Opera today said the number of monthly users of Opera One for iOS grew 20% year on year in October 2026, with the United States, at 46%, showing the fastest growth of any market the company named. The Oslo-based browser maker also began rolling out Data Saver to its flagship iPhone browser, an optional feature that compresses images and text on Opera's servers before they reach the device and that, according to Opera, can cut browsing data consumption by up to 80%.

The growth figures are Opera's own. The company measured monthly active users of its iOS browser in October 2026 against the same month a year earlier, according to the announcement, and gave percentage changes by region and by country. It did not publish absolute user numbers for iOS, so the size of the base behind the 46% cannot be established from the release. Opera, listed on Nasdaq under the ticker OPRA, issued the announcement from Oslo.

In Short

Opera says the number of people using its iPhone browser each month rose 20% in a year, with the US up 46%, and it is adding a setting that shrinks web pages on its own servers so they use up to 80% less mobile data. That matters to publishers and advertisers because a browser with built-in ad blocking is gaining users on iPhone, and because pages loaded with Data Saver pass through Opera's servers on the way to the reader. The growth rates are lower than those Opera reported for the second quarter, and the announcement leaves open what websites and ad systems see when the new feature is switched on.

Twenty percent, from an undisclosed base

Opera broke the 20% global figure into four regions. The United States grew 46%, according to the company. Europe grew 16%, with the United Kingdom at 32% and France at 19%. Asia grew 17% and Africa 14%. All figures refer to Opera One for iOS and are presented as year-over-year growth; the release states the October 2026 period for the global number and does not restate it for each region.

A pattern sits inside those numbers. The United States is the only region Opera named that grew faster than the global average of 20%. Asia, Africa and Europe all came in below it. Because the UK and France each grew faster than Europe's 16%, the rest of Europe, taken together, must have grown more slowly than 16% - a reading by PPC Land from Opera's figures, which the company does not spell out. Without the regional user counts, it is not possible to say how much of the global figure the US accounts for, or whether regions the release does not name, such as Latin America or the Middle East, grew faster or slower.

The company placed the iOS numbers alongside a desktop milestone. In October, Opera reached 100 million monthly active users on PC, up 16% year over year, according to the release. "Behind this growth across both desktop and mobile is a broader shift in consumer expectations - users are increasingly reconsidering the default as their understanding of what a browser can do evolves," Opera stated.

On iPhone, the default is Safari, and it holds most of the traffic. Cloudflare's report for the third quarter of 2025 put Safari at 77.797% of iOS browser traffic and Opera at 1.520% of global browser traffic. Opera's iOS user base therefore grows within a small slice of the platform, and percentage gains from a small base can be large without moving overall share by much. The release offers no share figure for iOS.

Slower than the second quarter

The October figures follow an earlier set from Opera, published in July. Then, the company reported growth in monthly active users of Opera One across the UK and the US for the second quarter of 2026: 93% for iOS in the UK, 50% for iOS in the US, 42% for iOS across Europe and 103% in France. Jørgen Arnesen, Opera's EVP Mobile, attributed that growth at the time to people choosing the browser deliberately.

Set side by side, the reported rates are lower in every market named in both releases. US iOS growth went from 50% to 46%. The UK fell from 93% to 32%, France from 103% to 19%, and Europe from 42% to 16%. The two windows are not identical - one covers a full quarter, the other a single month - so the comparison is not like for like. Still, the direction is consistent across all four. Does that mean fewer new users, or simply a larger base? The release gives no absolute numbers, so it cannot answer the question, and Opera does not comment on the change.

How Data Saver works

Data Saver is not new technology for Opera. "Data saving has been a part of Opera's DNA for nearly two decades," the company stated. With Opera Mini, it "pioneered server-assisted mobile browsing, helping millions get online efficiently in markets where every megabyte counts," according to the announcement.

The iPhone version follows the same principle. "When Data Saver is enabled, images and text are compressed on Opera's servers before they reach the user's device, reducing the data needed to load a webpage," according to Opera. The page is fetched and shrunk at Opera's end, then delivered in compressed form to the phone. The company presents the feature for specific situations: travelling abroad on expensive roaming data, topping up a prepaid plan, running low on a monthly data bundle, or browsing on a weak connection.

Data Saver is off by default. It can be switched on from the browser's main menu or under Settings, and users can see how much data they have saved, according to the release. The feature is available in the latest version of Opera One for iOS, which is free on the App Store. Data Saver joins existing built-in features that Opera lists for the iOS browser: a free browser VPN, native ad blocking, integrated browser AI and advanced tab management.

Why does a server-side feature matter so much on iPhone? Outside the European Union, Apple's App Store rules require third-party browsers on iOS to build on WebKit, the engine behind Safari. Apple has allowed alternative browser engines in the EU since 2024 under the Digital Markets Act, and has changed how its browser choice screen works for EU users. Elsewhere, rendering is fixed. Browser makers on iPhone therefore compete on what surrounds the engine: blocking, VPNs, AI, tab handling and, now for Opera, what happens to a page before it arrives.

The move also cuts against a decision by the market leader. Google retired Lite mode, the data-saving feature in Chrome for Android, with Chrome 100 in 2022, saying it was no longer necessary as mobile data costs had fallen in many countries. Opera's argument runs the other way: networks have improved, but pages have grown faster.

What the release does not say

For publishers and advertisers, the details of a server-assisted design matter as much as the headline saving, and several are missing. The announcement does not say whether Data Saver applies to encrypted HTTPS pages, which make up most of the web, or only to some traffic. It does not say which IP address or location websites see when a page passes through Opera's servers - a question that affects geotargeting, analytics and fraud filtering - or whether Opera forwards the reader's original address to the site.

Nor does it say whether ad creatives and third-party scripts are compressed, altered or left untouched, or how the 80% figure was measured, on which pages and under what conditions. Video is not mentioned; the feature description covers images and text. The release names no server locations and says nothing about what traffic data Opera retains when the feature is on. "Up to 80%" is a ceiling, not an average, and the release gives no typical saving.

A heavier web

Opera's case for the feature rests on page weight. "Mobile networks have become faster and data plans more generous in many markets, but websites have simultaneously grown much heavier," according to the release. The company cites HTTP Archive's 2025 Web Almanac, which it says shows the median mobile homepage growing from 845 KB in 2015 to about 2.6 MB in 2025, "an increase of more than 200% in a decade." The arithmetic holds: 2.6 MB is roughly three times 845 KB, an increase of about 208%. "More JavaScript, larger images and richer content mean more data is transferred every time a page loads," Opera stated.

Page weight is already a commercial issue for site owners, mostly framed as speed. Google's Core Web Vitals measure loading and responsiveness, and a December 2025 analysis by 20i of more than 350 large US online retailers found 65% failing Core Web Vitals on mobile, against 53% on desktop. Opera's framing shifts the cost from load time to the reader's data allowance, a cost borne by the visitor rather than the site.

The release does not break out how much of that weight comes from advertising and measurement scripts. Opera One for iOS already ships with native ad blocking, which removes part of it on its own. Data Saver adds a second layer, applied to whatever is left.

Africa and Asia, where megabytes cost more

Opera ties the feature most directly to markets where data is expensive. "This issue is particularly relevant in markets where iPhone ownership is growing but mobile data remains expensive relative to income," according to the announcement. In Africa, where Opera One for iOS grew 14% year over year, the company cites Counterpoint Research as reporting double-digit growth in iPhone sales in the first quarter of 2026.

Opera's own history on the continent is the backdrop. The company says it "built strong brand recognition across the continent with Opera Mini" and "sees this as a significant opportunity to extend its reach on iOS." In Asia, where Opera One for iOS grew 17%, Opera points to high mobile data consumption as the reason efficient browsing matters. Neither region's growth exceeded the 20% global figure.

Those two regions are where the company's data-saving reputation was built, and they are also where the iOS growth was slowest among those named. The US, where data plans are typically larger, drove the headline number, and Opera explains that growth with a different argument entirely.

The US: personalization, control and ad blocking

The strongest growth came from the United States "as consumers look for more personalization and control than the default browser offers," according to Opera. The company backs that explanation with two outside figures. It cites Shift's 2026 State of Browsing Report as finding that 92% of surveyed US adults value browser personalization. Shift is itself a browser maker; PPC Land covered the launch of its privacy-focused Shift AI layer in April 2026. Opera also cites Gartner as reporting in April 2026 that 52% of consumers had taken steps to block advertising. The release gives no sample sizes, methods or geographic scope for either survey.

The ad-blocking figure is the one with the most direct bearing on the advertising market. Estimates of its scale vary widely. Ad-Shield's co-CEO said in July 2026 that ad-blocked traffic accounts for 10 to 30 percent of all web traffic, and that 60 to 80 percent of it is invisible to the sites receiving it, figures that did not come from a published methodology.

Opera is not the only browser company pitching built-in blocking to iPhone users. DuckDuckGo switched on YouTube ad blocking by default on iPhone, Windows and Mac on July 8, 2026. Brave, which blocks ads and sells its own, reported 109 million monthly active users in February 2026. Vivaldi rebuilt its ad and tracker blocker with per-site strengths in version 8.3 on November 5, 2026, including on iOS.

The legal ground under browser-level blocking is also shifting. On November 2, 2026, The New York Times and three other papers sued Brave in New York, with one count arguing under unjust enrichment law that Brave profited by blocking the papers' ads and selling its own. That case concerns Brave, not Opera, but it targets a business model that several browser companies share.

Arnesen framed the iPhone push around choice. "Data saving is a signature Opera feature, and we're proud to bring it to iPhone," he said. "As the web gets heavier, people everywhere want more control over their data use. We're growing in various markets, from the US and Europe to Asia and Africa, and what they have in common are users who look beyond the default when an alternative offers real value. With features like Data Saver, we intend to be that alternative on iPhone."

Why this matters for advertisers and publishers

For the marketing community, Opera's numbers land in a year when the iPhone has become harder ground for ad tech. Safari already limits cookies and tracking through Intelligent Tracking Prevention, and Safari 27 went further, refusing requests to The Trade Desk's ad domain through a WebKit change merged in February 2026. Alternative browsers on iOS add their own layer. A growing share of iPhone users on a browser with native ad blocking, a VPN and, now, server-side compression means more variation in what ad calls, tags and creatives actually reach the screen.

The release does not say whether native ad blocking is on by default in Opera One for iOS, which determines how much of that growth translates into blocked impressions. Without absolute user numbers, the effect on any given publisher's iPhone traffic is also impossible to estimate from Opera's figures alone.

Opera sits on both sides of the advertising question. Its browsers block ads, and in September 2025 it tested a Video Skip button that jumps video ads to the end. Its desktop gaming browser, Opera GX, arrived on Linux in March 2026 with a VPN and ad blockers built in. At the same time, Opera Ads, its advertising arm, earned TAG Platinum status in December 2024 and in September 2024 partnered with HUMAN on pre-bid CTV fraud detection, at a time when Opera Ads handled more than 400 billion requests a day. Blocking third-party ads in the browser while running an advertising business is a combination PPC Land has also examined at Brave.

The argument over defaults also has a regulatory history. Opera challenged the European Commission's decision not to treat Microsoft's Edge as a gatekeeper browser, and on September 2, 2026 the EU General Court dismissed the case, citing Edge's 5.8% share of European page views in December 2022. Research covered by PPC Land in July 2026 found that the DMA's choice screens brought Firefox about 6 million additional EU users, evidence that defaults can move when users are asked. Opera's iOS figures suggest some movement without a choice screen in the US, where none applies. How much movement remains unknown until Opera discloses the numbers behind its percentages.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Opera, the Norwegian browser company listed on Nasdaq as OPRA, and Jørgen Arnesen, its EVP Mobile. The announcement affects publishers, advertisers and ad tech vendors whose pages, tags and ads load in Opera One for iOS.

What: Opera said monthly active users of Opera One for iOS grew 20% year over year, with the US up 46%, Europe 16% (UK 32%, France 19%), Asia 17% and Africa 14%. It began rolling out Data Saver, an optional feature, off by default, that compresses images and text on Opera's servers and can cut browsing data use by up to 80%, according to the company. The figures are company-reported, with no absolute user numbers, and are lower than the rates Opera reported for the second quarter in the US, UK, France and Europe.

When: Announced today, with the growth figures covering October 2026 against October 2025.

Where: Worldwide on Opera One for iOS through the App Store, with growth figures for the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, France, Asia and Africa.

Why: Opera argues that heavier web pages, expensive mobile data in markets such as Africa, and US consumers seeking more control than Safari offers are pushing users toward alternative browsers. For the advertising industry, the release raises unanswered questions about what websites and ad systems see when pages pass through Opera's servers, and adds to the number of iPhone users on a browser with native ad blocking.