50+ Whatsapp Statistics 2024 - Usage and Revenue [UPDATED]

Report Highlights

WhatsApp has more than 2 billion users (2021).
There are over 100 billion messages exchanged on WhatsApp daily.
22% of users are on iOS and 73% are on Android.
Last year, there were 600 million downloads of WhatsApp making it the most downloaded application under Facebook. The US alone accounted for 7.5% (45 million) of these downloads.
WhatsApp ranked 3rd in downloads of communication apps in the US, behind Facebook Messenger and video teleconferencing software.
WhatsApp is used in over 180 countries and is statistically the most popular messaging application in all but 25 of these countries.
A year before its $19.3 billion acquisition by Facebook, WhatsApp was valued at $1.5 billion. This was after a funding round by lone-time backer and California-based venture capital firm.

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User Statistics

The monthly number of users has been surging steadily over the past few years.

In February of 2014, there were 465 million WhatsApp users, and by February of 2016, the number of monthly users had hit 2 billion.
As of 2021, WhatsApp still has 2 billion active users.
WhatsApp leads both Facebook [1.3 billion] and WeChat [1.2 billion] in active users each month.
The average user accessing WhatsApp using an Android device spends approximately 38 minutes on the app every day.
Most users are on Android (73%) and iOS (22%).
In the US, 78% of the WhatsApp users use the application at least once a week.
The recent spike in the number of WhatsApp users was partly due to a 40% jump between the start of the pandemic and March 2020. The aggregated 40% figure was initially at 27%, and it kept rising as the pandemic continued.
Considering the age group of between 16 and 64 having access to the internet, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Argentina and Malaysia lead the way in terms of users, having 97%, 96%, 95%, 95%, and 93% respectively.

US Statistics

26% of males and 21% of females in the US use WhatsApp.
The US makes up for 17% of the total male users and 19% of female users around the world with one in every four adults using the messaging service.
As of 2020, WhatsApp had a majority (27%) of its users aged between 26 and 35 years.
The age bracket of 15 to 25 year-old Americans contributed to 19% of WhatsApp users while the 36 to 45 years-old bracket contributed to 20%. Those aged between 46 and 55 years represented 17% of the users.
Hispanic Americans are the most consistent of users, with 46% of them using the service followed by Blacks at half the representation of the Hispanic American. Whites total to a 16% fraction.
28% of WhatsApp users live in urban settings, 23% in the suburbs and 9% stay in rural areas.
33% of the users have more than just a college education, with 20% of the users only having reached college. Another 20% of users have a ceiling of high school education.
23% of Americans on WhatsApp earn below a yearly amount of $30,000, with 48% of them earning above $50,000. Of the 48%, 29% earn about $75,000.
Users who are older than 65 years contribute to 10% of the total users, with those below 30 years contributing to 54% of the users.
In 2020, 50% of WhatsApp users in the US used the app daily, 78% used it weekly while 91% used it at least once a month.

Global Statistics

Six countries in the world have restricted the use of WhatsApp – China, Iran, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Korea and Cuba.
As of December 2020, WhatsApp had 459 million users in India, and the number was still growing, edging towards the half a billion mark.
In Finland, 77% of males and 91% of females use WhatsApp.
The numbers are also high in Germany, with 87% of Germans active on the platform. 67% of women and 54% of men in the Western European country would rather always have the app.
In the UK, more than 75% of the active users accessed WhatsApp every day in the third quarter of 2020. Female users were more active on the platform than their male counterparts, with 81% of them using the app as compared to 73% of males in the same period.
A significant 95% of social media users in Mexico are also WhatsApp users, a figure that only trails the 97% by YouTube.

Financial and Revenue Statistics

WhatsApp’s initial investment, in form of seed funding, back in 2009 was $250,000. The sum was contributed by Acton’s friends.
In 2014, the social media app recorded a revenue of approximately $1 million.
Facebook spent more than $19 billion, delivered in different forms, to buy WhatsApp in 2014. The Zuckerberg-founded company offered $3 billion in restricted securities to Acton and Koum and delivered 4 billion in cash. The remaining sum was paid in Facebook shares.
Sequoia Capital had invested in WhatsApp twice before the acquisition. The first was $8 million investment in 2011 followed by a $50 million investment three years later.
In the early days, WhatsApp used to charge $1 for the yearly subscription until 2016 when the service model was done away with.
In mid-2020, WhatsApp began testing a payment option for specified user markets.

WhatsApp Download Statistics

WhatsApp started off as a simple but unique messaging app and evolved as more features were added. The number of downloads recorded by the platform reflects its growth over the years.

The total downloads of WhatsApp have been growing since 2013 when there were 500 million.
The numbers grew to $2 billion in 2016 and breaking the $4 billion mark in 2019. As of 2020, there were close to 5 billion downloads.
The download numbers in the first quarter of 2021 showed that Sweden at 39% recorded the highest growth in the number of downloads, as compared to the previous quarter.
Sweden was then tailed by Singapore, Hong Kong, Spain and Hungary with the countries recording 22%, 15% and 14% growth respectively.
On the App store, France saw a 38% increase, Sri Lanka at 31%, Malaysia and Poland at 22% and Turkey at 17% growth in download numbers.
As of August 2021, WhatsApp Messenger had a rating of 4.7/5 on the App store from a total of 8.8 million ratings. WhatsApp business also has a 4.7 rating on the same store from over 250,000 reviews.
On the Google Play Store, WhatsApp Messenger has a 4.1 rating from 142 million votes, and the Business version has a 4.2 rating from over 5 million votes.
42 million downloads were made in January this year split as follows: 5 million on the App Store and 30.3 million on the Google Play Store.

Statistics on WhatsApp Features

WhatsApp only brought audio and video calls to the desktop in May this year.
WhatsApp supports up to 60 languages on android devices and 40 languages on iPhone devices.
An approximated half a billion WhatsApp users upload a status update each day.

WhatsApp Business Statistics

WhatsApp Business was launched in January 2018 with a focus on supporting small businesses.

Over 5 million user accounts were established within the first year of its creation.
Currently, in 2021, the business version of WhatsApp has over 100 million downloads on the Play Store.
Current estimates approximate a total of 18 million downloads as of January this year, with a vast majority coming from Android devices.
There are 175 million customers worldwide who send a message or interact with a business account on WhatsApp.

The Overall Impact of COVID-19 on WhatsApp

In the early days of the pandemic, WhatsApp users worldwide logged a staggering 15 billion minutes of WhatsApp calls each day.
In June last year, WhatsApp said that its users spent 2 billion minutes on WhatsApp calls each day.
On average, Before the COVID-19 pandemic, users spent an approximated 195 minutes on the application every week.

Messaging Statistics

The growth of WhatsApp has been consistent with the rise in the number of daily messages sent via the app.

In 2011, there were 1 billion messages sent per day and by the start of 2016, the number had grown thirty-fold and approximately a year later, 42 billion were being sent via WhatsApp each day.
In 2017 July, 55 billion messages were sent, and a further 10 billion increase was seen by May the following year.
By October 2020, WhatsApp reported over 100 billion daily messages sent on the platform.

More Whatsapp Facts

WhatsApp messenger has grown to become the most popular messaging platform in more than half of the countries in the world. The instant messaging and voice-over-IP service was developed by two former Yahoo employees at the beginning of 2009. Its developers Brian Acton and Jan Koum initially placed focus on status updates.

Five years after its launch, it was acquired by Facebook at a reported figure of $19.3 billion
The app currently tops the charts of messaging services in terms of active monthly users having first achieved the milestone in 2015.

Whatsapp is Facebook’s biggest acquisition deal to this day. Though there is a web service and a PC application options, its clients prefer the mobile application.

The WhatsApp service is available in two models – WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business. The latter is offered as either WhatsApp Business app for small entities or Enterprise Solution for large corporations.