What Is Threads? Meta's Text App in 2026, Explained

Threads is Meta’s text-based social media app, built by the Instagram team, for sharing short posts of up to 500 characters and replying to other people in public conversation threads. It launched on 5 July 2023, and most people sign in with their Instagram account.

Looking for a different kind of thread? Sewing thread, CPU threads and a thread of posts on X are covered under other meanings.

Threads isn’t new any more: it has grown from its July 2023 launch to 500 million monthly users, a milestone Meta announced in June 2026. This page skips the launch story, answers what people ask next, and dates every fact, because Threads changes fast.

Table of Contents

• What Is Threads in 2026? The Fact Box
• How Does the Threads App Work?
• How Is Threads Connected to Instagram?
• Threads vs X vs Bluesky: What’s Different?
• Is Threads Part of the Fediverse?
• What Has Changed on Threads Since Launch?
• Is Threads Worth It for Brands and Creators?
• What Else Can “Threads” Mean?
• Related Terms
• Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Threads in 2026? The Fact Box

In 2026, Threads is an established, ad-supported conversation app with 500 million monthly active users, a milestone Meta announced in June 2026.

Threads at a glance	As of 25 September 2026
Made by	Meta, built by the Instagram team
Launched	5 July 2023; in the EU since 14 December 2023
Users	500 million monthly active users (Meta, June 2026)
Post length	500 characters, plus an optional text attachment of up to 10,000
Photos and video	Carousels of up to 20 items; videos up to 5 minutes
Links and tags	Up to 5 links and one topic tag per post
Feeds	For You and Following, steerable with Dear Algo and Your Algo in a few English-speaking countries
Messaging	Its own inbox since July 2025; group chats of up to 50 people
Communities	Topic communities since October 2025, out of beta since June 2026
Live Chats	Real-time public chats around live events, since April 2026
Ads	Rolling out to all users worldwide since January 2026
Fediverse	Optional sharing via ActivityPub for public profiles, 18 and over
Account	Sign up with Instagram; delete Threads without deleting Instagram

The post, media, link and tag limits come from Meta’s Threads developer documentation. Everything else is dated in the changelog below.

It’s 500 characters, not 500 words, a slip some older guides still make. That’s roughly 80 words of plain English.

How Does the Threads App Work?

The Threads app is used for short public conversation: you post text, photos or video, people reply underneath, and your feed mixes accounts you follow with recommended posts. Meta’s launch announcement described an app “for sharing text updates and joining public conversations”, and that is still the core.

What you can post

• Text: 500 characters, plus an optional attachment of up to 10,000 that people read without leaving Threads (added in September 2025).
• Media, links and polls: photos, 5-minute videos, 20-item carousels, up to five links, and polls and GIFs since October 2023.
• One topic tag: Threads’ version of a hashtag, no # symbol needed. You only get one, so pick the topic you most want to be found for.
• Ghost posts: toggle the ghost icon and the post archives itself after 24 hours; replies go to your inbox, and only you see who liked it (Meta, October 2025).

Two feeds, and two ways to steer them

Threads has a For You feed of recommended posts and a Following feed, and since 2026 you can steer the recommendations.

• Dear Algo (February 2026): a public post that starts “Dear Algo”, as in Meta’s example “Dear Algo, show me more posts about podcasts”, adjusts your feed for three days, and others can repost your request to apply it to theirs. It launched in the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
• Your Algo (June 2026): the private version, with topic settings that last one, three or seven days, rolling out in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Replies, messages, Communities and Live Chats

Replies are the point of Threads, and most features added since 2025 push people into conversation. You can limit who replies and, since October 2025, approve replies before they appear. Threads got its own DMs in July 2025, replacing a hand-off to Instagram’s inbox, then added message requests and group chats of up to 50 people in September and October.

Communities launched in October 2025 with more than 100 topics, such as the NBA, TV and K-pop, and left beta in June 2026 with a Communities Hub. Live Chats, added in April 2026, are real-time public group chats during live events, starting in the NBA community during the Playoffs, with up to 150 active participants per chat, according to TechCrunch.

How Is Threads Connected to Instagram?

Threads is a separate app that borrows your Instagram identity: you log in with your Instagram account, and by default your username, display name and profile photo carry over. That’s why people call it IG Threads or Instagram Threads, even though it has its own posts, feed, inbox and followers.

• Following: when you join, you can choose to follow the same accounts you follow on Instagram.
• Audience: it isn’t a copy of Instagram. In July 2025 Meta said more than a third of daily Threads users with connections follow mostly different accounts there than on Instagram.
• Messages: Threads DMs have lived in Threads, not your Instagram inbox, since July 2025.
• Deleting: at launch, deleting a Threads profile meant deleting Instagram too. Since December 2023 you can deactivate or delete Threads on its own.
• Crossover: Threads posts can appear on Instagram and Facebook (you can opt out), and since February 2026 you can share one straight to your Instagram Story.

Can you use Threads without Instagram? Instagram is the standard way in, but Meta has tested Threads-only accounts and, in Europe, Facebook login since mid-2025, so check the sign-up screen in your country.

Threads vs X vs Bluesky: What’s Different?

Threads, X and Bluesky all run on short public posts, replies, reposts and quotes; they differ in post length, how open the network is, and where each audience reads.

The three size figures measure different things, so don’t rank them. The one like-for-like comparison is Similarweb’s: in early January 2026, Threads averaged 141.5 million daily users on iOS and Android against X’s 125 million, as TechCrunch reported. X kept a huge lead on the web, with 145.4 million daily web visits to Threads’ 8.5 million, and Similarweb found X still ahead in the US, though the gap was narrowing.

Bluesky is smaller, though by its own count it grew from 13 million to more than 43 million users between October 2024 and March 2026.

Is Threads Part of the Fediverse?

Only if you opt in. Threads can share your posts to the fediverse, a network of independent servers such as Mastodon that talk to each other through an open protocol called ActivityPub. Each server has its own users, content and rules, but people on one can follow and reply to people on another.

1. Who can turn it on: people aged 18 or over with a public profile. It opened as a beta in March 2024 in the US, Canada and Japan, then expanded to most countries outside the European region by that June.
2. What others see: your posts appear on servers such as Mastodon, where people can follow you, like and reply. Since late 2024 you can follow fediverse accounts back.
3. What Threads added in June 2025: a newest-first feed of fediverse accounts you follow, and search by full fediverse handle.
4. What stays behind: polls and posts with reply controls aren’t shared to the fediverse.

In its June 2025 update, Meta said Threads had interacted with more than 75% of fediverse servers in the year since sharing launched. For most brands it’s a bonus, not a strategy: turn it on if your profile is public and you’d like Mastodon users to follow you too. Bluesky runs on a different open protocol, the AT Protocol.

What Has Changed on Threads Since Launch?

Most of what separates today’s Threads from the 2023 launch version arrived between July 2025 and June 2026: its own inbox, long text attachments, Communities, ghost posts, worldwide ads, Dear Algo and Live Chats.

If you wrote Threads off in 2023: the launch rush faded within weeks, then it grew steadily, reaching 500 million monthly users in June 2026, up from 400 million ten months earlier.

Is Threads Worth It for Brands and Creators?

For most brands and creators already on Instagram, Threads is worth trying: it reaches 500 million monthly users, it runs on short text rather than produced video, and your Instagram profile gives you a head start. It’s a weaker bet if your buyers mostly read on a desktop or nobody on your team has time to reply.

We publish to Threads for the people who use Outfeed AI, and this is how we’d weigh it.

Reasons to post there:

• The audience is big and mobile, with more daily mobile users than X in Similarweb’s January 2026 estimate.
• You don’t start from zero. Instagram followers can carry their follow over when they join, yet Meta says more than a third of daily users with connections follow mostly different accounts there, so you also reach new people.
• Topics are explicit. One topic tag per post, Communities and Dear Algo requests mean people tell Threads what they want, so an account with one clear subject is easier to match.
• Links are welcome: up to five per post, and Meta pitched text attachments partly as a way to point readers to your work elsewhere.
• There’s a paid lane: Threads ads run from Meta’s ad tools alongside Facebook and Instagram campaigns.

Reasons to hold back:

• Desktop reach still favors X, which Similarweb put far ahead on the web and still ahead in the US.
• It’s a conversation feed. From reply approvals to Live Chats, the features added in 2025 and 2026 are built around live conversation. If you can’t reply, expect less.
• Benchmarks are thin. When we built our engagement tools, we found no credible published engagement benchmark for Threads, so measure against your own trend.

From the publishing side, Outfeed AI posts to Threads through Meta’s official Threads API, which also answers whether Threads posts can be scheduled: yes, through tools built on that API, Outfeed AI included. Before anything goes out, it checks each Threads draft against the 500-character limit and stops carousels over 20 items, the same rules the API enforces. Ghost posts and Live Chats stay in the Threads app.

If you decide to post, start with the best time to post on Threads, a day-by-day table with its sources. And if you already write for Instagram, X or LinkedIn, Outfeed AI drafts each network’s version of the same idea from one chat message and previews each one before it’s published.

What Else Can “Threads” Mean?

Outside Meta’s app, a thread is sewing yarn, a chain of connected posts, or a unit of work inside a computer, and “threads” is also slang for clothes.

• Sewing thread: “a fine cord of flax, cotton, or other fibrous material spun out to considerable length”, in Dictionary.com’s definition.
• Clothes: Dictionary.com lists threads as slang for clothes, as in “nice threads”.
• A thread of posts: a series of posts and replies on one subject, in a forum, an email chain or on X, where it usually means one person’s numbered chain of posts. “I posted a thread” has nothing to do with the Threads app.
• Computing: a thread is the smallest sequence of programmed instructions that a scheduler can manage on its own. A processor sold as “8 cores, 16 threads” runs 16 threads at once.
• Instagram’s earlier Threads: Threads from Instagram was a close-friends messaging app launched in 2019. Instagram shut it down in December 2021, as 9to5Mac reported, and it’s unrelated to today’s app.

The quick test: a capital T, “on Threads” or an @handle points to the app; a lowercase “thread” almost never does.

Related Terms

• Repost: sharing someone else’s post with your followers. Threads, X and Bluesky all have one, and on X it replaced the retweet, as our guide to what RT means explains. Instagram now has its own, covered in what Repost on Instagram does.
• Quote: a repost with your own words above the original.

For more definitions, browse the Outfeed AI social media glossary.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need an Instagram account to use Threads?

Usually, yes. Threads was built on Instagram accounts: you sign up by logging in with Instagram, and your username carries over by default. Since mid-2025 Meta has tested Threads-only accounts and, in Europe, logging in with Facebook, so the options you see depend on where you live.

Can I delete my Threads account without deleting Instagram?

Yes. Since December 2023 you can deactivate or delete your Threads profile on its own, and your Instagram account stays as it is. When Threads launched in July 2023, deleting a Threads profile meant deleting the Instagram account attached to it.

Is Threads connected to Mastodon and the fediverse?

Only if you opt in. People aged 18 or over with a public profile can turn on fediverse sharing, which uses the ActivityPub protocol to show their posts on Mastodon and other servers, where people can follow, like and reply. As of Meta’s June 2025 update, it was not offered in the European region.

How many characters can a Threads post have?

500 characters, not 500 words. Since September 2025 you can also attach up to 10,000 characters of extra text, which people read without leaving Threads. For comparison, X allows 280 characters without Premium, and Bluesky allows 300.

Does Threads have ads?

Yes. Threads began testing ads in the US and Japan in early 2025, and in January 2026 Meta started rolling them out to all users worldwide. Advertisers buy them in Meta’s ad tools alongside Facebook and Instagram campaigns, as image, video and carousel ads.