Mail Online hit a new traffic record of 15.3m unique browsers in August, beating the previous peak hit in July – according to ABC.

Meanwhile, The Sun was the fastest growing UK newspaper website audited by ABC, up 129 per cent year on year and 14.2 per cent month on month.

The News UK tabloid dropped its online paywall last November and has made big gains since relaunching in a mobile-first format in June.

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The Evening Standard also made significant progress month on month, up 10.8 per cent. It was the second fastest growing site year on year, up 58.5 per cent to 672,455 unique browsers per day.

In terms of monthly unique browsers, the Standard noted that it grew faster than any of the national newspaper websites in August.

Digital editor Geoff Teather said: “These figures are particularly pleasing off the back of a huge team effort to bring comprehensive and compelling coverage of the Rio games.

“August was also an unusually busy news month and the traffic growth demonstrates once again the strength and appeal of the Evening Standard brand.”

Other sites slipped back following intense interest around the EU referendum in July.

The Guardian dropped 13 per cent to 8.5m unique browsers per day and the Telegraph fell 8.2 per cent to 4.8m

Overall, Mail Online attracted 248m unique browsers over the whole of August according to ABC. Some 63m of these were in the UK.

Note: ABC counts different devices (rather than people) accessing the websites.

UK newspaper website ABC figures for August 2016 (source ABC)

Title Avg daily browsers Month on month % change Year on year % change MailOnline 15,228,325 2.35 11.13 theguardian.com 8,352,910 -12.94 11.05 Mirror Group Nationals 5,262,564 -0.23 23.29 Telegraph 4,769,878 -8.15 8.04 The Independent 3,655,785 -8.47 45.04 The Sun 2,950,649 14.18 128.75 express.co.uk 1,650,539 -6.34 36.02 Metro 1,251,374 -13.75 -10.62 dailystar.co.uk 964,366 2.92 9.83 Manchester Evening News 833,172 1.28 31.1 Evening Standard 672,455 10.82 58.47 Liverpool Echo 598,174 -8.26 22.4 Wales Online 318,874 -16.38 23.68 Birmingham Mail 286,550 7.36 24.6 ChronicleLive 268,989 -0.5 18.43 Hull Daily Mail 110,439 GazetteLive 108,819 -5.94 16.4