Roku passes 100 million active households worldwide

The new Roku Streaming Stick is built with portability in mind. (Courtesy image)

Key Points

Roku now reaches more than 100 million streaming households, marking a major milestone in its global expansion.
The company is shifting focus from household counts to engagement metrics, releasing user totals only at key milestones.
Roku’s scale and platform growth are driving higher engagement, strengthening its value for advertisers and content partners.

Roku says it now serves more than 100 million households through its streaming devices and smart televisions as the company continues to build out its business in North America, Latin America and key parts of Europe.

The milestone was announced two months after Roku executives told shareholders they expected the company to surpass the 100 million household mark some point this year, as reported by The Desk when Roku released its fourth quarter (Q4) financial earnings for 2025.

Roku no longer discloses the number of households using one of its devices or smart TVs on a regular basis, opting instead to focus on other engagement metrics in its quarterly financial earnings reports. Household numbers are now released irregularly, only when the company achieves a milestone.

“Surpassing 100 million streaming households is a defining moment, not just for Roku, but for the future of television,” Anthony Wood, the founder and CEO of Roku, said in a statement. “We’re helping shape the entertainment landscape by making it easier to discover great content, more affordable to watch it, and more effective for advertisers and partners around the world to connect with audiences.”

Roku started in the mid-2000s as a project in partnership with Netflix, which was exploring ways to bring its budding streaming service to TV sets at a time when most of its members were still receiving DVDs through the mail.

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Netflix eventually decided to focus on its core business, spinning out Roku into a separate company in 2008, which allowed the company to forge software partnerships with other companies. Roku’s first devices were made through a partnership with Netgear; those first boxes allowed streamers to watch content from Netflix, YouTube, Hulu Plus, Crackle and Amazon’s Prime Video on ordinary TVs.

Over time, Roku’s simplistic user interface found favor with consumers who were new to the world of streaming. As cable bills rose due to distribution fees charged by programmers, the allure of low-cost streaming services convinced more Americans to buy Roku devices.

The Roku business accelerated significantly when the company decided to license out its operating system to smart TV makers like TCL, Hisense and Element. Executives eventually shifted their focus from selling Roku hardware to capitalizing on its smart TV platform through subscription and advertising sales, which now accounts for more than three-quarters of the company’s quarterly revenue.

Roku said its devices are now used by more than half of broadband households in the United States, with additional growth coming from international markets including Mexico, Canada, Brazil and the United Kingdom. Its operating system is available in more than 15 countries, reflecting ongoing efforts to scale its platform globally.

The company cited data from Comscore indicating Roku generates more than three times the engagement of the next leading TV operating system in the United States. The Roku home screen increasingly serves as the primary entry point for viewers, influencing content discovery and viewing behavior across streaming services.

Roku accounts for around 40 percent of the streaming market share in the U.S., competing heavily with Amazon in the low-cost streaming and smart TV space. The platform now supports thousands of free and premium streaming apps, including its own free streaming service called The Roku Channel, which is the second most-watched ad-supported app on its devices. (YouTube has the number one spot.)

The company has also expanded its consumer offerings with the recent launch of Howdy, a low-cost, ad-free subscription service priced at $3 per month in the U.S. and Mexico.

Roku said its scale provides advertisers and distribution partners with access to a large and highly engaged audience across its platform, including placements on its home screen, streaming channels and branded experiences like Roku City and the Roku Sports Zone.

Moving forward, Roku said it intends to capitalize on its momentum by improving its platform capabilities, increasing personalized content and app recommendations and expanding the availability of Roku devices to new territories, though it didn’t name any in its release last week.