Instagram reached 1 billion monthly active users in 2018.
The milestone was announced in June 2018, when Instagram said that at least 1 billion people used the service each month. The announcement came alongside the launch of IGTV, Instagram’s long-form vertical-video product, making the user milestone part of a major expansion beyond its original photo-sharing identity.
Instagram’s growth had accelerated sharply during the years after Facebook acquired the company in 2012. It passed 100 million monthly users in 2013, reached 500 million in 2016, and reported 800 million monthly active users in September 2017. Reaching 1 billion in 2018 meant the service had added roughly 200 million monthly users in less than a year.
The figure refers to monthly active users, not daily users, registered accounts, or the number of people online at one moment. That distinction matters because social platforms often publish several different audience measures. Another common mix-up is assigning the milestone to 2019 or 2020; those years followed the June 2018 announcement.