BeReal, a photo-sharing app, seems be a new social media darling, rising up the ranks this year and inspiring copycat behavior from some competitors (looking at you, Instagram and TikTok). Thanks to some new data from Comscore and Sensor Tower, here are some numbers on its growth and audience.
Global Audience and Engagement
There have been more than 53 million worldwide installs of BeReal this year across the App Store and Google Play, according to data from Sensor Tower Store Intelligence. While the app was launched at the end of 2019, it has only seen significant growth this year, with installs growing each month so far through September. To wit, the 14.7 million installs in September, a 20% hike over August’s 12.3 million, represent more than one-quarter of the year’s total to-date.
So far, the app isn’t generating the same rate of engagement from its users as other popular social media platforms. During Q3, Sensor Tower reports that 9% of BeReal’s global Android installs opened the app every day. For context, a previous Sensor Tower analysis of Q2 data found that 39% of Instagram’s Android installs opened the app each day, as did 29% of TikTok’s installs. So BeReal has some ways to go before it can lay claim to that kind of engagement.
Still, Sensor Tower notes that the app is growing its monthly active users (MAU) rapidly. Compared to January, it’s worldwide MAUs in September were up 2,254%, with monthly usage rising in each month.
US Audience and Demographics
Sensor Tower notes that the US has been the top country in terms of BeReal’s new installs, comprising a majority in each month since March.
New data [download page] from Comscore tracks the app’s popularity in the US, finding that its US audience size grew each month from March (658,000 adult unique visitors) through August (2.15 million adult unique visitors), such that the August adult audience size was more than 3 times the size of the March figure. It’s important to note that this audience size is only for adults (18+) and so likely is a significant undercount as it does not include teens, with whom the app appears to be quite popular.
As is stands, 18-24-year-olds comprised 72% of BeReal’s adult audience in August. But it’s not just the age skew worth noting here. Instead, there’s another demographic group to take into account: women.
Indeed, women make up the majority of BeReal’s adult audience in the US, and increased in number by about 1 million between March and August.
Combining women and 18-24-year-olds gets to the crux of the adult user base in the US: women ages 18-24 represent two-thirds (66%) of BeReal’s adult audience in the US as of August.
In fact, worth noting is that while 18-24-year-olds are the biggest segment of the female BeReal audience, 25-34-year-olds hold that position for the male audience.
All told, the female 18-24 representation on BeReal is 11.85 times higher than this group’s share of the internet-using population. This index figure of 1185 is light years ahead of other popular apps, including Snapchat (index of 310), TikTok (250), Pinterest (246) and Instagram (203).
So for marketers looking to reach young adult women in the US, BeReal seems to be ready.
