Android messaging apps in 2026: what 4 Play listings publish

Updated August 2026 · all four listings re-read on 16 August 2026 · a decision table added, five entries withdrawn

This page reports what four Google Play listings publish about four messaging apps on one date: the rating and the rating count, the install band, the price and any in-app purchase range, the Contains ads label and the Data Safety section. Not one of the four carries a Contains ads label, so that column separates nothing here and is no reason to pick any of them.

The largest install band on this page

Rating 4.3 from 45,061,023 ratings · Installs 10,000,000,000+, the store’s own count of installs · Free to install, no in-app purchases · Developer Google LLC · Category Communication · Listing updated 12 August 2026 · Data Safety: may share data with third parties, may collect data types, encrypted in transit, deletion can be requested, independent security review · Contains ads: No · checked 16 August 2026

Google Play listing · 4.3 (45,061,023) · read 16 August 2026

Google Messages is the listing with the biggest numbers behind it and the most declared collection. Read 16 August 2026: a rating of 4.3 from 45,061,023 ratings, an install band of 10,000,000,000+, which is the store’s own count of installs and not a count of people, a free install with no in-app purchases, and no Contains ads label. The blunt part is the Data Safety section. It is the only one of the four listings on this page that declares data may be shared with third parties.

The sharing line in its Data Safety section is what separates this listing from the other three here, and may is the listing’s own word, so it is a declaration of what can happen rather than a record of what did. Skip this if a listing that declares no third-party sharing matters more to you than the size of the record behind it. Take Google Messages over Signal if the published record is what you are choosing on; take Signal over it if the sharing line is the part you cannot accept.

• Good: The record behind it is the biggest here: 45,061,023 ratings, and an install band of 10,000,000,000+ that is the store’s own count of installs rather than a count of people (read 16 August 2026)
• Good: Its listing was updated on 12 August 2026, the most recent of the four update dates on this page
• Good: Its Data Safety section lists an independent security review, the only one of the four listings here that does
• Con: The sharing line names what may go out: Location, Personal info, and Device or other IDs. That is the developer’s declaration to Google Play, not a measurement of what left the phone
• Con: Its declared collection is the broadest here too, and the listing does not spell it out: it reads Location, Personal info and 8 others, so eight of the declared types are not named on the store page itself
• Con: The release note under What’s new on its listing says only that the update brings bug fixes and stability improvements, so the update date does not say what changed (read 16 August 2026)

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The largest rating sample with no sharing declared

Rating 4.5 from 2,902,290 ratings · Installs 100,000,000+ · Free to install, in-app purchases $1.99 an item · Developer Signal Foundation · Version 8.22.2, listing updated 10 August 2026 · Data Safety: no data shared with third parties, may collect Personal info, encrypted in transit, deletion can be requested · Contains ads: No · checked 16 August 2026

Google Play listing · 4.5 (2,902,290) · read 16 August 2026

Signal is the entry with the largest rating sample of the listings here that declare no sharing at all. Read 16 August 2026: 4.5 from 2,902,290 ratings, an install band of 100,000,000+, free to install, and no Contains ads label. It is also the only entry on this page whose listing publishes a purchase range, and that range is a single price of $1.99 an item. The blunt part: the same section declares that the app may collect Personal info, so no data shared with third parties is not the same statement as nothing collected.

Personal info is the whole of its declared collection, which is narrower than either of the other two listings here that declare any collection at all. The listing names the developer as Signal Foundation and links its own privacy policy at signal.org/privacy, which this page has not read. Skip this if a listing with no purchase range at all is what you want. Take Signal over SimpleX Chat if you want a rating with millions of ratings behind it; take SimpleX Chat over Signal if a listing that declares no data collected at all is the point.

• Good: Its Data Safety section declares no data shared with third parties, and the only type it declares it may collect is Personal info, the narrowest declared collection of the three listings here that declare any
• Good: 4.5 rests on 2,902,290 ratings, which is a sample large enough that a handful of new reviews cannot move it (read 16 August 2026)
• Good: The listing publishes a version, 8.22.2, and an update on 10 August 2026, so the record behind these figures can be dated
• Con: It is the only entry here whose listing publishes in-app purchases, and the range is a single price of $1.99 an item, so a free install is not the whole of the price
• Con: The word in that collection line is may, which is the store’s own hedge: the developer is declaring what the app may collect, not reporting what it did collect
• Con: Its Data Safety section lists no independent security review, which one other listing on this page does list. A Data Safety section is a declaration by the developer either way, not an audit

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A listing that declares no data collected

Rating 4.0 from 2,622 ratings · Installs 1,000,000+ · Free to install, no in-app purchases · Developer SimpleX Chat · Version 7.0, listing updated 28 July 2026 · Data Safety: no data shared with third parties, no data collected · Contains ads: No · checked 16 August 2026

Google Play listing · 4.0 (2,622) · read 16 August 2026

SimpleX Chat declares the least of the four listings here: its Data Safety section says no data shared with third parties and no data collected at all. Read 16 August 2026: 4.0 from 2,622 ratings, an install band of 1,000,000+, free to install with no in-app purchases, and no Contains ads label. The blunt part is the sample. 2,622 ratings is a very small number to read a score off, so its 4.0 and the higher scores elsewhere on this page are not measuring the same thing.

Its listing sums the app up, in the developer’s own words, as Private & e2e encrypted messenger without user identifiers - private by design!, quoted from its Google Play listing, read 16 August 2026. That is the project’s claim about itself and this page cannot confirm it; what the listing does state beside it is a Data Safety section with two lines, no data shared with third parties and no data collected, which is a declaration made to Google Play rather than an audit of the app. Skip this if you want a published rating with a large sample behind it before you install anything. Take SimpleX Chat over Google Messages if the declared collection is what you are choosing on; take Google Messages over it if you want the biggest numbers on the page.

• Good: Its Data Safety section is the shortest of the four here, two lines long
• Good: The listing publishes a version, 7.0, and an update on 28 July 2026, so what the store offers can be dated
• Good: It is the only one of the four listings here that declares no data collected at all; each of the other three declares that the app may collect data types
• Con: Its 4.0 rests on 2,622 ratings. A score on a few thousand ratings is not comparable with a score on millions, and this page does not treat it as though it were (read 16 August 2026)
• Con: It is the lowest rating of the three listings on this page that publish one
• Con: Its listing is the oldest of the four here, updated on 28 July 2026, though that is still weeks rather than years

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Voice messages, on a listing with no rating yet

No rating and no review count are published on its listing · Installs 1,000+ · Free to install, no in-app purchases · Developer Haiket · Category Communication · Listing updated 4 August 2026 · Data Safety: no data shared with third parties, this app may collect Personal info, Contacts, and App info and performance, data is encrypted in transit, deletion can be requested · Contains ads: No · checked 16 August 2026

Google Play listing · no rating is published there to quote · read 16 August 2026

Haiket is the entry with no rating to quote. Its Google Play listing is live and was read on 16 August 2026, and Google Play publishes no star rating and no review count for it: the header carries the developer, the install band and the Install button, and no star figure at all. That is an absence at the store, not a low score, and nothing on this page treats it as one. What the listing does publish, on the same date, is an install band of 1,000+, a free install with no in-app purchases, no Contains ads label, an update on 4 August 2026, and a Data Safety section declaring no data shared with third parties.

The long description on its Google Play listing, read 16 August 2026, opens with a claim in the developer’s own wording: Fastest messenger in the world. The listing publishes no rating and no review count beside it to weigh it against. Treat the whole entry that way: what the listing carries is what the developer declared, and the store has published no score of its own next to it. Skip this if you want a published rating before you install anything. Take Haiket over the other three here if voice messages are the whole reason you are looking; take any of the other three over it if a record you can check matters more than the format.

• Good: Its listing was updated on 4 August 2026, more recently than one of the other three listings here, so the smallest entry on this page is not the one carrying the oldest store record
• Good: Its Data Safety section declares no data shared with third parties, and states that data is encrypted in transit and that deletion can be requested
• Good: It is the only one of the four listings here whose own short description sums the app up as voice messaging, so what it is for is not in doubt
• Con: Google Play publishes no rating and no review count for it, checked 16 August 2026, so there is no published measure of what anyone makes of it. That is a gap in the record and nothing more
• Con: Its install band of 1,000+ is the smallest on this page by several orders of magnitude, and an install band is the store’s own count of installs rather than a count of people
• Con: Its Data Safety section also declares that the app may collect Personal info, Contacts, and App info and performance, which is broader than what two of the other three listings here declare and narrower than what the third declares, and may is the listing’s own word

Back to the comparison table

The four listings are documented to very different depths, and most of that difference belongs to the store rather than to the apps.

Install bands. Google Messages reads 10,000,000,000+ and Haiket reads 1,000+, with Signal at 100,000,000+ and SimpleX Chat at 1,000,000+ between them. All four are the store’s own counts of installs, rounded down to a band, and none of them is a count of people using anything. Read on 16 August 2026.

Ratings, and the samples under them. Google Messages shows 4.3 from 45,061,023 ratings, Signal 4.5 from 2,902,290, and SimpleX Chat 4.0 from 2,622. Haiket’s listing publishes no rating and no review count at all, checked 16 August 2026. A score on a few thousand ratings and a score on millions are not the same measurement, so the gap between the highest and the lowest of the three published scores here is not a settled ranking, and the fourth entry is not last: it has no score to be last with.

Advertising. None of the four listings carries a Contains ads label. That is what Google Play publishes about advertising, so on this page the column separates nothing and no entry earns anything for it. It is also the store’s label rather than an inspection of the app.

Price. All four are free to install. One in-app purchase range is published across the four, Signal’s, and it comes to $1.99 an item.

Data Safety. One of the four declares third-party sharing: Google Messages, which names Location, Personal info, and Device or other IDs. The other three declare none. Only SimpleX Chat goes further and declares no data collected at all, while Signal declares that it may collect Personal info and Haiket declares that it may collect Personal info, Contacts, and App info and performance. Every line of that is a declaration the developer made to Google Play, in the store’s own wording, and may is the word the store uses. It is not an audit, and this page has not read any of the linked privacy policies.

It comes down to which published record you want behind the app you install.

Take Google Messages if the size of the published record matters most to you. It has the biggest install band and the biggest rating sample of the three listings here that publish one, and its listing is the most recently updated of the four. Accept in exchange that it is the only one declaring that data may be shared with third parties, and that its declared collection is the broadest here.

Take Signal if you want a listing that declares no third-party sharing with a large rating sample behind its score. Accept in exchange that its Data Safety section declares that the app may collect Personal info, and that it is the only entry here with a published purchase range, at $1.99 an item.

Take SimpleX Chat if the shortest Data Safety section on the page is what you are choosing on: no data shared, no data collected. Accept in exchange that its score rests on the smallest published sample here, so it is the least settled number on the page, and that its listing is the oldest of the four by update date.

Take Haiket only if voice messages are the whole point for you, and go in knowing that Google Play publishes no rating and no review count for it, so there is nothing published to check the developer’s claims against. Its install band is the smallest here by a wide margin.

None of that is a statement about how any of these apps behaves once it is installed, and this page does not make one: nothing here rests on running them.

This page used to run through eight subjects, most of them announcements rather than apps. It now stands on the four Play listings it actually links, and that is worth explaining rather than papering over.

An entry here needs a first party record that can be re-opened on the day of writing: the app’s own store listing, re-read, with the date printed beside every figure. Four entries have one, and those four are the only store links the version of this page read today carries. The rest rested on a vendor blog post, a GitHub release page or news coverage, and none of that could be re-opened at its own source in this pass, so none of it is left standing here with a fresh date on it. Every entry that went is named in the changelog at the foot of this page, with the reason it went.

One 2026 claim did survive the check, and it survived because a listing carries it: SimpleX Chat’s own Play record gives version 7.0 with an update on 28 July 2026, which is in its section above. Four entries is a thin year for a category this size. Saying so is more useful than filling the gap with announcements no store record can confirm. For a wider shortlist of messengers rather than this year’s records, see our free messaging apps for Android roundup.

Checked 16 August 2026: all four Play listings this page links were re-read from their own store pages, and every figure on the page now carries the date it was read. Three of the figures printed above also stood on the previous version of this page, and each of the three now comes off a listing rather than off an announcement: 28 July 2026, which that version gave as a GitHub release date and the listing gives as SimpleX Chat’s update date; the version numeral 7.0, which that version tied to a GitHub release and the listing publishes as the version it offers; and $1.99, which that version gave as a monthly subscription figure and which Signal’s listing publishes as a single price an item. Every other figure above is new. The version read today printed no rating, no rating count, no install band, no in-app purchase range from a listing, no Contains ads label and no Data Safety line for any of the four. All of those are here now for the three listings that publish them, each with the date it was read, and for the fourth the page states in words which figures its listing does not publish. Only one of the four listings publishes an in-app purchase range, and only that one is quoted. A decision table is here as well, which the page did not carry at all. The one price it printed for any of these four, a monthly subscription figure, came from an announcement rather than from a listing, and each listing’s own price is here instead; the other price it printed belonged to an entry that leaves, named below. Corrected for Haiket: the page gave its listing an update date of 25 June 2026, and the listing read today gives 4 August 2026. Retracted with it, and named here only: a couple of dozen listing reviews on store mirrors. Its own Play listing publishes no rating and no review count whatsoever, so a review count taken from a mirror is not a figure this page will carry, and the absence of a rating is not a low rating. The opening claim Four things genuinely changed in 2026 is withdrawn as a framing. One of those four claims does survive on a first party record, and it is in the page above: SimpleX Chat’s own listing gives version 7.0 and an update on 28 July 2026. The other three claims rested on vendor blog posts and announcements, and this pass had no store record to re-read any of them against. Withdrawn entirely for the same reason, named here and nowhere else: BirdyChat, bitchat, Messages by OzarksMade, Session and Molly. None was cut for being dead; each was cut because the version of this page read today carries no store listing for it, so nothing about it could be re-verified at source. The verdict capsule was rewritten rather than added, since the page already carried one built around those four claims, and the lead sentence naming release notes, GitHub release pages and vendor blogs as the sources is replaced by a dated How we verify box naming the four listings this pass read. The FAQ was rewritten in full: two of its five questions were about entries that have gone, two answered announcements this pass had no store record to re-read, and the fifth asked about SimpleX Chat 7.0, which its own listing does confirm and which is answered in its section above. Four screenshot strips are dropped, one per app: every image in them came from the app’s own Play listing, and the standard for this site carries no Play marketing graphics. They are in the pre-write backup if the owner wants them restored.