X continues to lose ground in the EU, reporting fewer users again in its latest DSA disclosure. X user decline is now a multi-year trend.
Under the EU Digital Services Act, all large online platforms must publish biannual reports on user counts, content moderation efforts, moderation staffing and government information requests.
X's latest report showed continued declines in active users, though the drops this time are slight. X's EU user count has been in decline since November 2023, the first year after Elon Musk acquired the platform in late 2022.
Musk's changes seemed to bring some additional interest, and EU active users rose again in the report released in October 2025 covering the first half of that year. But in the second half of 2025, EU usage dipped about 15% and has stayed at that level into 2026 — despite repeated claims from Musk and X staff that the platform is seeing record-high usage.
These insights cover only the EU, but the declines reinforce external data suggesting X's overall user base is shrinking.
Figures shared by SimilarWeb and reported by TechCrunch show a significant drop in monthly active users this year. SimilarWeb estimates, which track app store activity, put X at around 302 million mobile active users in June 2026, with 123.7 million daily active users.
SimilarWeb estimates may not be fully accurate and don't include web usage. But they diverge sharply from X's own numbers: in May, as part of the SpaceX prospectus, X reported 550 million monthly active users. Website users would account for some of the gap, but historically around 85% of X users access via mobile, so a 250 million discrepancy is hard to explain.
User counts are only one element. Revenue looks worse.
As reported by TechDirt, SpaceX's Q2 performance update published Aug. 4 contained X's latest revenue figures. X brought in $367 million in ad revenue in Q2 2026, and $710 million cumulatively for the first half of the year — a decline of $160 million year over year, or 18.4%.
Against 2022, the last year before Musk took over, the gap is far larger. In Q1 2022 Twitter brought in $1.2 billion in total revenue and $1.11 billion in ad revenue, posting about $2.2 billion in ad revenue for the first half. Between H1 2022 and H1 2026, ad revenue dropped about 70%.
Musk once claimed he would generate $12 billion in ad revenue by 2028, according to New York Times reporting. The NYT also reported he expected X to reach 69 million paying subscribers by 2025, rising to 159 million in 2028.
SpaceX hasn't shared subscriber counts. But in February, X's then-Head of Product Nikita Bier said the platform had reached $1 billion in annual revenue from subscriptions.
The average X Premium subscription is $8 per month, between $3 for Basic and $40 for Premium+. Taking $8 as the midpoint at a $1 billion annual run rate implies around 10.4 million paying users — about 1.9% of a 550 million monthly active user base.
Part of the answer is that X is now one component of the larger SpaceX conglomerate.
X provides a critical data stream for xAI, which uses the millions of posts in the app to inform its models. That gives X a different internal value, separate from its own ad and subscription intake. If xAI becomes profitable, the platform may not need to generate as much money to remain viable.
But the data only keeps flowing if X maintains a big enough audience — which is the backdrop for features that keep people inside the app, like routing all US creator payouts through X Money and opening a chatbot account API for brands.
When evaluating reach on X, account for the near-2x gap between the company's stated monthly active users and outside estimates. In media planning, verify against your own campaign reach and frequency rather than reported platform totals.
It has fallen since November 2023, dropping about 15% in the second half of 2025 and holding at that level into 2026.
$367 million in Q2 2026 and $710 million for the first half — down 18.4% year over year, and roughly 70% below H1 2022.
It supplies xAI with a training data stream, giving it internal value inside the SpaceX conglomerate separate from its own revenue. But it still needs a large enough audience to keep that data flowing.
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