The top apps for engagement retention: The Times and The Sunday Times, Daily Mail and Mail+
The Daily Mail and The Times have the most engaged app users of any newsbrand in the UK, according to data from Ipsos iris.
But in terms of overall popularity, BBC News remains the biggest app in the UK with 15 million users followed by Apple News on 14 million.
Google’s smartphone-based aggregation tool Discover may well be the most popular news app in the UK but does not appear in the Ipsos ranking because it is part of the suite of Google products embedded in most mobile devices (not a separate app). Samsung News, the default news app on Samsung devices since April 2025, does not yet appear in Ipsos Iris data.
Daily Mail’s newspaper editions app, Mail+, recorded the most average minutes spent per person (758 minutes) followed by The Times and Sunday Times (539 minutes).
The Times and The Sunday Times app saw a redesign and relaunch in April 2025.
Speaking to Press Gazette in December, Times head of digital Edward Roussel said the relaunched app was “a major step forward in terms of defining our digital future”, and included a re-engineered homepage, new Life & Style and Culture sections and new game Quizle.
Ranking third in average minutes spent per person was the Daily Mail (formerly Mail Online) news app at 392 minutes.
Mail+ also saw the highest month-on-month increase of 86% for total minutes (167.8 million), and 58% increase year on year.
The Daily Mail has also surpassed The Telegraph in terms of audience usage since Press Gazette’s last annual ranking, with the latter now ranking fifth among the top 30 with 360 minutes per month on average (down 18% year on year).
AOL’s News Mail & Video app overtook Sky News to take seventh place when ranked by total minutes.
The American brand’s app recorded 359 million minutes in November after a year-on-year dip of 5%, while Sky News (313.1 million minutes) fared worse with a drop of 28%.
Year-on-year engagement dropped the most for CNN, down by 73% to 1.6 million total minutes, followed by Samsung’s previous news app Upday News – down 53% to 3.5 million minutes.
Substack Reader saw the highest year-on-year total minutes growth, more than doubling its engagement by 153% to 39.3 million minutes spent with the app.
This was followed by GB News (up 94% year on year to 10 million minutes) and The New York Times Crossword, up 68% to 299.4 million minutes.
[Read more: How games are powering online subscriptions at The New York Times]
Mail+ saw the third biggest year-on-year boost in total minutes, up 58% to 167.8 million. On a month-on-month basis, it saw the biggest increase by 86%.
Product reviews newsbrand Which? followed this with a month-on-month increase of 75% to 2.6 million total minutes.
BBC News saw the most amount of minutes spent with its app overall, recording 1.6 billion minutes – down 5% year on year. This was followed by Apple News (0% change year on year to 1.2 billion minutes) and Daily Mail.
BBC News has remained bigger than Apple News in the UK in the year since Press Gazette’s last UK news apps ranking a year ago.
The broadcaster’s app has an audience of 15.1 million people aged 15-plus, up 3% year on year and down 1% month on month, and reaches 28.8% of the UK online population.
Apple News’s monthly audience of 14.1 million was stable year on year (0%) and fell 2% month on month.
Apple News is a free aggregator that comes installed as default on all Apple devices such as iPhones, with most major news organisations making their content available through the app where it is curated by editors.
CNN saw the biggest fall year on year in audience, down 36% to an audience of 90,800.
Trinity Mirror’s local news app In Your Area saw the third biggest drop in audience, down 18% to 484,000.
The biggest growth in audience was at The Sun, with its app more than doubling its audience figures year on year – up 101% to 411,000.
It ranked as the 21st biggest app in Press Gazette’s last ranking in 2024, but climbed to 14th position in November 2025.
The app is set to relaunch this year with “new features that offer a better user experience”, editor-in-chief Victoria Newton recently told Press Gazette.
Following The Sun’s year-on-year growth was Substack Reader, up 84% to an audience of 1.1 million. It also saw a month-on-month increase of 10%.
Personal finance brand Money Saving Expert overtook Sky News by one spot since Press Gazette’s last annual ranking and is now third among the 30 biggest news apps in the UK. It saw the third biggest year-on-year growth in audience, up 43% to 3.4 million.
Sky Sports saw year-on-year growth of 53% to an audience of 2.63 million people, narrowing the gap between itself and BBC Sport.
The majority of sports apps in the top 13 ranking saw year-on-year growth – live scores app FotMob increased by 60% year on year to 858,000 people followed by ITV7 Racing (up 23% to 203,000).
Fifa Soccer (audience of 129,000) and One Football (287,000) both fell year on year by more than a quarter, down 36% and 29% respectively.
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