Number of monthly users Firefox drops below 200 million

The number of monthly users of the desktop version of Firefox has fallen below 200 million for the first time in years. This is according to figures from Mozilla. The figures show a dip every year in the summer, but the number of users seems to be falling structurally.

Firefox had on desktop according to Mozilla’s dashboard last week 196,327,000 users who open the browser at least once a month. That was around 209,000,000 this week exactly one year ago, while that number was still around 222,000,000 two years ago. That is a decrease of between 6 and 7 percent per year.

The drop is not seen in other areas, such as how long users have the browser open in a day and how many new profiles users create per day. Most installations are on Windows: 62 percent of users have Windows 10, another 20 percent have Windows 7 and 4.2 percent have Windows 8.1. Linux totals at 3.2 percent, behind macOS at 7.2 percent.

The numbers show a downward trend every summer due to the holiday period, Mozilla says on the explanation page. As a result, it is likely that the number of users will exceed 200 million again next month.

Mozilla has not yet commented on the numbers. The numbers come from a 10 percent sample of Firefox users each week, Mozilla says. The browser builder has been publishing the figures since 2018.