Valve hasn't shared official Steam user figures for several years, but fresh analysis suggests the biggest store in PC gaming is now hovering around 200 million monthly active users (MAU). If accurate, that would make the platform more than 50% larger than the entire PlayStation ecosystem.
Breaking Down the Math
This estimate comes from the latest GameDiscoverCo newsletter, which uses a combination of alternate data sources and Valve's own disclosures. A key piece of the puzzle is Valve’s Digital Services Act notice, which confirmed that Steam had an average of 31.1 million monthly active recipients in the EU as of the second half of 2025.
By using this EU figure as a baseline and cross-referencing it with Steam’s public bandwidth charts—which track data usage across different regions—analysts were able to estimate the store's total global demographic. While bandwidth usage isn't a perfect proxy for user counts, the math aligns to suggest a figure of roughly 198 million MAU for late 2025, implying the platform has likely crossed the 200 million threshold in 2026.
Valve’s own historical data provides further context. In 2021, the company officially reported 132 million MAU. By looking at the growth rate of concurrent users—which Valve notes has been climbing by about 3.4 million each year since hitting 25 million five years ago—we can approximate current growth. Even using more conservative estimates, the data consistently points toward a range between 190 million and 220 million users.
Steam vs. PlayStation
The scale of these numbers becomes clear when compared to console competition. A recently translated report from Sony confirms that PlayStation had 125 million monthly active users as of March 2026. This figure is lower than what Steam reported back in 2021.
While this is an exercise in approximating figures rather than reading internal server logs, the growth of PC gaming relative to console platforms is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Sony, meanwhile, appears to be looking beyond the traditional living room model, shifting focus toward selling hardware like monitors and speakers to broaden its reach.
Ultimately, while we don't have the exact street address for these figures, the data suggests we are at least in the right zip code. Regardless of the exact total, Steam’s dominance as the primary storefront for PC gaming remains unmatched by current console metrics.