Conversations, Insights
The most popular messaging apps in the world by country
Conversations, Insights
Did you know that people around the world spend the majority of their time online on a messaging app? According to the latest global insights by Datareportal, chat applications are the hottest digital trend right now.
But what exactly does that look like for different countries? What messaging trends are emerging around the world, and what do they mean for businesses? We’ve crunched the latest numbers and put together global stats and an overview of the most popular messaging apps in the world by country.
From WhatsApp to Facebook Messenger to Signal: There’s quite a variety when it comes to messaging apps. Some, like WhatsApp, have been extremely popular for years. Others, like Signal, are up and coming, while apps like Viber or WeChat attract particular regional audiences. So, let’s take a closer look at how the top messaging apps in the world stack up against each other.
For this, we compared and ranked them by their monthly active users (MAUs). Let’s dive in!
Data disclaimer: A few companies haven’t published user stats for some messenger apps in years. While we used the most recent official data to rank them, keep in mind that their current numbers might differ.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that WhatsApp (owned by Meta) has hit the three billion user mark in the first quarter of 2025, with more than 100 million WhatsApp users in the U.S. This makes WhatsApp by far the most popular messaging app in the world by user numbers.
WeChat and its Chinese mainland version Weixin are the messenger apps for Chinese users around the globe. While users in China use the Weixin version, users abroad access WeChat. According to WeChat owner Tencent, the combined user numbers of WeChat and Weixin reached 1.385 billion MAUs in 2024.
As of March 2025, Facebook’s Messenger has surpassed the one billion user mark again. This is slightly up from ad audience numbers that indicated a user base of around 950 million users in past years.
In March 2025, Telegram founder Pavel Durov said the messaging app had reached one billion MAUs (up from 950 million in 2024), making it the fourth most popular messaging app in the world.
In Q1 of 2025, Snapchat reported that the app had reached more than 900 million monthly active users.
Tencent’s other popular messaging app, QQ, counts 562 million MAUs as of December 2024.
In 2014, Viber’s parent company Rakuten said that it had reached 209 million MAUs. No newer numbers have been released by Rakuten since, but some sources put Viber’s active user base closer to 260 million in 2024. Viber is popular in Russia, Eastern Europe, Greece, and the Philippines.
Line is a popular messaging app in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia, and is owned by the SoftBank Group. The last time the company published official user numbers was in 2020 when it said Line had 187 MAUs.
In 2021, the Z Holdings Corporation (a former joint venture between the SoftBank Group and Naver Corporation) released a report stating that Line had 178 million MAUs in its four main markets that account for about 90% of Line’s total market share. This would put Line’s user numbers at around 197.8 million MAUs.
Known for its high security, the Signal messenger has a loyal user base. According to an April 2025 interview in the Swiss newspaper NZZ with Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation, Signal has somewhere between 70 and 100 million MAUs. The BBC, on the other hand, said the messaging app only had 40 to 70 million active users in April 2025.
According to its Q4 2024 numbers, KakaoTalk, the South Korean super-app, had 54 million MAUs globally as of December 2024. 48.9 million of these users (91%) are located in South Korea where KakaoTalk is by far the most popular messaging app in the country.
While they might go beyond messaging or be part of a broader social media platform, Instagram Direct Messenger, iMessage, and Discord are also worth mentioning when it comes to the most popular messaging apps in the world.
Instagram Direct is Instagram’s direct messaging feature used for private conversations between users. Many businesses also provide customer service through it. Instagram Direct’s user numbers are a bit hard to gauge, since Meta doesn’t release separate data for Instagram Direct anymore.
In 2017, TechCrunch reported that Instagram’s direct messaging feature had 375 million monthly actives. Mark Zuckerberg said in Meta’s 2025 Q1 earning call that there are now as many messages sent each day on Instagram as there are on Messenger with its one billion active monthly users. This could be an indicator that Instagram Direct’s numbers are up from the last reported 375 million.
Similarly, there are no official Apple user numbers for iMessage. Several sources say that there are currently over 1.38 billion iPhone users in the world. With iMessage being the native messaging app on iPhones, it gives you an idea of how many people might use the chat app – even though you should keep in mind that not every iPhone user is necessarily also an active iMessage user.
Discord is a cross between a social network, online forum, and messaging service – and hugely popular with gamers. According to the company, Discord currently has 200 million monthly active users globally.
Now that you’ve got an idea about which messaging apps dominate globally, let’s zoom in and take a look at specific countries.
Once you start looking at popular messaging apps by country, the picture becomes more diverse. Even though WhatsApp is still the number one chat application in most countries, there are significant regional differences. These are especially important to keep in mind if you’re considering incorporating messaging apps in your customer communication strategy.
The following table gives you an overview of the top messaging apps in the world, broken down by country.
| Country | Messaging App |
| Argentina | |
| Australia | Messenger |
| Austria | |
| Belgium | |
| Brazil | |
| Canada | Messenger |
| Chile | |
| China | |
| Colombia | |
| Denmark | Messenger |
| Finland | Telegram |
| France | |
| Germany | |
| India | |
| Indonesia | |
| Ireland | |
| Italy | |
| Japan | Line |
| Kenya | |
| South Korea | KakaoTalk |
| Malaysia | |
| Mexico | |
| Netherlands | |
| New Zealand | Messenger |
| Nigeria | |
| Norway | Messenger |
| Pakistan | |
| Peru | |
| Philippines | Messenger |
| Portugal | |
| Russia | Telegram |
| Singapore | |
| South Africa | |
| Spain | |
| Sweden | Messenger |
| Switzerland | |
| Turkey | |
| U.A.E. | |
| UK | |
| USA | Messenger |
| Vietnam | Zalo |
Drilling down this list,
It’s hard to miss that the world has a very clear favorite when it comes to messaging apps: WhatsApp! If you’re putting the popularity of WhatsApp on a map, the world looks pretty green.
Keep in mind, however, that consumers typically don’t exclusively chat on one single messaging app. Most actually use a variety of platforms for different purposes – and they expect businesses to meet them there. And there are also variations in preferences when it comes to different demographics.
From a business perspective, we recommend digging a bit deeper to really understand your target audience’s specific needs and preferred communication channels.
As these user statistics show, people around the world use WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, and other chat-based apps to talk to friends and family, and also increasingly to talk to businesses.
That’s why WhatsApp, WeChat, Apple, Messenger, and others offer specific business versions of their consumer apps, so companies can professionally interact with their target audience on messaging apps.
It’s a great opportunity to meet your customers on the platforms they already use and love, and offer them meaningful experiences with your business.
And don’t worry! This doesn’t mean that you have to start chatting with customers on five different messaging apps. Special business messaging tools bundle all of these channels into one solution. With Sinch’s messaging platform, for example, you can easily reach customers on WhatsApp, Messenger, Apple Messages for Business (iMessage), Telegram, Viber – and even SMS and RCS.
If you’re not quite sure where to start, check out our global communication guide to explore which channel(s) might be the best fit for your audience.
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