⚡ Social Media Platforms in South Africa

Social media is online platforms where people can create and share content, connect with others through likes, comments, and messages, and build social communities.

South Africa is an African country with a population of over 60 million people.

According to our data, social media platforms are detected on 57.2% of websites from South Africa.

Statistics based on 18K+ analyzed websites. About this data

⭐ Most Popular in 2026

The following chart shows the top social media platforms in South Africa in 2026, based on market share.

The most popular is Facebook with an impressive share of 86.4%, followed by Instagram with 61.4% and X with 47.6%.

Facebook 86.4%
Instagram 61.4%
X 47.6%
LinkedIn 37.2%
WhatsApp 11.2%
TikTok 8.2%
Pinterest 2.4%
SoundCloud 0.8%
WeChat 0.5%
Telegram 0.5%
Flickr 0.5%
Behance 0.4%
Linktree 0.4%
Threads 0.3%
Tumblr 0.3%

🚀 Highlights

Here is a list of the top platforms that are more popular in South Africa than worldwide.
Differences between global and country rankings are shown in parentheses.

8. SoundCloud ^(-4)
9. WeChat ^(-8)
12. Behance ^(-12)
13. Linktree ^(-13)
14. Threads ^(-4)
15. Tumblr ^(-1)
18. QQ ^(-3)
20. Mastodon ^(-5)
21. Substack ^(-9)
23. Weibo ^(-6)

✨ Best Social Media Platforms

Below is a more detailed list of the top 25 of the 52 social media platforms used on sites from South Africa, ranked by their market share.

Rank	Name	Market share
1	Facebook Menlo Park, California, United States A social media platform owned by Meta. Free	86.4%
2	Instagram Menlo Park, California, United States A photo and video sharing social media platform owned by Meta Platforms. Free	61.4%
3	X Bastrop, Texas, United States A social media platform that allows users to post short messages, images, and videos. Free$3+/month	47.6%
4	LinkedIn Mountain View, California, United States A business and employment-focused social media platform that enables professionals to network, search for jobs, share content, and engage with companies. Free$29.99+/month	37.2%
5	WhatsApp Menlo Park, California, United States An instant messaging and Voice over IP service owned by Meta. Free	11.2%
6	TikTok Haidian, Beijing, China A Chinese social media platform focused on short-form videos. Free	8.2%
7	Pinterest San Francisco, California, United States A visual discovery and social media platform for sharing and organizing images and videos using Pins, which are visual bookmarks linked to external content and grouped into themed boards. Free	2.4%
8	SoundCloud Berlin, Germany An online music streaming and distribution platform that allows musicians upload, share, and monetize audio tracks, while listeners discover and engage with content. Free$4.99+/month	0.8%
9	WeChat Shenzhen, China A Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app that has evolved into a super-app combining communication, commerce, and everyday services. Free	0.5%
10	Telegram Dubai, United Arab Emirates A cloud-based messaging app for mobile and desktop platforms focused on security, speed, and privacy. Free$$$	0.5%
11	Flickr Mountain View, California, United States A photo-sharing social network and image hosting service with free storage for up to 1,000 photos. Free$11/month	0.5%
12	Behance San Jose, California, United States A platform for creative professionals around the world to showcase their own work and to discover the creative work of others. Free$9.99+/month	0.4%
13	Linktree Melbourne, Victoria, Australia A freemium social media landing page service that lets users create a single customizable page of links to all their social profiles and websites from one shareable URL. Free$5+/month	0.4%
14	Threads Menlo Park, California, United States A microblogging and social media platform from Meta designed for sharing text updates and participating in public conversations. Free	0.3%
15	Tumblr San Francisco, California, United States A blogging and social media platform currently owned by Automattic. Free$6.99/month	0.3%
16	Bluesky Seattle, Washington, United States A social network designed to operate without control by a single company, built as a reference implementation of the AT Protocol for distributed social networks. Free	0.2%
17	Discord San Francisco, California, United States An instant messaging and VoIP social platform that allows users to communicate via text chat, voice, and video. Free$2.99+	0.2%
18	QQ Shenzhen, China A Chinese instant messaging software platform. Free	0.2%
19	Reddit San Francisco, California, United States A social news aggregation, content rating, and forum social network where content is promoted by members ("redditors") through voting. Free$5.99/month	0.1%
20	Mastodon Berlin, Germany A decentralized social network running on independent servers and powered by Mastodon open-source software. Free	0.1%
21	Substack San Francisco, California, United States An online publishing and social platform for writers and journalists that enables creating subscription-based newsletters, podcasts, and multimedia content delivered directly to subscribers. Free$$$	0.1%
22	VK Moscow, Russia A Russian social media and social networking service that allows users to communicate, share content, and join online communities. Free	0.07%
23	Weibo Beijing, China A Chinese microblogging website. Free	0.07%
24	Medium San Francisco, California, United States An online publishing platform that allows writers to share articles, stories, and ideas with a built-in audience and content discovery system. $5+/month	0.06%
25	Line Tokyo, Japan A Japanese instant messaging and social networking app often described as a super-app because it integrates services such as a digital wallet, news feed, digital comics, media streaming, and shopping. Free	0.06%

👉 See Also

🌎 Social Media in other countries

🗃️ About This Data

We evaluate the popularity of technologies based on the number of websites where we detect their usage.
Technologies without a detectable web footprint, and those we do not track, are not reflected in the calculated market share.
This report is based on the analysis of 18,243 websites from South Africa.
We currently track the presence of 87 social media platforms across the web.
Of these, 52 were detected on websites from South Africa.
Statistics were last calculated on May 6, 2026.
For more details, see our methodology and disclaimer.