Pinterest reported earnings Friday April 24 and the numbers told a story most people are not paying attention to. Monthly active users hit 542 million in Q1 2026, up 8.4 percent year over year, with U.S. active users climbing 4.1 percent to 102 million. Revenue came in at 967 million dollars, up 21 percent year over year, with the international segment growing 41 percent. Average revenue per user climbed to 1.84 dollars globally, which is a low number compared to Meta but represents the largest single quarter expansion in Pinterest's history. The stock jumped 14 percent on the print and is up 38 percent year to date.
The number that matters more than the headline figure is the shopping integration data. Pinterest now reports that 47 percent of weekly active users perform at least one shopping action per week, defined as a click through to a product page, a save to a shopping board, or a price drop alert subscription. That number was 28 percent two years ago. The platform has rebuilt itself around the visual shopping use case in a way that Instagram tried to do with the Shop tab and largely abandoned in 2024. Pinterest never abandoned the project. They kept building in the background.
The Amazon partnership that closed in March 2024 is the engine driving most of this. Amazon products now appear natively in Pinterest feeds with full pricing, Prime eligibility, and one tap purchase that does not leave the Pinterest app. The Prime population on Pinterest skews older and more affluent than Instagram or TikTok shoppers, with median household income at 92 thousand dollars and 64 percent of weekly shoppers in the 28 to 54 age range. That demographic is the most attractive paid social audience in the market and Pinterest is the only major platform serving it at scale outside of YouTube.
Creators have started to notice. Pinterest's creator program added 31,000 verified creators in Q1, with average creator earnings of 4,200 dollars per month for top tier accounts. The economics work because the platform pays creators based on attributed sales rather than impressions or follower counts, which is a different model from Instagram's bonus payouts. A creator with 18,000 Pinterest followers in the home and lifestyle space can generate more affiliate revenue than the same creator with 180,000 Instagram followers, simply because the click through to purchase rate is roughly 9 times higher. Pinterest does not advertise these numbers heavily but the data is in the platform analytics for any creator who logs in.
The Idea Pins format that launched in 2021 evolved into Pinterest Reels last year and is now driving the bulk of the new user growth. The format runs 15 to 60 seconds, autoplays in the home feed, and surfaces shoppable products in the lower third of the video. The interesting design choice is that the videos do not loop endlessly. Each video plays once, then the feed advances. That single decision keeps session length in the 22 to 38 minute range rather than the multi hour scroll sessions that define TikTok and Instagram Reels. Pinterest is selling the lack of doomscroll as a feature rather than a bug.
The competitive picture matters too. Threads has 141.5 million monthly users but flat engagement. X has 125 million U.S. users with declining advertiser confidence. Bluesky is at 41 million users but the audience skews tech and political and the shopping use case has not formed there. Substack Notes is climbing fast at 22 million but is text first. Pinterest sits in a unique position as the only large scale visual platform where the audience came specifically to shop and plan. That positioning is hard to replicate and is why advertisers are reallocating budget back into the platform after a quiet period from 2022 to 2024.
The brand side of the story is also worth watching. Wayfair, Target, Lowe's, and Etsy each increased Pinterest ad spend by more than 60 percent year over year in Q1. The interior design and fashion verticals are obvious. The less obvious vertical that has caught up is small kitchen appliances, where brands like Our Place, Caraway, and Great Jones are running entire product launches through Pinterest first before extending to Instagram. Caraway specifically reported that Pinterest accounts for 38 percent of its direct to consumer attributable revenue, which is the highest single channel share at the company.
For creators thinking about platform diversification in 2026, Pinterest belongs in the conversation in a way it did not three years ago. The follower counts grow slower than TikTok or Instagram. The content workflow takes more upfront effort because each pin needs a strong visual and a clear product link. The payoff shows up in the long tail. A pin from 2023 still generates meaningful traffic in 2026, which is the opposite of how the algorithmic feeds on other platforms work. That permanence is what is pulling creators and brands back to a platform almost everyone wrote off two years ago.