BeReal Update: Everything You Need to Know

Introduction

BeReal was the app of 2022, then everyone wrote its obituary, then a gaming company bought it for half a billion dollars. So which is it, dead or alive? The honest answer is neither. It is smaller, it has a new owner, it now runs ads and it has quietly added a stack of features most people who deleted it never saw.

This is the current state of BeReal with the real numbers attached, not the 2022 hype and not the lazy "it died" take. If you market to Gen Z, the bottom of this guide is the part that matters: what the update actually changed for brands.

What BeReal is and how it works

BeReal launched on December 21, 2019, created by Alexis Barreyat, a former GoPro employee, alongside Kevin Perreau in France. The premise is a direct shot at Instagram: no filters, no curation, just one unedited moment a day.

The mechanic is the whole product. Once a day, at a random time, everyone in your time zone gets a notification: "Time to BeReal." You have two minutes to take a dual-camera photo that fires the front and back lenses at once, capturing your face and whatever is in front of you simultaneously. You cannot see anyone else's post until you have posted your own. Post after the window and it is flagged as late. The app even shows others how many retakes you needed. That friction is the point.

The big update: Voodoo and ads

The headline change has nothing to do with features. In June 2024, mobile gaming company Voodoo acquired BeReal in a deal worth roughly $537 million (about 500 million euros). That mattered because BeReal had a fatal flaw: it made almost no money. Before the sale, the platform did not charge users or run ads, surviving purely on investor funding.

Voodoo fixed that fast. It introduced in-app advertising in July 2024 and launched a dedicated US advertising platform in April 2025. The app that built its identity on being the anti-Instagram, the place with no ads, now has ads. Revenue climbed from essentially zero to over $30 million by the end of 2025. The authenticity purists hate it. The business needed it.

Every new feature, in one table

Beyond the ownership change, BeReal has shipped a steady run of features, some expanding the core idea, some quietly contradicting its "one post a day" purity. Here they all are.

Sources: BeReal product announcements; Captiv8; AlternativeTo; Wikipedia. Feature availability varies by region.

The real numbers

This is where most articles either cherry-pick the flattering figure or the damning one. Here is the honest version, including the part where the sources openly disagree.

What this means for brands

Here is the part the hype pieces skip. The update turned BeReal from a channel brands could not really use into one they can, even if it is niche.

• RealBrands opens the door. Official brand accounts can now apply for dedicated in-stream feeds, the first genuine brand-marketing surface BeReal has offered.
• The format rewards unpolished content. A behind-the-scenes no-filter post fits BeReal natively. A glossy campaign asset will feel wrong and get ignored.
• Ads now exist. The US ad platform means you can buy reach directly, not just hope for organic pickup.
• Early adoption is cheap attention. Fewer brands are active here than on Instagram or TikTok, so the competition for a Gen Z eye is lower right now.
• Trust is the asset. One 2025 measure named BeReal the most trusted platform among Gen Z, with around 30% expressing confidence in its content. Authenticity is the whole pitch.

The catch is reach. Whether the base is 40 million or 16 million, it is a fraction of Instagram or TikTok and it skews to a specific young authenticity-minded audience. BeReal is a precision tool, not a megaphone.

The verdict

BeReal is not the next Instagram and it never will be that. But the "it's dead" obituaries are wrong too. What actually happened is more interesting: a buzzy app with no business model got bought by a company that knows how to monetize, kept its authenticity hook, added the features and ads it was missing, then settled into a smaller but loyal Gen Z niche. The peak is behind it. The second act is just starting.

How to use this with Flinque

BeReal is one channel in a fragmented Gen Z world. No single platform reaches that audience on its own. The real job is finding creators who genuinely connect with younger audiences wherever they are, then verifying their reach is real before you spend.

With Flinque you can search 10M+ verified creators by niche, platform and audience demographics, run a fake follower check before committing budget, then benchmark engagement so you know a creator's Gen Z audience is authentic and active. BeReal shows where authenticity-first attention is heading. Flinque helps you find the people who already command it.