The manga began as a one-shot debut work by Hajime Isayama; his editor Shintarō Kawakubo, who noticed that Isayama's style matched the concept of the magazine Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine, suggested reworking the one-shot into a serialized version for a launch competition.

In the original one-shot version, the Titans were weapons created by a religious science organization to exterminate humanity, there was no 3D maneuver gear, and characters used wireless communication devices—elements that were changed for the serialized version.

Isayama has said he built the story by first designing a world setting that could make the best use of the concept of giants, working 'world-first' rather than plot-first.

If readers remove the dust jacket of the manga volumes, they find medieval-manuscript-style illustrations depicting people fleeing Titans and crossing the sea to settle behind walls; the text in these images looks unreadable but is actually Japanese katakana written upside down, hinting at the story's core secrets.

Isayama described the hidden katakana text under the covers as being like 'the first page of a textbook in this world,' containing knowledge common to everyone in the story's setting.

To celebrate the manga's 10th anniversary in 2019, Isayama's hometown of Hita in Ōita Prefecture ran a crowdfunding campaign to build bronze statues of the characters; a statue of young Eren, Mikasa and Armin was installed in front of the Ōyama Dam in November 2020, followed by a statue of Captain Levi in front of JR Hita Station in March 2021.

Volume 3's release in December 2010 pushed the manga's cumulative circulation past one million copies with just two volumes in print; by April 2013 the first nine volumes had surpassed 12 million copies, and after the anime premiered that figure jumped to over 23 million by August 2013.

Volume 13, released in April 2014, had a first印刷 run of 2.75 million copies, the highest first-print run in Kodansha's history at the time, breaking a record held for about 26 years by Be-Bop High School's volume 8 (2.27 million copies) from 1987.

By November 2023 the series had sold over 140 million copies worldwide across 18 languages and more than 180 countries, making it only the second Kodansha manga after The Kindaichi Case Files to surpass 100 million copies sold.

In South Korea the manga sold over 350,000 copies by 2013, and the anime aired simultaneously with Japan; its popularity was so great that broadcast times were changed and the theme songs and soundtrack were released there at the same time as in Japan.

In the United States, the New York Times bestseller weekly manga ranking for the second week of October 2013 had Attack on Titan volumes occupying four of the top five spots, with volume 1 at number one.