This is an in-depth list of up-to-date TikTok statistics for 2021.
In this article, you will find detailed stats on TikTok’s growth, demographics, user behavior, competition, and much more.
Without any delay, let’s see the stats!
TikTok is the fastest growing platform in the world. The social media platform was launched in September 2016. In the four years since its launch, the platform has become popular all over the world. According to Datareportal, TikTok has over 700 million active users. With this number of users, TikTok is the 7th most used social media platform in the world.
Another report from mobile data and analytics firm App Annie estimates that TikTok will reach 1.2 billion monthly active users in 2021. The only social media platforms to pass the 1 billion monthly active users (MUA) mark are Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, YouTube, and WeChat.
TikTok’s growth is phenomenal when compared to other social media platforms. It took Facebook almost four years to reach the same number of active monthly users that TikTok managed to acquire in three years. It took Instagram six years to hit the same number of active monthly users. One of the reasons for TikTok’s fast growth is its popularity in Asian countries. The app is popular in countries like China, Japan, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Vietnam.
According to an April 2020 report from Sensor Tower, TikTok has been downloaded more than 2 billion times on both Google Play and the Apple App Store.
This is double the number of downloads the app had in 2019. The popular short video platform reached its first billion downloads in February 2019. It took TikTok almost 3 years to reach 1 billion downloads. In comparison, it took eight months from February 2019 to reach 2 billion downloads.
In the first quarter of 2020, TikTok was downloaded 315 million times worldwide.
Source: SensorTower
This is the highest amount of downloads any app has received in a given quarter. This huge increase in downloads is most likely a result of the pandemic lockdown. More people were at home and had time for social media. People were looking for new ways to have fun and kill boredom, which led to more TikTok downloads.
Of these 2 billion downloads, India is the biggest driver of TikTok downloads. To date, the app has been downloaded 611 million times in India. This is 30.3 percent of the total downloads. China comes in 2nd place. The Chinese version of TikTok called Douyin has been downloaded 196.6 times in China. This amounts to 9.7 percent of the total downloads. The United States ranks third in TikTok downloads with 165 million or 8.2 percent of total downloads.
Google Play accounts for a vast majority of TikTok downloads. TikTok has been downloaded 1.5 billion times on Google Play. This accounts for 75.5 percent of the total downloads. (SensorTower 2020)
Recent reports from Statista show that TikTok was very popular in South America during the 3rd quarter of 2020. The app was downloaded 3.08 million times in Brazil.
Outside South America, Mexico comes in second place with 3 million downloads and. The US comes in third place with 2.31 million and Russia is 4th with 2.24 million downloads.
TikTok has been downloaded 495.2 million times on Apple App Store. This amounts to 24.5 percent of TikTok’s total downloads.
In the first quarter of 2019, TikTok was the downloaded app on the Apple App Store with 33 million installs.
According to BusinessofApps, the average TikTok user spends 52 minutes per day on the app. Whether it is just scrolling through the For You feed or creating and sharing their videos, TikTokers spend an average of 1 hour on the app.
People spend significantly more time on TikTok than other social media platforms. Facebook and Instagram is the only app where users spend more time on. Facebook users spend an average of 58.5 minutes on the app daily. People spend an average of 53 minutes on Instagram. Users spend less time on Snapchat than the other three (49.5 minutes).
As of 2020, TikTok is available in 141 out of the 195 countries in the world (Apptrace, 2020). The app is also available in 75 languages.
What makes this stat interesting is how fast they grew such a huge audience. In just 5 years, TikTok managed to enter 72 percent of all the countries in the world. The fast growth is due to the merger of Musical.ly and Douyin to form TikTok. Most of TikTok’s Eastern audience comes from the Chinese version of the app called Douyin. The Western audience came from Musical.ly (that is now TikTok)
As a marketer or brand looking to grow a business, TikTok can help you reach your target audience with ease. By promoting your business on TikTok, you can reach your prospective customers in 141 different countries.
Learn how to use TikTok as a brand.
TikTok is huge in America. There are over 80 million monthly active users in the US. Even though the app is very popular among teens, the latest figures show that the number of US adults using the app is growing.
As of June 2020, teens (10-19) accounted for 32.5 percent of active TikTok users in the US. The second-largest share of users is aged 20-29. They account for 29.5 percent of users. Even the older demographics are very active on the platform. Users aged 30 – 50+ accounted for 37.4 percent of total users.
What’s the reason why you haven’t started marketing your brand on TikTok?
Are you worried that your audience demographic isn’t active on the platform?
While the platform is used significantly by teens, the older demographics are becoming very active on the app. If you aren’t using TikTok to promote your business, you should start doing so now.
Read this beginner’s guide to TikTok marketing to help you get started.
This TikTok statistic shows the value of TikTok to brands. Three-quarters of all apps are opened just once after they are downloaded and then abandoned. This isn’t the case with TikTok.
90 percent of TikTok users use the app daily. This shows that TikTok users are very active on the platform.
A study showed that TikTok users prefer to watch videos from other creators than sharing their own. In the study, TikTok users were observed for a month. The result of the study showed that 68 percent of TikTok users watch someone else’s video and 55 percent upload their videos.
TikTokers are spending significantly on the app. China accounts for the majority of this revenue. China generated 72.3 percent of the total revenue, or $331 million. The US ranked second. US users generated 19 percent of the total revenue, or $86.5 million. Great Britain ranks 3rd. They generated 2 percent of total revenue, or $9 million.
Statista carried out a survey in December 2019 to determine the video content reach among US internet users. In the survey, 23 percent of respondents stated that they had used or seen videos posted on TikTok. 44% of the respondents say that they hadn’t used the platform before. 33% say that they have never heard of TikTok.
As of June 2020, the most viewed content category on TikTok was entertainment content. Hashtags related to entertainment content accumulated 443.3 billion hashtag views overall. The second most popular category is the dance category with a total of 150.3 billion hashtag views.
The next most popular hashtag categories on TikTok include:
Pranks – 54 billion
Fitness/sports – 43.3 billion
Home reno/DIY – 28.6 billion
Beauty/skincare – 21.8 billion
Fashion – 17.5 billion
Recipes/cooking – 12.9 billion
Life hacks/advice -8.3 billion
Pets – 7.5 billion
Outdoors -1.2 billion
These stats show that TikTokers spend time watching a broad range of topics on the platform. With this knowledge, brands can create a suitable content strategy for their audience.
TikTok is the second most downloaded app in 2020, the same as last year. In 2019, Whatsapp was the most downloaded free iPhone app. In 2020, due to the pandemic and more people working from home, ZOOM Cloud Meetings was the most downloaded free app in 2020.
On iPad devices, TikTok is the 6th most downloaded in 2020. Zoom Cloud Meetings comes in first once again as the most downloaded free iPad app in 2020.
Influencer Marketing Hub analyzed 100,000+ influencer profiles across popular influencer marketing platforms. The result of the research showed that TikTok had the highest social media engagement rate per post.
TikTok is very popular among Indian teens. As of 2019, they were more than 120 million active users in India. In fact, in 2019, the app was downloaded the most in India. In January alone, the app was downloaded 32.3 million times.
TikTok is facing a hard time in India right now. As of June 2020, TikTok and other Chinese apps have been banned in India. This was after a violent border clash between China and India left 20 Indian soldiers dead.
TikTok’s usage has exploded in Asian countries. TikTok is the most downloaded app in Southeast Asia. In 2019 alone, the app grew to 507 million users in Southeast Asia. One of the reasons why TikTok has been focusing its attention on Asia is because of threats of getting banned in Countries like the US and Japan. They are already banned in India.
In August 2020, the Chinese version of TikTok called Douyin surpassed 600 million daily active users. This is a 50 percent increase from the 400 million followers they had in January. The lockdown in China contributed to this massive growth.
Douyin users in China are also making a lot of money. According to ByteDance’s China chief executive officer Zhang Nan, 22 million creators earned over 41.7 billion yuan (US$6.1 billion) in the past year.
Bytedance is the parent company for Douyin and TikTok. Douyin was created to target the Asian market. To penetrate Western countries like the US, Bytedance purchased social media app Musical.ly for over US$1 billion in 2017.
The manner of the purchase is why the US government is threatening to ban TikTok in the country. According to the US, Bytedance did not receive clearance from the US committee that reviews purchases from foreign buyers for national security risks. (Source)
TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps in the world. The app is available in over 141 markets and 75 languages. This is no surprise since TikTok was one of the best-rated apps of 2020. The app is projected to be available in more languages and enter more regions in 2021.
It took the developers of Douyin 200 days to create the app. Within a year, the app had 100 million users, and more than one billion videos watched every day. TikTok was launched in September 2017 after Bytedance purchased Musical.ly.
I find this stat very interesting. In September 2019, Korean group BTS joined the TikTok platform. The band joined the platform by 19:40 KST (Korean Standard Time) and by 23:11 KST, they had amassed 1 million followers. So the fastest time to reach one million followers on TikTok is 3hr 31 minutes.
The most followed person on TikTok is Charli D’Amelio. She has over 103 million followers on the app. Her videos have amassed over 8 billion likes on the platform.
After Charli, these are the most-followed people on TikTok:
2. Addison Rae – 71,800,000
3. Zach King – 53,700,000
4. Loren Gray – 50,100,000
5. Spence X – 50,200,000
6. TikTok – 49,300,000
7. Bella Poarch – 48,200,000
8. Dixie D’Amelio – 46,700,000
9. Will Smith – 45,100,000
10. Riyaz – 43,700,000
As of June 2020, the most followed person on Douyin is Chinese male actor Chen He. He has over 69 million followers. The second most followed person is Dilraba Dilmulrat. The actress, model, and singer has over 55.6 million followers. Singer and actor Show Lo takes the third spot with 40.39 million followers.
The initial release date of the prototype of Musical.ly was April 2014. The official version of the app was launched in August 2014. The founders of the app are Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang. It took them around 6 months to build Musical.ly. in the initial stages, the app was designed as an online self-learning platform. This offering did not appeal to users, so they changed their focus. The app was redesigned as a social media network that incorporates music and video.
Beijing based company Bytedance is the owners of both TikTok and Douyin. They launched Douyin in September 2016. In September 2017, they rebranded it as TikTok and launched it in the international market. Even after the rebrand, they still kept the original name in China.
Currently, TikTok has been downloaded over 2 billion times worldwide. It hit the 1 billion downloads milestone in February 2019. It took the platform around seven months to grow from 500 million to 1 billion global downloads.
As TikTok explodes in popularity, so does their revenue. According to Statista, TikTok generated 2.7 million US dollars in in-app revenues from the Apple Play Store in September 2020. The United States accounts for 67 percent of total in-app purchases on the iOS store.
TikTok generated nearly 990,000 US dollars in in-app revenues from Google Play in September 2020. The United States accounts for 36 percent of total in-app purchases on the play store.
This TikTok statistics is not a surprise. Android is the leading mobile operating system in the world. As of October 2020, Android controlled 72.92 percent of the OS market share. iOS comes in second place with 26.53 percent.
Due to Android’s dominance of the smartphone market, 75% of TikTok downloads have been on Android devices. The main exception is the US where most TikTokers use an iOS device.
According to HypeAuditor, the average engagement rate on TikTok is 17.5%. This value will depend mainly on the size of your followers. The higher your followers, the lower your engagement rate on TikTok.
TikTok users with less than 5,000 followers usually have an average engagement rate of 21.10%. For users with 5000 to 20,000 followers, the engagement rate reduces to 18.14% The average engagement rate drops to 15.53% for accounts with 500,000 to 1,000,000 followers.
When HypeAuditor analyzed accounts with 1,000,000 followers or more, the average engagement rate was 17.28 percent.
According to a July 2020 study from Statista, US influencers have an average engagement rate of 17.99 percent. In comparison, International TikTok influencers had an average engagement rate of 15.86 percent.
During the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, TikTok and Douyin saw a massive increase in in-app purchases. TikTok and Douyin saw a 10X increase to $78 million in May 2020. TikTok generated more in-app revenue than established apps like YouTube, Tinder, and Netflix. Douyin contributed 86.6% of in-app revenue. The US market contributed the 2nd highest in-app revenue with 8.2 percent.
The coronavirus pandemic lockdown helped the growth of TikTok. In the first month of the lockdown, TikTok was downloaded 115.2 million times. To help you understand how massive this number is, Instagram only averaged 111.5 downloads per quarter in 2019.
In this TikTok stat, we will see the behavior of engaged TikTok users in a month. (GlobalWebIndex)
The survey involved a base value of 263 engaged TikTokers in the UK and the US aged 16-64. They were asked “Which of the following have you done on TikTok in the past month?
This is the result of the survey:
When TikTok was first banned in India in 2019, Bytedance reportedly lost $500,000 in revenue each day. For everyday TikTok was banned from the app stores in India, it lost a lot of money.
TikTok is one of the highest-ranked websites on Alexa. The site ranks #138 in global internet engagement with users averaging 5:36 minutes on the site. The top keywords by traffic are tiktok (14.92%), tik tok (8.61%), tiktok ads (2.25%), charli d’amelio (1.59%), and addison rae (1.14%).
If you want to learn about running ads on TikTok, check out our in-depth guide to TikTok Ads.
The hashtag with the highest number of views and posts is #foryou. As of the time of writing, the hashtag has 6083.1 billion views or 6 trillion views. Other popular hashtags include #foryoupage, #fyp, #duet, #tiktok, and #viral.
According to CB Insights, the company was last valued at 140 billion dollars. Although reports from Bloomberg states that ByteDance is in talks with some investors from Sequoia over funding to boost the company’s valuation to 180 billion dollars.
According to research from AppAnnie, TikTok ranked 6th in apps for consumer spending worldwide in the first quarter of 2020. The app that topped TikTok includes Tinder, YouTube, Netflix IQYI, and Tencent Video. Below TikTok in the list, you will find apps like Disney+ and Pandora Music.
According to reports from MarketingCharts, 37% of TikTok users in the US have a household income of more than $100,000. However, TikTok is also popular in low-income households as well. 18% of US TikTokers report to be from households with an income of less than $25,000 yearly.
According to reports from Statista, female users accounted for 58.8 percent of TikTokers in June 2020. Male users accounted for 41.2 percent of the app’s user base.
As of January 2020, TikTok had a penetration rate of almost 48 percent among users aged 13 to 19 years. While the app is very popular among teens, the older generation has started developing an interest in the app.
According to a 2019 survey, 10 percent of internet users in Latin America aged 16 to 64 say that they have used TikTok. The number is higher in North America with 12 percent saying they had a TikTok account. TikTok’s penetration is highest in the Asia Pacific region with 36 percent of internet users saying they had a TikTok account.
According to the annotated Douyin Data Report from Katherine Wu, we can have insight into how Douyin users use the app. According to data from the report, 460,000 families used Douyin to capture moments with the entire family. Family-related content received 2.79 billion views and over 100 million likes. 3.8 million parents also uploaded videos with their children and there were 7.09 million videos on weddings.
The most liked video on TikTok was uploaded by Bella Poarch. The video was just her lip-syncing and bobbing her head to Millie B’s M to the B song. She uploaded the video in August 2020 and it went viral. The video has over 43.9 million likes on TikTok.
According to a 2019 annual report from ByteDance, over 14 million educational videos were shared in China in 2019. Due to the success of this kind of video, TikTok promoted the #Edutok hashtag in India. Since introducing the hashtag, it has been viewed 127.4 billion times.
Among the top 10 most-followed people on TikTok, Will Smith is the richest star. But for the sake of this list of TikTok statistics, I will exclude him because he made his money outside of TikTok.
According to Forbes, here are the highest-paid people on TikTok:
Byte is one of the major competitors of TikTok. They plan to start paying creators in April. They are offering $250,000 in payout to 100 creators. The creators will be handpicked by Byte. TikTok isn’t left out either. In July 2020, TikTok announced a $200 million creator fund. They announced later that month that the creator fund will increase to $1 billion in the next 3 years.
A new study on kids app usage has shown that younger people aged between 4 to 15 spend an average of 80 minutes per day on TikTok.
Lasso is Facebook’s clone of TikTok. Lasso had 250,000 downloads in the US last November. In that time frame, TikTok had 41.3 million downloads.
The minimum ad budget on TikTok is $50 per day. But according to a leaked pitch deck, TikTok ads can be very expensive when compared to other social media apps.
Here are the different ad format and its pricing:
According to Telegraph, TikTok influencers with 2.5 million followers or more charge around $600-1000 per post. TikTok influencers are cheaper than Instagram influencers. An Instagram influencer with 10,000 to 20,000 followers will charge around $100 – 200 per post.
That’s it for my list of TikTok statistics.
I use TikTok a lot. I spend at least an hour scrolling through the For You feed every day. So I enjoyed compiling this list of stats.
What do you think of this list?
Are there any TikTok stats you think I should have added to the list?
Leave your thoughts in the comment section.
Hi! I'm Marvellous, huge fan of Iconosquare as a product, and determined to help experienced social media marketers thrive in the various aspects of their career.
Every week, Emily interviews top brands, renowned influencers, and hidden agencies with one goal in mind: to understand what happens backstage of their social media strategies.
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