8% of women and 10% of men had a "very favorable" impression of Twitter. 2% of men and 4% of women had never heard of the platform.

Twitter saw 7.6 million global installs in the 12 days following Elon Musk's acquisition. This is an increase from 6.3 million installs in the previous 12-day period.

In the US, 52% of Twitter users access the platform every day, 84% access the network weekly, and 96% use the platform monthly.

79% of Twitter accounts are held outside of the United States.

On November 5, 2022, the Twitter app saw a dramatic increase in negative ratings as 119 one-star iOS reviews were added. This is the most the app has seen in a single day.

US-based adults aged 50 and older produce 78% of all political tweets. And Democrats are more likely than Republicans to use Twitter.

Around half of U.S. adults who use Twitter (49%) post fewer than five tweets per month.

The CIA reads up to 5 million tweets a day.

Chapter 3

Twitter Demographic Statistics

X's potential advertising reach is roughly 600 million.

According to eMarketer, nearly 66% of businesses with 100 or more employees have a Twitter account.

77% of Twitter users feel more positive about brands that are community- and society-focused.

Meta's Threads has overtaken X in daily mobile users, reaching around 141.5 million daily mobile users versus roughly 125 million for X - a sign of intensifying competition in the text-based social space.

X serves more than 2 billion search queries daily, according to recent developer job postings.

Chapter 4

Twitter Marketing Statistics

Twitter has one of the lowest CPC (cost per mille) for its ads, with an average of $6.46, and engagement rates for ads can be as high as 1-3%. This is way higher than Facebook's average engagement rate of 0.119%

35.67% of B2B businesses use Twitter as their marketing tool and 92% of companies tweet more than once a day.

On average, there are 160 million ads shown on Twitter daily, and ads with no hashtags received 23% more engagement.

40% of Twitter users reported purchasing something after seeing it on Twitter.

53% of people on Twitter are more likely to be the first to buy new products, and users spend 26% more time viewing ads on Twitter than on other social media platforms

Summary

It's certainly been a busy few years for X. The platform has come a long way since it was founded as Twitter in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass. Now folded into Elon Musk's xAI and SpaceX empire, can it continue to steer toward success, or is it headed for more storms?

One thing is for sure, I'll be keeping a close eye on what unfolds in 2026.

These X stats were up to date as of early 2026 and provide insight into how the platform is performing. I update it annually, so be sure to bookmark this page to keep informed.

References

If you are interested in more statistics, then check out our Internet statistics page here.

Related Posts

← Back to all articles