Number of monthly Firefox users 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 decreasing structurally.

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

The decline 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 Windows 7, and 4.2 percent Windows 8.1. Linux comes in at 3.2 percent in total, behind macOS at 7.2 percent.

The numbers show a downward trend each summer due to the holiday season, Mozilla says on the explanation page. It is therefore obvious that the number of users will again exceed 200 million in the coming month.

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