The Truth About Snapchat's Active Users (The Numbers The Company Doesn't Want You To See)

More than 400 million messages are received on Snapchat every day.

That's a stat the company likes to use to show off how popular it is without revealing exactly how many people actively use the app.

Business Insider has gotten a little more color on the numbers Snapchat doesn't want you to see.

One source with insight into the company's figures told us the following:

• Snapchat has about 60 million total installs, making it larger than Instagram when it sold to Facebook for $1 billion.
• Of those 60 million installs, Snapchat has about 30 million monthly active users.
• 55% of monthly active users use Snapchat daily

We checked with another source who wouldn't give exact numbers, but said the absolute figures (60 million installs and 30 million monthly active users) are "much too low."

From that, we can infer that Snapchat is indeed a monster app with at bare minimum 60 million installs and 30 million monthly active users. That makes its multi-billion-dollar valuation seem reasonable.

It doesn't make money yet, but we hear it's looking at popular apps in China like WeChat to monetize. It will likely go the route of charging users for extra items, like stickers and emoticons, before showing you ads.

Even in Snapchat's early days, engagement was through the roof. In July 2011, just days after Snapchat launched, its CEO Evan Spiegel texted a friend:

"This thing is a rocketship...Our 7-day retention is 60% right now (target is 30%) and we're growing."

Snapchat could not be reached for comment.