The Brexit vote helped the UK’s national newspapers break digital readership records in June, with the Independent, the Guardian, the Mirror and Mail Online all passing major milestones.

The Independent, which went digital-only in March, saw the biggest boost, with traffic up almost 44% to an average of 4.4 million unique browsers a day, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations figures published on Thursday. The Telegraph was the next biggest riser, with an almost 30% rise to 5.6 million.

Mail Online saw an almost 8% rise to pass 15 million for the first time, while the Guardian’s audience rose by more than 15%, taking it over an average of 10 million unique daily browsers for the first time.



All four news outlets added more than 1 million daily browsers compared with the previous month.

The Mirror also saw a big rise, up almost 8% to bring in more than 5 million daily browsers for the first time, as did the Express, which saw an almost 19% rise to more than 1.8 million. The Sun also saw a big rise of more than 15%, but from a comparatively small base having only dropped its paywall fully at the end of November.

However, the Daily Star saw its traffic fall during the month, down 9% to 818,188.

MailOnline 15,053, 614 (7.88%)

theguardian.com 10,304,181 (15.48%)

Telegraph 5,623,053 (29.49%)

Mirror Group Nationals 5,032,799 (8.38%)

The Independent 4,382,722 (43.77%)

The Sun 2,730, 920 (15.37%)

express.co.uk 1,851,337 (18.69%)

Metro 1,346,565 (11.49%)

dailystar.co.uk 818,188 (-9.02%)

Evening Standard 725,888 (34.45%)