Signal Statistics 2026: Users, Finances and Encryption Adoption

Signal reached between 70 and 100 million monthly active users by April 2025, according to Signal Foundation president Meredith Whittaker, speaking to Swiss newspaper NZZ. Cumulative downloads passed 218 million since the app’s 2014 debut, per Sensor Tower data published in March 2025. The numbers below cover users, regional downloads, Signal Foundation finances, Signal Protocol licensing, formal verification, and nation-state targeting.

Key Takeaways

• Signal reached 70 to 100 million monthly active users in April 2025, up from approximately 20 million at the end of 2020 and more than 40 million in January 2022, per the Signal Foundation president.
• The app crossed 218 million cumulative downloads since 2014, with the United States accounting for 27%, the Netherlands 18%, and Germany 6% of global downloads, per Sensor Tower.
• Signal Technology Foundation booked $29,413,537 in 2024 revenue against $38,019,696 in expenses, a net income of –$8,606,159 per the latest IRS Form 990 on ProPublica.
• The January 2021 WhatsApp privacy-policy backlash drove 50.6 million Signal installs in a single month, a 5,001% year-over-year jump from the previous January, per Sensor Tower.
• Brian Acton’s founding loan grew from $50 million at the February 21, 2018, launch to $105,000,400 by the end of 2018, due February 28, 2068, with nil interest, per the Signal Foundation announcement.
• Five state-aligned threat groups (APT44, UNC4221, UNC5792, and Turla as Russia-aligned, plus the Belarus-linked UNC1151) actively targeted Signal accounts in February 2025 by abusing the linked devices feature, per Google’s Threat Intelligence Group.
• Meredith Whittaker received $743,531 in 2024 compensation as Director and President of Signal Messenger, the highest-paid role inside the Foundation per the latest 990.

Editor’s Choice

• Total downloads: 218 million since the Signal app’s 2014 launch, per Sensor Tower data published in March 2025.
• Monthly active users: between 70 and 100 million as of April 2025, per Whittaker via NZZ.
• January 2021 single-month installs: 50.6 million, up from 992,000 in January 2020.
• Signal Technology Foundation 2024 total revenue: $29,413,537, down from $35,750,994 in 2023.
• Annual operating cost projection: $50 million by 2025 (up from around $40 million in 2023), per Whittaker in November 2023.
• Acton’s founding loan size by the end of 2018: $105,000,400, due February 28, 2068.
• WhatsApp users on Signal Protocol since April 5, 2016: more than one billion monthly active users.

Recent Developments

• May 2026: Signal Foundation published Signal-Android v8.10.0 on GitHub on May 6, 2026, adding Unicode 17.0 emoji support, including a new Ballet Dancer reaction.
• 2026: Cheval, Jacomme, and Richards published Automated Formal Analysis of Signal’s Double Ratchet (IACR ePrint 2026/727), the first highly automated formal analysis of the protocol’s full feature set, identifying three Forward Secrecy issues that have since been remediated.
• September 8, 2025: Signal launched Secure Backups, the encrypted messaging app’s first paid subscription tier at $1.99 per month for 100 GB of zero-knowledge encrypted storage, per the Signal blog.
• September 19, 2025: Signal Technology Foundation filed its 2024 IRS Form 990, recording $29,413,537 in revenue against $38,019,696 in expenses on ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer.
• April 2025: Whittaker disclosed Signal’s monthly active user range at between 70 and 100 million in an NZZ interview.
• March 24, 2025: Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg published the Houthis’ PC small group article, revealing senior US national security officials had used Signal to coordinate Yemen strike planning.
• March 24, 2025: Signal US downloads jumped 25% then 47% day-over-day, per Sensor Tower, as the Signal-Gate disclosure drove a fresh adoption wave.
• February 19, 2025: Google’s Threat Intelligence Group published its “Signals of Trouble” report naming Russia-aligned threat actors targeting Signal accounts via maliciously linked device QR codes.

Signal Monthly Active Users by Year

• Signal had approximately 20 million monthly active users by the end of December 2020.
• The platform surpassed 40 million monthly active users by January 2022.
• According to an April 2025 NZZ interview, Signal had between 70 and 100 million monthly active users.
• Whittaker stated in November 2023 that the annual operating cost was estimated at around $40 million, with expectations to reach $50 million by 2025.

Source: Signal Foundation disclosures, Whittaker NZZ interview April 2025

Signal’s privacy-first positioning trades absolute scale for trust depth, a pattern visible across the cybersecurity statistics we track on platform retention.

By the numbers: Signal accumulated 218 million downloads since 2014, per Sensor Tower data published in March 2025. Whittaker reported between 70 and 100 million monthly active users in an April 2025 NZZ interview. At the midpoint of the disclosed range, the implied download-to-active conversion sits in the low-30% range, consistent with privacy-driven downloads tied to specific events.

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The January 2021 WhatsApp Privacy Spike

• Signal’s installs in January 2021 grew 5,001% year-over-year to 50.6 million, up from 992,000 in January 2020, per Sensor Tower.
• Signal saw approximately 7.5 million installs globally through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store between January 6 and January 10, 2021, which is 43 times the previous week.
• Over the first four months of 2021, Signal’s first-time downloads surged 1,192% year-over-year to 64.6 million, while WhatsApp’s mobile app declined 43% year-over-year for the January-to-April period, although it still reached approximately 172.3 million installs.
• Between January 7 and January 8, 2021, Signal saw more than 100,000 installations.
• Between January 12 and January 14, 2021, the listings for Signal on the Google Play store increased from over 10 million to over 50 million.

Source: Sensor Tower install-growth data

The January 2021 spike turned Signal from a cryptographer’s tool into a household-named privacy app, with attitudes mirrored in our Gen Z social media data.

Signal Downloads by Year and Region

• Signal accumulated 218 million global downloads since its 2014 launch, per Sensor Tower data published in March 2025.
• The United States represented 27% of global downloads, followed by the Netherlands at 18% and Germany at 6%.
• US daily active users increased 3% day-over-day on January 20, 2025, then 6% the following day.
• US downloads jumped 11% and 17% day-over-day on January 20-21, 2025.
• A more recent surge saw downloads increase 25% and 47% day-over-day on March 24 and March 25, 2025.
• Across the competitor cohort, monthly active users and downloads fell an average of –1% and –6% year-over-year in the same window.

Signal Foundation Finances and 990 Filings

• Signal Technology Foundation booked total revenue of $29,413,537 in fiscal year 2024, with contributions accounting for $21,843,492 or 74.3% of revenue, per the Form 990 filed September 19, 2025, on ProPublica.
• Total expenses for fiscal year 2024 reached $38,019,696, producing net income of –$8,606,159 and net assets of –$4,724,975.
• Revenue history by year: $29,413,537 in 2024, $35,750,994 in 2023, $26,064,219 in 2022, $12,765,380 in 2021, $14,860,292 in 2020, $19,408,880 in 2019, and $609,365 in 2018.
• Whittaker received $743,531 in 2024 compensation as Director and President of Signal Messenger; Jim O’Leary (VP, Engineering) received $715,212; Ehren Kret (Chief Technology Officer) received $709,890; Aruna Harder (Chief Operating Officer) received $589,160.
• The foundation has been tax-exempt since February 2019 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California.

Key finding: Foundation revenue dropped from $35,750,994 in 2023 to $29,413,537 in 2024, while expenses climbed to $38,019,696, per the ProPublica filing record. The donation-funded model that Whittaker projected would need $50 million annually by 2025 is widening its operating gap.

Brian Acton’s Founding Loan Mechanics

• WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton announced the formation of the Signal Foundation alongside Moxie Marlinspike on February 21, 2018, with an initial $50 million loan from Acton.
• Acton had left WhatsApp’s parent company, Facebook, in September 2017 before founding Signal Foundation.
• By the end of 2018, the loan had increased to $105,000,400, due to be repaid on February 28, 2068.
• The loan is unsecured and carries nil interest.
• Signal Foundation operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit sustained entirely by community support, with no advertisers or investors.
• Foundation board members include Amba Kak, Brian Acton, Jay Sullivan, Katherine Maher, and Whittaker as President; Marlinspike is emeritus.

Signal Protocol Licensing and Adoption

• The Signal Protocol was developed by Open Whisper Systems, with Trevor Perrin and Moxie Marlinspike starting development in 2013.
• Signal Messenger maintains a reference implementation written in Rust under the AGPLv3 license on GitHub.
• WhatsApp partnered with Open Whisper Systems in November 2014 and completed the rollout on April 5, 2016, encrypting the conversations of more than one billion people worldwide.
• Facebook Messenger added optional Secret Conversations using the Signal Protocol in October 2016.
• Google Allo featured an optional incognito mode with Signal Protocol encryption in September 2016 and was discontinued in March 2019.
• Skype added Signal Protocol support to its optional Private Conversations mode in January 2018.
• Google Messages began providing end-to-end encryption by default to all RCS-based one-to-one conversations in November 2020.
• Over a billion monthly active users across the world are now using the Signal Protocol for end-to-end encryption.
• WhatsApp’s integration covers chats, group chats, attachments, voice notes, and voice calls across Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Nokia S40, Nokia S60, Blackberry, and BB10.
• Skype is one of the most popular applications in the world, with hundreds of millions of active users at the time of the January 2018 partnership.

Source: Signal blog, Signal Protocol documentation

Few open-source security projects show that leverage; see our cybersecurity in cryptocurrency statistics for an adjacent privacy-driven sector comparison.

Signal Cloud Backup Launch (September 2025)

• Signal announced Secure Backups on September 8, 2025, the messenger’s first paid subscription tier.
• The free tier preserves the last 45 days of media plus unlimited text message storage, capped at 100 MiB of compressed storage.
• The paid tier costs $1.99 per month and provides 100 GB of storage with extended media history beyond the 45-day window.
• A 64-character recovery key generated on-device is the sole decryption mechanism, and Signal never receives this key.
• Backups use the same zero-knowledge technology that enables Signal groups to work without revealing intimate metadata.

Source: Signal Blog, September 8, 2025

Security Audits and Formal Verification

• Cohn-Gordon, Cremers, Dowling, Garratt, and Stebila published A Formal Security Analysis of the Signal Messaging Protocol in 2016, archived as IACR ePrint 2016/1013.
• The 2016 paper proved that the key exchange core of the Signal Protocol satisfies standard security properties, including secrecy, authentication, forward secrecy, and post-compromise security.
• Alwen, Coretti, and Dodis presented a formal treatment of the Double Ratchet at Eurocrypt 2019, proving forward security, post-compromise security, and immediate (no-delay) decryption.
• The Double Ratchet ensures that every message is encrypted and authenticated using a fresh symmetric key.
• Cheval, Jacomme, and Richards published Automated Formal Analysis of Signal’s Double Ratchet in 2026 as IACR ePrint 2026/727, providing the first highly automated formal analysis covering all features, including out-of-order message arrivals.
• The 2026 analysis uncovered three attacks on the protocol: two confirmed in the main implementation and one in the specification, each weakening or breaking Forward Secrecy.
• All three issues identified in the 2026 paper have since been remediated.

Source: IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive, Springer Eurocrypt proceedings

Russia-Aligned APT Targeting

• Google’s Threat Intelligence Group published Signals of Trouble on February 19, 2025, documenting five state-aligned threat actors (four Russia-aligned: APT44, UNC4221, UNC5792, and Turla; plus the Belarus-linked UNC1151) actively targeting Signal Messenger accounts.
• Named threat actors include APT44 (also known as Sandworm or Seashell Blizzard, attributed to the Main Centre for Special Technologies within the GRU); UNC5792, which partially overlaps with CERT-UA’s UAC-0195; UNC4221, tracked by CERT-UA as UAC-0185; Turla, attributed to Center 16 of the Federal Security Service; and UNC1151, a Belarus-linked cluster.
• The primary technique abuses Signal’s legitimate linked devices feature through malicious QR codes that link victim accounts to actor-controlled Signal instances, enabling real-time eavesdropping without full-device compromise.
• UNC4221 operates a tailored Signal phishing kit designed to mimic components of the Kropyva application used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine for artillery guidance.
• APT44 uses WAVESIGN, a Windows Batch Script that exfiltrates Signal’s SQLCipher database to attacker infrastructure.

Source: Google Cloud Threat Intelligence, February 19, 2025

Why it matters: Five named state-aligned APTs concentrating on the linked-devices feature reframes Signal’s threat model. The protocol’s cryptography held; the operational attack surface is the device-linking flow itself, where a phished QR scan converts an attacker’s instance into a permanent silent reader of the target’s traffic. Signal’s voice phishing data shows the same human-layer pivot now defines elite tradecraft against encrypted-comms users.

The Signal-Gate Cabinet Leak

• On March 13, 2025, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz added Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to a private Signal group chat labeled Houthis PC small group.
• On March 15, 2025, at 11:44 am, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared operational details of a planned US strike against the Houthis in Yemen, including specific information about targets, weapons, and strike sequencing.
• The 18-person chat included Vice President JD Vance, Mike Waltz, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Stephen Miller, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
• On March 24, 2025, Goldberg published the article in The Atlantic.
• On March 25, 2025, Waltz accepted full responsibility for the breach.
• Signal US downloads jumped 25% day-over-day on March 24, 2025, and 47% day-over-day on March 25, 2025, in the immediate aftermath, per Sensor Tower.

Signal-Gate is a textbook operational-security failure on a tool whose cryptography performed as specified. The protocol kept the conversation confidential from outside observers while the cabinet selected one.

Twilio Breach and Operational Incidents

• In August 2022, Signal notified 1,900 users that their data had been affected by a breach at SMS provider Twilio, including phone numbers and SMS verification codes.

Source: Signal disclosures via Wikipedia

Wider API security breach statistics show identical attack patterns across the SaaS supply chain.

Signal vs WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage

• WhatsApp uses the Signal Protocol by default for all communication and has reached more than 1 billion monthly active users on the protocol since April 5, 2016.
• Signal’s monthly active user base of 70 to 100 million is roughly an order of magnitude smaller than WhatsApp’s billion-plus Signal-Protocol footprint, though both rest on the same cryptographic core.
• Skype offers Signal Protocol encryption only inside the optional Private Conversations mode, not by default.
• Facebook Messenger added optional Secret Conversations using the Signal Protocol in October 2016.
• Telegram uses MTProto (not the Signal Protocol) and only encrypts secret chats end-to-end.

Source: Signal Protocol documentation, Signal blog announcements

US-Specific Usage and Demographics

• The United States accounts for 27% of Signal’s global downloads, the largest single market.
• US daily active users grew 3% day-over-day on January 20, 2025, then 6% the following day on January 21, 2025, per Sensor Tower.
• US downloads jumped 11% and 17% day-over-day on January 20-21, 2025.
• Across the wider competitor cohort, monthly active users fell an average of –1% year-over-year, and downloads fell –6% year-over-year in the same window.

Source: Sensor Tower, March 2025

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Conclusion

Signal reported in April 2025 between 70 and 100 million monthly active users and 218 million cumulative downloads, while booking a net income of –$8,606,159 against $29,413,537 in 2024 revenue. The donation-funded model is stretching to fund its own next phase, with the September 2025 Secure Backups subscription as the first paid revenue stream.

For readers tracking cybersecurity attack statistics, Signal’s mid-decade arc shows a single nonprofit shaping global secure communications on a sub-$30 million budget.