Honor of Kings Revenue & Monthly Player Count Stats [2026]

Honor of Kings is the highest-grossing mobile game in history, and a decade after launch it is still pulling in tens of millions of players every month. Here is a full breakdown of its downloads, revenue, player counts, monetization, and user acquisition heading into 2026.

Key Stats for 2026

Data source: AppMagic.

Is Honor of Kings Still Popular in 2026?

Yes, but it is a mature game holding steady rather than a game still climbing. Monthly revenue actually hit a fresh high in early 2026, which tells you the spending base is as strong as ever.

Player numbers and download volume, on the other hand, sit well below their old peaks. Downloads spiked hard around the June 2024 global launch and have since cooled, while MAU last topped 100 million back in 2017 during the game’s domestic explosion in China.

What you are looking at now is a slow, controlled decline in audience size paired with rising spend per user. That is a very healthy place for a ten-year-old MOBA to be.

Data source: AppMagic. Current data uses the latest complete month available.

Game Overview

Data source: Wikipedia and Level Infinite.

How Many People Play Honor of Kings?

Honor of Kings is one of the most played mobile games on the planet, so its DAU and MAU numbers are massive.

Honor of Kings DAU & MAU Stats

Data source: AppMagic.

How Many Downloads Does Honor of Kings Have?

Honor of Kings is one of the most downloaded games ever, with 447 million all-time installs. The standout year was 2024, when the worldwide launch and a huge July install spike pushed the game past 76 million downloads in a single year.

Data source: AppMagic.

How Much Money Does Honor of Kings Make?

Honor of Kings has generated $14.5 billion in lifetime revenue, and its latest full year, 2025, brought in roughly $1.7 billion. That makes it the highest-grossing mobile game of all time, and one of the few titles that has stayed above the billion-dollar mark year after year for nearly a decade.

Honor of Kings Revenue Statistics (2015 – 2026)

Data source: AppMagic. Revenue reflects IAP (in-app purchase) data, net of platform fees and inclusive of taxes. It does not include ad revenue.

How Honor of Kings Makes Money

Honor of Kings is a free-to-play game monetized almost entirely through in-app purchases. There are no ads. Every dollar comes from players buying cosmetics, heroes, passes, and event items with real money.

Skins Are the Engine

Cosmetic hero skins are the single biggest revenue driver. The game runs a tiered rarity system, with Epic and Legendary skins priced through a paid token currency, and the most desirable limited-edition skins can pull in eye-watering single-day numbers. This is a game where one well-designed skin drop moves the monthly revenue needle.

Status and identity sell here. Players spend to stand out in a 5v5 match, not to win it, which keeps the monetization cosmetic-first and avoids the pay-to-win backlash that sinks other titles.

Honor Pass and Gacha

The seasonal Honor Pass battle pass runs on 90-day cycles with free and premium tracks. Token rebates on completion mean engaged players essentially recycle currency back into the system, which deepens the spending habit rather than feeling like a one-off cost.

Layered on top is a gacha draw system for premium skins, the classic mechanic for converting committed players into high spenders.

IP Collaborations and Whales

Limited-time IP collaborations, from Sanrio to anime and film tie-ins, drive spikes in spending by attaching scarcity and fandom to new cosmetics.

Combined with a meaningful whale population, this is what keeps Honor of Kings at the top of the top-grossing games charts. The monetization model is built on identity, scarcity, and ritualized seasonal spending, and it is one of the most effective in the industry.

Monetization Efficiency

Data source: AppMagic.

These are exceptional numbers. A revenue-per-download figure above $32 is in a league very few mobile games ever reach, and it reflects both a deep-pocketed core spending base and a monetization system that converts engagement into purchases extremely well.

The 20.2% DAU/MAU ratio shows a committed daily-player core inside a much larger monthly audience, exactly the profile you want for a live-service game.

Player Demographics

Honor of Kings stands out from most competitive titles for one reason in particular: it attracts a large share of female gamers, which is rare in the MOBA genre.

Its core audience skews young, mobile-first, and heavily concentrated in China, though the global version has been pulling in newer audiences across MENA, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

Data source: Bloomberg and South China Morning Post.

User Acquisition Snapshot

Honor of Kings is one of the clearest examples in mobile of a game that doesn’t need to buy its way to scale. Its user acquisition strategy is built on brand gravity, content, and live ops, with paid UA playing a supporting role rather than carrying the growth.

Growth Driven by IP and Live Ops, Not Just Spend

In China, the game is a cultural institution, so demand is largely organic. The download spikes line up with content moments: the June 2024 global launch, anniversary seasons, and major collaboration drops. The pattern is unmistakable, new content creates the installs, not blanket ad buying.

For the global version, Level Infinite has pushed harder on paid and creator-led acquisition to seed new markets, but even there the heavy lifting comes from the IP and esports brand.

Creative Built Around Heroes, Skins, and Collaborations

The marketing creative leans on character reveals, cinematic skin CGs, and collaboration announcements.

These work because they double as both content and ads, the new hero trailer is the campaign. Scarcity and fandom do the persuading, whether it’s a Sanrio crossover or a Chinese-mythology skin directed like a short film.

An Enormous Creator and Esports Flywheel

Honor of Kings runs a structured content creator program (HOK Studio) that rewards creators with skins and currency for producing gameplay content, effectively turning thousands of players into an always-on UA channel.

Sitting above that is the King Pro League, one of the biggest esports properties in China, which functions as a permanent top-of-funnel brand engine. This community flywheel is the real moat.

A Mature Game in Monetization Mode

Read the data together and the picture is clear: this is a game in mature growth, leaning on its existing base. Audience size is gently declining while revenue holds at record-adjacent levels, which means current performance is driven by monetizing and retaining existing players more than acquiring new ones. The global launch is the main new-user growth lever, and it is still early in that market.

For studios trying to build this kind of self-sustaining growth, the hard part is connecting creative, paid social, and live ops into one system that compounds. That’s the work we focus on at Udonis – we’re a mobile game marketing agency that helps studios grow through paid UA, creative testing, and growth strategy.

References

1. AppMagic. 2026. Mobile App Data.
2. Wikipedia. 2026. Honor of Kings.
3. South China Morning Post. 2017. Honour of Kings: female gamers outnumber men on world’s most popular battle arena mobile game.
4. Game Developer. 2023. Women make up over half of players for mobile MOBA Honour of Kings (Bloomberg data).
5. CNBC. 2024. China’s Tencent sees opportunity in female Honor of Kings mobile gamers.
6. Esports Insider. 2025. Honor of Kings: The record-breaking esport that dominates in China.
7. Honor of Kings Wiki (Fandom). 2026. Honor Pass.
8. Campaign Middle East. 2024. Honor of Kings opens door to brand collaborations.

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