Meta’s Threads Now Has More Monthly Users Than X
Zuckerberg told investors Threads has overtaken X in monthly users, but Meta published no number to back it up, and the company's own financials show no benefit from the lead yet.
Mark Zuckerberg made a claim with no number. On the October 21, 2026 earnings call for Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction), he said: “Threads has now overtaken X in monthly actives.”
Meta closed at $697.52, up 0.47%. It then traded at $712.61 after hours, up 2.16% as of 7:59 PM ET. That move reflects the whole quarter, which brought $64.6 billion in revenue, up 26%. Threads played no measurable part in that move.
Inside one of its segments, SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) reports X. It closed at $159.31, up 7.79%, after its own results came out on October 20. After hours, it fell to $156.70, down 1.64%.
Zuckerberg says Threads has more users, but nothing in Meta’s financials shows a return yet, and the two companies’ user numbers also measure different things.
Zuckerberg’s Claim Rests on Numbers Meta Has Not Published
The last Threads count Meta reported was 500 million monthly users, announced June 16, 2026. In a September podcast interview, Zuckerberg said Threads was either bigger than X or close to it.
CFO Susan Li said Threads time spent per user grew over 20% year over year. That figure tracks how long each person remains. It tells you nothing about how many people use the app.
Threads benefits from Meta’s distribution. Meta’s apps averaged 3.64 billion daily active people in September 2026, and Threads gets new users from that base through Instagram.
Why Threads and X User Counts Cannot Be Compared Directly
SpaceX’s IPO filing put X at about 550 million users as of March 2026 and 520 million as of December 2025, without defining “users.” Both figures are below the 600 million monthly actives X had often claimed.
Third-party estimates track daily mobile users instead. On that measure, Threads first passed X worldwide in the week of September 15 to 21, 2025, at 130.2 million against 130.1 million. It also led in October 2025, at 128.2 million against 124.7 million.
Over that October period, Threads grew 48% while X fell 16%. However, X still drew 141.7 million daily web users, compared with 7.6 million for Threads. X also led among U.S. mobile users, 21.4 million to 16.6 million.
Advertisers pay the most for U.S. users and for desktop audiences, which include many professionals, so a lead in global mobile users is worth less in revenue than the headline suggests.
Users Still Have to Turn Into Advertising Dollars
The SpaceX segment, which includes X (now called Super Intelligence), has an advertising line widely reported as X’s ad revenue. That line fell to $367 million in Q2 2026 from $426 million a year earlier. It then rose to $538 million in Q3 from $454 million.
For the first nine months of 2026 it amounted $1.248 billion, still behind $1.323 billion for the same period of 2025. Meta took in $64.6 billion in a single quarter.
Meta’s results do not show any benefit from Threads’ user lead yet, and that will change only if Meta increases ad load on Threads. Ad load is the share of the feed given to ads.
What Meta’s Valuation Means for the Threads Opportunity
Meta is worth $1.78 trillion, and its shares fell 5.9% over the past month. That leaves the stock up only 5.93% for the year, even though revenue is growing at 26%.
Threads adds a possible source of upside at that valuation. If Meta puts ads on Threads the way it did on Instagram, the app becomes a revenue line Meta has barely used. If Threads stalls, the core ad business still supports the stock. SpaceX, worth $2.16 trillion, offers limited exposure to social media because X’s ad line is a small part of the company.
Three things would settle the user question. These are Meta publishing a Threads monthly figure, a SpaceX filing with an updated X count, or details on Threads ad revenue on Meta’s fourth-quarter call. If that call passes without a Threads number, Zuckerberg’s claim will likely remain unsupported by Meta’s own data.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Omor Ibne Ehsan is a writer at 24/7 Wall St. He is a self-taught investor with a focus on growth, cyclical, and dividend equities that have strong fundamentals, value, and long-term potential. He also has an interest in high-risk, high-reward investments such as penny stocks.
