Meta announced on June 16, 2026 that Threads has surpassed 500 million monthly active users, a milestone that lands almost three years after the text-based app launched in July 2023 as a rival to X. The number marks the halfway point of chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s stated plan to build a public conversations app with one billion people.

The growth math is striking. Threads went from 100 million monthly users in late 2023 to 150 million by mid-2024, 275 million by the end of 2024, 350 million by mid-2025, and 400 million by August 2025, adding 100 million users in the ten months before the 500 million announcement. The platform now trails X by only about 50 million monthly users, and Threads head Connor Hayes said daily active users also rose year on year.

Meta credits communities for the momentum. Groups formed around books, sports, parenting, and music have become the platform’s fastest-growing feature since launching last year, and to celebrate the milestone Meta is graduating communities out of beta. New additions include a Communities Hub in the main menu for discovering and switching between communities, custom Community Icons, Community Progress indicators that show when a topic is close to becoming a community, and expanded Community Champions recognition. Local communities are starting with native-language tags in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

The announcement also brought Your Algo, a private feed-control feature that lets users choose to see more or less of specific topics for one, three, or seven days. It builds on February’s Dear Algo tool and is launching in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Live Chats are expanding to more communities in the coming weeks with co-hosting capabilities and the ability to quote chat moments directly to feeds.

For creators, Threads at 500 million is no longer an experiment. It is the second-largest text platform on earth, with Instagram’s distribution engine feeding it and an ad business now running globally. The practical move is to claim your community early: start or join a community in your niche, use Live Chats for real-time conversation around your content drops, and treat the Your Algo rollout as a reminder that topic-focused posting now travels further than generic commentary. The audience is there. The creators building inside communities are the ones converting it into reach.