TikTok statistics 2026: 2.21 billion ad reach, 37% of US adults and a $64.3 billion shop

By Jan Suski. I go deep on every review, checking every number against its source and digging up details other coverage misses, a habit from six years of SEO and link building for tech companies. Bylines at Surfer, Brand24, and Senuto. How the scoring works.

Published 4 October 2026Prefer this source on Google

TikTok's ads reached 2.21 billion users aged 18+ in April 2026, third behind YouTube and Facebook, per DataReportal. In the US, 37% of adults use the TikTok app, up from 21% in 2021, according to Pew Research Center. TikTok Shop sold US$64.3 billion of goods worldwide in 2025.

The US business changed hands on 22 January 2026. A new joint venture led by Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX took over US operations, with ByteDance keeping 19.9%, and TikTok said the app serves more than 200 million Americans.

These TikTok statistics cover TikTok users, demographics, time spent, downloads, revenue, TikTok Shop, engagement and creators, each tied to the body that published it. They're for marketers setting a TikTok advertising budget, analysts comparing social media platforms, and anyone who needs to know why the number of TikTok users depends on who's counting.

Number of TikTok users and active users in 2026

TikTok users worldwide

TikTok's ad tools reach 2.21 billion users aged 18+, which makes TikTok the third most popular social media platform by ad reach. YouTube reaches 2.65 billion users and Facebook 2.39 billion users, with Instagram behind at 1.99 billion, per DataReportal's April 2026 data. Its mid-year update says TikTok's potential ad reach "jumped by more than 8 percent in just the past three months".

Monthly active users and TikTok's own count

TikTok's last official count of monthly active users came in September 2021, when it said "more than 1 billion people around the world now come to TikTok every month". How many users it has today depends on the meter. Business of Apps, a named estimator, models 1.844 billion TikTok users worldwide in 2025.

TikTok is the international version of Douyin, which its parent company ByteDance runs separately in China. DataReportal's January 2025 ad reach equalled 34.3% of adults worldwide outside China, per its TikTok page.

TikTok users by country

Indonesia passed the US in late 2025 as TikTok's largest ad audience. Pakistan's 25% rise flew under the radar. Here's how the top five markets compare in DataReportal's Digital 2026 country reports:

Mexico's 105.7% shows the limit of ad reach as a head count. Ad reach tallies TikTok accounts an advertiser can target, so duplicates push it past the adult population. Our social media statistics report compares those counts across other social media platforms.

TikTok users in the US and the joint venture

US TikTok users by age

37% of US adults use TikTok and 24% use it daily, per Pew's 2025 survey of 5,022 adults. Use drops with age:

• Adults under 30: 63%
• Ages 30 to 49: 44%
• Ages 50 to 64: 30%
• Ages 65 and older: 12%

TikTok's own count of its US user base keeps climbing. The company claimed 100 million US users in 2020, more than 150 million in March 2023 per TechCrunch, "well over 170 million" in January 2024, and "more than 200 million Americans and 7.5 million businesses" at the January 2026 handover. DataReportal's US ad reach for adults stood at 153 million in late 2025.

How the US joint venture came about

The joint venture closed a two-year legal fight in the first quarter of 2026. Congress passed the divestiture law as Public Law 118-50 on 24 April 2024, and the Supreme Court upheld it on 17 January 2025. After four enforcement delays, an executive order of 25 September 2025 approved the framework, and TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC was established on 22 January 2026.

Silver Lake, Oracle and MGX each hold 15% of the venture, and ByteDance retains 19.9%, per the joint venture's announcement. The venture will "retrain, test, and update the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data" inside Oracle's US cloud, under CEO Adam Presser.

Forrester analyst Kelsey Chickering told AP that "the algorithm is the heartbeat of the app's addictive experience." US support for a ban fell from 50% in spring 2023 to 34% in 2025, per Pew.

TikTok user demographics: age groups, gender and Gen Z

Age demographics and gender distribution

TikTok's global user base skews male and young. In DataReportal's January 2025 data, the most recent split it published, 55.7% of TikTok's global ad audience was male and 44.3% female, and 66% was aged 18 to 34. Men aged 25 to 34 made up the largest single group at 20.7%.

TikTok's diverse user base splits differently by region. Women make up 30.0% of TikTok's ad reach in Southern Asia and 53.0% in Western Europe, per DataReportal. In the US, the adult user base splits 52.3% male and 47.7% female.

Teens, Gen Z users and younger audiences

Younger age groups lean in hardest. 68% of US teens use TikTok, and 21% say they're on it almost constantly, per Pew. Girls (24%) outpace boys (17%), and 37% of Black teens and 34% of Hispanic teens report almost constant use, against 10% of White teens. Sprout Social puts Gen Z users at 72% on TikTok in its 2026 content strategy report.

Older demographics are a smaller slice. Users 55 and over were 8.4% of the global ad audience. For a brand mapping its target audience against these user demographics, our demographic market segmentation guide and the audience segmentation tools ranking cover the method.

How much time users spend on TikTok

The average Android user spends 1 hour 37 minutes a day in the TikTok app, per DataReportal's Digital 2026 report, which tracks time spent across social media platforms on Android. Users open the app 10 times a day for sessions of 9 minutes 42 seconds, the third-highest daily session count among the social media apps DataReportal compares.

US usage statistics read lower. EMARKETER puts average time spent by US TikTok users at 57 minutes a day in 2026, with TikTok compared against 61 minutes for YouTube and 37 for Instagram in its TikTok Marketing 2026 report. On teen screen time, 61% of US teens use TikTok daily, per Pew's December 2025 teen survey.

Entertainment is the draw. 95% of US adult users told Pew they use TikTok for entertainment, 81% as a major reason, while 62% use it to look at product reviews and 53% to keep up with sports or pop culture. 55% of the platform's users regularly get news there, equal to 20% of all US adults, up from 3% in 2020.

TikTok downloads and the most downloaded app race

TikTok was the most downloaded app of 2024 with 773 million downloads, ahead of Instagram's 759 million, per Business of Apps. In 2025 it slipped to 644 million TikTok app downloads and second place among the most popular apps, behind ChatGPT's 770 million.

The trackers split on 2025. AppTweak's model puts TikTok third at 545.8 million, down 12.0%, behind ChatGPT (845.3 million) and Instagram (762.3 million), per its download ranking. Sensor Tower's State of Mobile 2026 put TikTok first on downloads, in-app purchase revenue and time spent, per 9to5Mac's summary, while its own Q4 2025 index called ChatGPT the most downloaded app globally for that quarter.

Cumulative installs passed 3 billion in July 2021, making TikTok the first non-Facebook app to reach that mark, per Sensor Tower.

TikTok's revenue and TikTok ads

Parent company ByteDance is private and reports no TikTok-only revenue. Bloomberg reported ByteDance revenue up 29% to US$155 billion in 2024, with international revenue up 63% to US$39 billion. For the first half of 2026, The Information reported about US$120 billion of revenue, up roughly 30%, and US$20 billion of net profit.

Estimates of TikTok's revenue fill the gap. Business of Apps models US$33.6 billion for 2025. WARC forecast TikTok's global ad revenue at US$34.8 billion for 2026 in a September 2024 datapoint, and its January 2026 forecast puts US ad revenue at US$14.5 billion in 2026, 38% of the global total.

In-app spending adds a second stream. Users spent nearly US$1.7 billion in TikTok in Q2 2025, more than double other apps, per Sensor Tower's Q2 2025 index. Sensor Tower ranked ChatGPT the third-highest grossing app of 2025 "behind TikTok and Google One".

TikTok ads and marketing budgets

TikTok advertising is now a fixed line in paid social budgets. HubSpot's 2026 Social Media Marketing Report of 1,100+ marketers ranks TikTok third for paid budget after Facebook and Instagram. 68% of TikTok marketers run paid or boosted posts, the core of most TikTok marketing strategy.

The median brand spent US$14,900 on TikTok ads per account in the fourth quarter of 2025, per Emplifi. Media buyers pricing in-feed ads can check the math with our CPM calculator, and our advertising industry statistics page collects the wider digital marketing statistics.

TikTok Shop statistics

TikTok Shop is on a roll. Global GMV nearly doubled to US$64.3 billion in 2025, up 94% across 16 markets, per Momentum Works. Southeast Asia drove the lion's share at US$45.6 billion. US GMV grew 68% to US$15.1 billion, up from US$9 billion in 2024.

EMARKETER measures it differently and lands close. Its December 2025 forecast puts US TikTok Shop sales at US$15.82 billion for 2025, 18.2% of US social commerce, from 53.2 million US buyers, with sales to "surpass $20 billion in 2026". EMARKETER analyst Rachel Wolff said "TikTok's ability to blend shopping and entertainment is turning the platform into an ecommerce powerhouse."

TikTok Shop sellers and sales channels

The US seller base is wide and thin. Momentum Works counted 15.4 million influencers and 803,500 stores in 2025, and storefronts are a dime a dozen. More than half recorded no sales, while more than 2,000 passed US$1 million in GMV. Beauty & Personal Care remained the largest category.

• Video drove 50% of 2025 GMV.
• The Shop tab drove 36%.
• Live commerce rose from 10% to 14% of GMV.

Holiday weekends show the impulse purchases at scale. TikTok Shop sold more than US$500 million in the US over the four days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025, across 760,000 livestreams, per Modern Retail. Teams tracking those numbers by product use the ecommerce analytics tools we rank.

Average engagement rate and how content performs on TikTok

TikTok compared with other platforms

TikTok has the highest brand engagement rate of the major social media platforms. Socialinsider's 2026 benchmarks put the average engagement rate by followers at 3.70% for 2025, up from 2.50% in 2024, against 0.48% on Instagram, 0.15% on Facebook and 0.12% on X. Its quarterly tracking shows TikTok falling to about 2.6% to 2.7% by mid-2026.

Other benchmarks also put TikTok first, at a lower level. The Quid (Rival IQ) 2026 benchmark puts TikTok's median at 2.01%, against 0.30% for Instagram and 0.21% for YouTube. Quid's sample covers 150 companies in 18 industries, so the highly engaged audience shows up well outside entertainment brands. Emplifi reported rapid growth in brand followings, with median follower counts on brand TikTok accounts up 200%.

What content performs best

The devil's in the details of per-post engagement metrics. Socialinsider's average brand post drew 6,496 average views, 3,492 likes, 50 comments and 248 shares in 2025, with shares up 45%. Users upload 16,000 TikTok videos every minute, per Domo's Data Never Sleeps 12, which makes a new post a needle in a haystack.

The For You feed, where trends and viral challenges spread, delivers more than 70% of video views, per Emplifi data cited by EMARKETER. Creation is concentrated. 52% of US adult TikTok users have ever posted a video, and 98% of public TikTok videos came from the most active 25% of users in Pew's 2023 study.

Short videos and high engagement

Short form videos still decide the click. TikTok's own creative research found that over 63% of the videos with the highest click-through rate put their key message in the first 3 seconds, and almost half of the best auction ads were emotionally appealing, per a 2020 TikTok for Business post. 61% of users discover new brands and products on TikTok, per a 2021 TikTok study.

Gen Z drives product discovery and high engagement. 55% of Gen Z engage with brand content on TikTok daily and 60% of users interact with short videos under 60 seconds, per Sprout Social. 49% of Gen Z turn to TikTok first to find products. Sprout's Q3 2026 pulse, hot off the press in September, found TikTok (50%) is the first platform consumers turn to for customer service, per Sprout's state of social media page.

TikTok creators and earnings

TikTok creators earn through the Creator Rewards Program, which pays for TikTok videos longer than one minute on the platform. Creators need TikTok accounts with 10,000 followers, an age of 18+ and 100,000 video views in the past 30 days, per TechCrunch's report on the 2024 relaunch. TikTok said total creator revenue rose more than 250% in the six months after the change, and that users spend half their viewing time on videos longer than a minute.

Brands jump on the bandwagon by buying creators directly. 31% of respondents to Influencer Marketing Hub's 2026 benchmark included TikTok in their influencer plans, the most-selected platform, and HubSpot found mid-tier creators with 100,000 to 499,000 followers delivered the best results for 36.80% of marketers. Our influencer marketing platform pricing report covers what the tools for finding those creators cost.

Why the number of TikTok users depends on who's counting

Each publisher measures a different thing. Ad reach counts targetable accounts, surveys count people who say they use the app, and app panels count devices that open it.

The measures moved in different directions in the same months. TikTok continues to add ad reach, up more than 8% in the three months to April 2026. Similarweb's app panel measured active users of TikTok's mobile apps down roughly 10% between September 2025 and February 2026, per DataReportal.

A trend tracker that logs each series separately keeps both readings on the record, and our social listening ranking covers tools that track TikTok mentions across other platforms.

Frequently asked questions

Can you see statistics on TikTok?

Yes. TikTok's built-in analytics in TikTok Studio show views, followers and content performance for your own account. Platform-wide numbers come from TikTok's ad tools, Pew surveys and app trackers such as Sensor Tower and Appfigures.

Is TikTok growing or declining?

TikTok continues to grow on three measures. Ad reach rose more than 8% in three months to 2.21 billion, US adult use rose to 37% in 2025, and TikTok Shop GMV grew 94% in 2025. Similarweb measured active app use down about 10% between September 2025 and February 2026, and downloads fell from 773 million in 2024 to 644 million in 2025.

What are the statistics on people using TikTok?

In the US, the number of TikTok users equals 37% of adults and 68% of teens, per Pew. Globally, TikTok's ads reach 2.21 billion adults, and average time spent is 1 hour 37 minutes a day for Android users of the TikTok app.

How much money do TikTokers make per 1,000,000 views?

Payouts vary by video. The Creator Rewards Program pays on originality, play duration, search value and audience engagement for videos over one minute, per NBC News, so earnings per 1,000,000 views differ by video and by creator.

Bottom line

TikTok is the third-largest ad audience in social media at 2.21 billion adults, the most engaging platform for brands in both 2026 benchmarks cited here, and a US$64.3 billion store. Its US business now sits in a joint venture with ByteDance holding 19.9%.

These TikTok statistics answer different questions. Ad reach sizes a campaign's target audience, Pew's 37% sizes the US adult audience on the platform, and app panels track how many active users open the app. In early 2026 those meters pointed in different directions, so keep an eye on all three before setting a budget.