How to post on Bluesky, and whether it is worth your time
Bluesky caps video at three minutes and has roughly 3 million daily active users to Threads' 147 million. Small, but the discovery mechanics are genuinely different.
8 minute read
What Bluesky actually is, underneath the app
Bluesky looks like a text-first feed with images and short video, but the part that makes it behave differently is the AT Protocol underneath. Your posts live on a personal data server rather than inside one company's database, and your account is identified by a decentralised identifier that is separate from whoever hosts you. Your handle is a DNS name. The practical consequence, per Bluesky's own developer documentation, is account portability: you can move hosting providers and keep your posts, your follows and your followers. Nothing about that changes how you write a post. It changes what happens if you ever fall out with the platform, which is a longer-term consideration than most social decisions get.
The size question, answered with real numbers
Registered accounts and active users are very different figures on Bluesky, and most breathless coverage quotes the first. TechCrunch, citing Bluesky's public stats in August 2026, put registrations at nearly 46 million. Similarweb's measurement of actual usage tells a harder story: 10.4 million monthly active users worldwide in June 2026, down 27.2% year on year, and around 3 million daily actives in July, down 25.6%. Against the late-2024 peak of roughly 22.1 million average monthly actives in the fourth quarter, the app has lost about half its active base. Threads, on the same Similarweb measurement, was at 147 million daily actives in July 2026 and growing 21.3%.
The part the size figure does not capture
A smaller audience is not automatically a worse one, and the same TechCrunch piece gives a reason to look twice. Bluesky's stickiness — daily actives as a share of monthly actives — sits at roughly 29%, which is comparable to Threads. The people who stayed are using it properly rather than drifting past. There is no advertising system competing with your post for feed space, and no paid tier that reorders replies. If your audience is journalists, developers, academics, or people who left X on principle, a few thousand engaged followers on Bluesky can be worth more than a much larger passive following elsewhere. If your audience is general consumers or a younger short-video crowd, they are not there in numbers.
Three setup steps that decide how findable you are
First, claim a domain handle. Every account starts as something.bsky.social, which reads as provisional and is easy to impersonate. Bluesky lets you set your handle to a domain you control by requesting a token in the app, adding it as a DNS TXT record at your registrar, and confirming in settings — fifteen minutes, and it functions as self-verification because nobody but the domain owner can do it. Second, pin custom feeds. These are user-built algorithms you subscribe to and switch between like channels, introduced in July 2023 and still the platform's distinguishing feature. Third, get into starter packs — curated invite lists that Bluesky's documentation says hold up to 150 people and three feeds. Everyone who uses a pack follows every account in it at once, which is the fastest growth mechanism on the platform.
Video on Bluesky: the real limits
Bluesky launched video in September 2024 at 60 seconds, with a per-account ceiling of 25 videos or 10GB per day, and support for .mp4, .mpeg, .webm and .mov. That length cap has since changed, which is why so much published advice is wrong. TechCrunch reported that app version 1.99, released on 10 March 2025, tripled the limit to three minutes. Three minutes is now the number to design against. One more requirement trips people up: Buffer's help documentation notes you must have a verified email on your Bluesky account before your first video will publish, and uploads are otherwise rejected without an obvious explanation. Bluesky has not published a per-file size cap, and third-party spec pages disagree about what it is, so keep exports lean.
Where video actually surfaces, and where it does not
Bluesky added a dedicated video tab to profiles and a swipeable trending-videos section in the Explore tab in early 2025, so there is somewhere for video to live beyond the timeline. What there is not is a TikTok-style recommendation engine pushing your clip to strangers at scale. The default Following feed is chronological; Discover is algorithmic but modest; most of your reach comes from reposts by accounts people already follow. Practically, that means a Bluesky clip needs to be interesting to the people who already know you rather than optimised for a cold-start algorithm. Vertical works, but landscape and square are perfectly normal here in a way they are not on Reels. Do not assume your 9:16 exports are the right format by default.
Scheduling and crossposting without a separate workflow
Because the protocol is open, Bluesky got third-party tool support unusually fast. Buffer announced official Bluesky scheduling in July 2024 and now covers drafting, scheduling, threads of up to 25 sub-posts, and post-level analytics, with the same connection available on mobile. Hootsuite and SocialBee also publish Bluesky scheduling guides. One quirk worth knowing before you queue anything: Buffer's documentation states images must be under 1MB to publish to Bluesky, which is far tighter than any other platform and will silently fail an otherwise fine post. Treat Bluesky as one more destination in an existing queue rather than a separate habit — that is the only way it survives a busy month.
So is it worth it? A defensible answer
For most creators, Bluesky is a low-cost secondary channel, not a growth engine. Three million daily actives against 147 million on Threads sets a ceiling that no posting strategy overcomes. It earns its place when the marginal cost of posting there is close to zero, and when your specific audience is disproportionately present. That means claiming your domain handle, getting into a starter pack or two, and adding Bluesky to whatever queue already handles your other accounts. If you are already cutting a long recording into clips, adding a landscape or square version under three minutes costs one extra export — FrameOS can produce those alongside your vertical cuts, and you can try it on 300 credits for 3 days · no card. What does not work is treating Bluesky as a project of its own.
FAQ
How long can a Bluesky video be?
Three minutes. Bluesky launched video in September 2024 with a 60-second cap, and TechCrunch reported that app version 1.99 on 10 March 2025 raised it to three minutes. There is also a per-account ceiling of 25 videos or 10GB per day, and you need a verified email on the account before your first video will publish.
How many people actually use Bluesky?
Registrations were near 46 million in August 2026, but active usage is much smaller. Similarweb measured 10.4 million monthly active users in June 2026, down 27.2% year on year, and around 3 million daily actives in July. For comparison, Threads had 147 million daily actives on the same measurement.
Can you schedule Bluesky posts?
Yes. Buffer added official Bluesky support in July 2024 and handles scheduling, threads and analytics; Hootsuite and SocialBee also support it. Because the AT Protocol is open, third-party tooling arrived quickly. Watch the media limits — Buffer's documentation says images must be under 1MB or the post will not publish.
What is a Bluesky starter pack?
A curated invite list that holds up to 150 accounts and three custom feeds, introduced in June 2024. Anyone can build one. When someone uses a starter pack, they follow everyone in it at once, which makes inclusion in a well-shared pack the single fastest way for a new account in that niche to gain followers.
Sources
Related pages
Keep reading
More Creator Growth →Social media automation: what is safe and what gets you restricted
LinkedIn's user agreement bans bots that like, comment or re-share. X bans auto-DMing new followers. Both are fine with you scheduling every post you publish. The line is sharper than it looks.
8 minute readHow to manage multiple social accounts without mixing them up
The hard part is not the posting. It is access control, keeping the personal account out of the brand's mouth, and getting more than one account out of a single recording.
8 minute readHow to get more followers on Facebook
Organic Page reach fell from about 16% in 2012 to 1-2% in 2025, by Hootsuite's own numbers. Meta has also published exactly what it demotes. Both facts change the plan.
8 minute readTurn one long video into a week of posts
300 credits for 3 days · no card
Start free