TikTok Statistics 2026: Users, Shop, Ads and News Data

How Many People Use TikTok

TikTok’s last published worldwide monthly user count dates from September 2021, when it passed 1 billion. ByteDance, TikTok’s parent, is a private company, so there are no quarterly user or revenue disclosures to fall back on. The US Supreme Court’s January 2025 opinion still described the platform as having more than one billion users worldwide.

The official counts that do exist are regional. In the US, the Supreme Court cited “over 170 million” users in January 2025, and the January 2026 joint-venture announcement referred to “more than 200 million Americans” and 7.5 million US businesses on the app. Neither figure comes with a definition or a measurement period, so treat them as statements rather than audited monthly users, and not as a measured rise. For what the ownership change means for advertisers, see our guide to TikTok advertising under new ownership.

TikTok in the European Union

TikTok’s most regular official audience figure is the one EU law requires. As a very large online platform under the Digital Services Act, TikTok reports its average monthly active recipients in the EU every six months, split by member state. “Recipients” is the Act’s term, and TikTok notes that user figures it shares in other contexts may use a different method and scope. The total rose from 178.3 million in the second half of 2025 to 189 million in the first half of 2026.

TikTok says the calculation is made for Digital Services Act compliance and should not be relied on for other purposes, and that member-state figures may count the same person more than once if they used the app in more than one country. France, Germany, Italy and Spain account for about 112.6 million of the 189 million. TikTok’s separate figure of more than 200 million monthly users across Europe adds the UK, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Who Uses TikTok in the US

Pew Research Center’s nationally representative surveys are the main public measure of who uses TikTok in the US. Its 2026 survey of 5,511 adults finds 37% use TikTok, the same as in 2025 and up from 21% in 2021. Use falls steeply with age: 65% of adults under 30 use TikTok, against 11% of those aged 65 and older.

Daily use is lower than reach. About a quarter of US adults said they use TikTok daily in early 2025, against about half for Facebook and YouTube. Among teens, 68% use TikTok, 61% visit it daily and 21% say they are on it almost constantly, up from 16% in 2022. TikTok does not publish a global age or gender split, so the age tables that circulate without a source should not be used.

TikTok Shop and Commerce

TikTok does not publish TikTok Shop’s gross merchandise value. The figures in circulation are research-firm estimates, mainly from Momentum Works working with the data firm Tabcut. Their estimate for 2025 is $64.3 billion worldwide, up 94% on 2024, with the US at $15.1 billion and Southeast Asia at $45.6 billion. For the first half of 2026 they estimate $50.3 billion worldwide and $11.8 billion in the US, and they project that the full year will pass $100 billion.

TikTok’s own figures are narrower but official: more than $500 million of US sales over the 2025 Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend, more than 100 billion searches with e-commerce intent on TikTok Shop in the US in 2025, and US LIVE Shopping sales more than doubling in the first half of 2026. That last figure does not line up easily with Momentum Works’ estimate that LIVE’s share of attributed US sales was 8.2% in the same half, down from 14% for 2025; the two use different methods, so quote each with its source. For selling on the platform, see our TikTok Shop guide.

TikTok Advertising Costs

TikTok publishes no average ad prices, and ByteDance does not report TikTok’s ad revenue. Benchmarks come from companies that measure their own customers’ accounts. Triple Whale’s data, from more than 5,900 ecommerce brands between August 2025 and July 2026, puts the median TikTok CPM at $4.08 and median cost per acquisition at $17.07, both lower than a year earlier, while the median conversion rate fell from 2.46% to 1.56%.

These are medians for ecommerce brands that use one analytics tool, so they are a reference point rather than a forecast for any account. Format-level and industry tables without a stated sample, period and method should not be used for planning. For definitions of CPC, CPM and conversion rate on TikTok, see our TikTok Ads benchmarks guide.

Content Engagement

An engagement rate is only comparable when the base is the same. Socialinsider divides interactions (likes, comments, shares and saves) by views, across more than 2 million TikTok posts. On that basis the average was 4.20% in 2025, 3.85% in the first half of 2026 and 3.90% in the third quarter of 2026. Rates calculated per follower are not comparable with these.

The same data shows reach concentrating in larger accounts. Accounts with 100,000 to 1 million followers averaged 34,900 views per post in 2025, up from 25,198, while accounts with 1,000 to 5,000 followers fell from 860 to 350, even as brands posted about 40% more often.

Creators and Posting

A small share of users creates most of what is on TikTok. In Pew’s study of content posted by US adults, the most active quarter of users produced 98% of publicly accessible videos, and about half of adult users had ever posted. Almost all adult users (95%) say entertainment is a reason they use TikTok, and 65% use it to connect with people who share their interests.

No public source was found for the per-tier creator income and payout figures that circulate, so they are left out here. For short-form planning across platforms, see our short-form video strategy guide.

Businesses on TikTok

The business figures TikTok cites come from Oxford Economics, which combined a survey of 1,000 US businesses that use TikTok with TikTok’s own business-account data. It estimates that US businesses with TikTok business accounts employ 28 million people and that 4.7 million US jobs benefit from those accounts. Oxford Economics lists the work as a consulting report, and it relies on TikTok’s data, so read it as an estimate rather than independent measurement.

For help building a TikTok presence that fits your audience and sales goals, see our social media services.

TikTok Compared With Other Platforms

TikTok’s reach is smaller than YouTube’s, Facebook’s or Instagram’s in every survey checked here: 37% of US adults use it against 84% for YouTube, and 37% of the Reuters Institute’s respondents use it for any purpose against 69% for YouTube. Where TikTok stands out is time per user. Similarweb app data reported by DataReportal puts the typical TikTok Android user at 1 hour 37 minutes a day, longer than the typical YouTube user, spread across shorter and more frequent sessions.

For how these platforms compare across the wider social landscape, see our social media statistics.

News, Search and Discovery

TikTok has become a news source as well as an entertainment app. Pew finds 20% of US adults regularly get news there, up from 3% in 2020, including 43% of adults under 30. The Reuters Institute finds 20% of respondents across 48 markets use TikTok for news, though only 10% in the US and 7% in the UK. The two surveys ask different questions of different samples (Pew a nationally representative panel of US adults, the Reuters Institute an online survey of about 2,000 people per market), so their US figures are not comparable.

Discovery is the commercial side of the same behaviour: 62% of US adult TikTok users look at product reviews or recommendations there, and TikTok reports more than 100 billion searches with e-commerce intent on TikTok Shop in the US in 2025. No survey was found to support the widely repeated claim that two-thirds of Gen Z use TikTok as a search engine. For optimising across TikTok and other non-Google search surfaces, see our guide to search everywhere optimization.

Ownership and Regulation

TikTok’s US ownership was settled in stages. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act took effect for TikTok on January 19, 2025, two days after the Supreme Court upheld it. Executive Order 14352 of September 25, 2025 approved a framework under which a new US joint venture would run the app, with ByteDance holding less than 20%. TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC was established in January 2026; ByteDance retains 19.9%.

In the EU, TikTok operates under the Digital Services Act and the GDPR. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission fined it €530 million in May 2025 over data transfers to China. The European Commission preliminarily found its ad repository in breach of the Digital Services Act the same month, then in December 2025 accepted TikTok’s binding commitments to fix it. Public support for a US ban fell from 50% in 2023 to 34% in 2025.

How to Use These Statistics

Match the figure to the question. For audience size, use official counts with their scope (189 million average monthly active recipients in the EU, more than 200 million Americans) or survey reach (37% of US adults), not ad-reach totals or global estimates. For commerce, quote TikTok Shop GMV as a research-firm estimate with its period. For engagement and ad costs, quote the benchmark’s sample and definition alongside the number.

Use published benchmarks to judge whether your own results are in a normal range, then plan against your own audience, engagement and sales data. If you need help setting that up, see our paid media services.

Widely Quoted Figures, Checked

Several TikTok statistics circulate without a source, or with a source that says something different. Each one below is checked against the publisher’s own page.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from one of the sources below.