Who has the most followers on X (Twitter)?
Elon Musk. By a long way.
He had 241.5 million on 26 October 2026. That's twice as many as Barack Obama, in second place.
I first wrote this page in January 2016, as a race: who would get to 100 million first?
That race is long over. (Katy Perry won it)
Who has the most followers on X right now?
Elon Musk: 241.5 million on 26 October 2026.
Only five accounts have more than 100 million:
And here's the whole top 10:
| # | Account | Followers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Elon Musk (@elonmusk) | 241.5M |
| 2 | Barack Obama (@BarackObama) | 118.8M |
| 3 | Cristiano Ronaldo (@Cristiano) | 114.5M |
| 4 | Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump) | 111.8M |
| 5 | Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) | 107.0M |
| 6 | Rihanna (@rihanna) | 98.7M |
| 7 | NASA (@NASA) | 92.3M |
| 8 | Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) | 91.8M |
| 9 | Katy Perry (@katyperry) | 90.0M |
| 10 | Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) | 84.0M |
These are the counts in our own list of famous accounts on X, read on 26 October 2026.
(Wikipedia's list of 1 November agrees, to within 0.1 million)
Counts move every day.
Want today's number? Open the account on X. You'll see it on the profile, shortened, like 241.5M Followers.
(On a computer, point at it with your mouse to see every digit)
Who's the most followed woman, sports star and politician?
- Most followed woman: Rihanna, 98.7 million.
- Most followed sports star: Cristiano Ronaldo, 114.5 million.
- Most followed politician: Barack Obama, 118.8 million.
- Most followed account that isn't a person: NASA, 92.3 million.
(Yes, a space agency beats every pop star except Rihanna 🚀)
Obama, Trump and Modi are the only politicians over 100 million.
Who was first to 100 million followers?
Katy Perry, on 16 June 2017.
She was the favorite in my 2016 race (it's further down this page), and she won it.
She's gone down since. On 26 October 2026 she had 90.0 million, in ninth place.
And she's not alone. Rihanna and Justin Bieber both passed 100 million too...
...and both fell back below it.
So 100 million isn't a finish line. You can drop back below it.
200 million? Elon Musk got there first, on 3 October 2024.
How has the top changed since 2016?
A lot.
In January 2016 Katy Perry was number one, with about 80 million.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump weren't even in the top 100.
Today Musk has three times her 2016 count:
Here's the 2016 top 4, and the two big new names:
| Account | Jan 2016 | Oct 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Katy Perry | about 80M | 90.0M |
| Justin Bieber | about 72M | 91.8M |
| Taylor Swift | about 68M | 84.0M |
| Barack Obama | about 68M | 118.8M |
| Elon Musk | not in the top 100 | 241.5M |
| Donald Trump | not in the top 100 | 111.8M |
The bar to get in has more than doubled, too.
In January 2016, about 11 million followers made the top 100. On 26 October 2026, number 100 in our list had 23.8 million.
India has climbed too. My 2016 top 100 had 6 Indian accounts. Now Narendra Modi is 5th and Virat Kohli 12th.
Who had the most followers before Elon Musk?
Barack Obama, from August 2019 until Musk passed him in March 2023.
Here's everyone who has held number one since April 2009, and from when:
- CNN Breaking News, April 2009
- Ashton Kutcher, April 2009 (the first to 1 million)
- Britney Spears, May 2010
- Lady Gaga, August 2010
- Justin Bieber, January 2013
- Katy Perry, November 2013
- Barack Obama, August 2019
- Elon Musk, March 2023
Katy Perry held it longest: almost 6 years.
Musk took it in March 2023, five months after he bought Twitter.
(In February 2023, two news sites, The Guardian and Platformer, reported that Twitter changed its code to show his posts to more people)
Why are big accounts losing followers?
We haven't found anyone who knows for sure.
But a count drops when people unfollow, when followers leave X, and when X locks or removes fake accounts.
And lots of the biggest accounts are shrinking.
Of the 2024 top 10, only Musk, Trump, Modi and Ronaldo have grown since.
X removes fake and spam accounts in big clean-ups. In April 2026, X's head of product said it was shutting down 208 bots a minute.
(Bought followers are often fake, so they can go in these clean-ups too. Here's the truth about buying Twitter followers)
So if your own count drops, you're not alone. 😉
Here's why you might be losing followers on X.
Why do the biggest keep getting bigger?
Partly fame. And X's own code may help.
In 2016 I called it the amplification effect: the biggest get listed more, and new users find them first.
X's code still has something like it.
For You, the feed X picks for you, takes some posts from a list of popular posts.
Only the very biggest accounts can get on that list.
X's code sets the cut-off at the top 1 in 20,000 of the accounts that posted in the last 7 days, by followers.
(You can see it in X's code, written as 0.005%. X can change it)
That doesn't push their posts to everyone. It just gives them a chance to show up in your feed, even if you don't follow them.
But fame off X counts for more.
Want an example? Taylor Swift's profile shows just 892 posts.
And 84 million people follow her.
So this list tells you who's famous. Not how to grow.
(Step one: be a pop star. Step two: there is no step two)
For the rest of us, here's how to get more followers on X.
The race to 100 million (2016)
This is the page as I wrote it in January 2016. The numbers are from the end of 2015.
To mark Twitter's 10 year anniversary I decided to create an infographic showing the users with the most twitter followers. It shows the number of followers each user had every year since joining the service. (Most joined between 2009 and 2010, with a handful joining earlier). I have not shown other users that were in the top 100 in previous years because the chart would become too crowded. If you would like to start chasing these users by getting some free twitter followers using our service then check us out!
.@katyperry still dominating twitter, but @taylorswift13 slowly catching her twiends.com/learn/most-…
At the moment it looks like Katy Perry is the firm favorite to hit 100 million followers first, having added 17.4 million followers in 2015. That gain was only slightly exceeded by Taylor Swift's gain of 18.7 million followers during the same period. Nine accounts made an appearance in the list for the first time. These included three Indian accounts, reflecting the growing popularity of Twitter in India. In terms of representation, this places India third (with 6 users), the UK second (with 11 users), and the USA first (with 66 users). Musicians, actors and TV personalities still dominate.
It took about two weeks to research the historic follower counts for each of the top 100 users. We only started tracking this data about two years ago on twiends, so I had to go and do some detective work to get the earlier years.
In most cases I was able to get very accurate counts for each user on the 31st of December every year. Most of this is available in cached copies of the user profile pages. I also referenced cached and current versions of the top user lists published by Twitaholic and Twitter Counter. In some instances I needed to take readings close to that date and then model the growth trajectories during that period. Then it was just a case of some fancy Excel to create the various charts.
(Both of those sites are gone now)
It's evident that being in the top 10 has an 'amplification effect', with these accounts far outpacing the rest of the pack in recent years. This is to be expected, as these accounts tend to get listed more often, and are usually discovered by new users first. They often have a large quantity of inactive followers making up their follower-base because of this, but they generally have the most active followers too.
Want to embed this on your website?
Feel free to embed this graphic on your website. All I ask is that you link back to this page so that your readers can find the most up-to-date version. Below is some html that does this for you: