How Many People Use YouTube 2026: Users by Country

YouTube reaches approximately 2.70 billion monthly active users worldwide as of February 2026. In the United States, 84% of adults use the platform, per the Pew Research Center’s 2025 survey. The platform’s potential ad reach grew by 39.7 million users, around 1.6%, over the past 12 months, signalling a maturing audience.

The story of YouTube’s audience is no longer a growth story. It is a saturation story. The data below covers global user counts, country-level rankings, US demographics from Pew Research, and the measurement gap that produces two different “YouTube user” totals depending on who is counting.

Key Takeaways

• YouTube’s potential ad audience reached 2.53 billion users around the world in early 2025, equivalent to 30.9% of all the people on Earth, per DataReportal.
• An estimated 84% of US adults use YouTube, including 95% of those aged 18 to 29, according to Pew Research Center’s February to June 2025 survey.
• India is the largest single-country YouTube audience at 491 million users, nearly double that of the United States’ 253 million.
• YouTube Music and Premium passed more than 125 million paid subscribers in March 2025, up from 100 million in February 2024.
• YouTube Shorts averages over 200 billion daily views, with localized versions running in over 100 countries across 80 languages.
• Alphabet reported 350 million paid subscriptions across its consumer services in Q1 2026 earnings on April 29, 2026, with YouTube subscription revenue growing faster than YouTube ad revenue.
• Mobile devices generate approximately 90% of YouTube visits, with US users averaging 49 minutes of daily viewing.

Editor’s Choice

• YouTube reaches approximately 2.70 billion monthly users worldwide as of February 2026.
• The platform’s ad-addressable audience hit 2.53 billion users around the world at the start of 2025, covering 45.5% of the world’s internet users.
• 2 billion logged-in monthly users were watching YouTube Shorts as of mid-2023, the most recent figure Google has disclosed for the logged-in segment.
• YouTube generated over $60 billion in total revenue during full-year 2025, exceeding Netflix’s $45.18 billion, Sundar Pichai disclosed on February 4, 2026.
• Paid YouTube Music and Premium subscribers reached more than 125 million worldwide as of March 2025.
• Among US adults, 84% report using YouTube, the highest of any social platform Pew tracks.
• Over 20 million videos are uploaded to YouTube daily, contributing to a lifetime archive of more than 20 billion uploaded videos.

Source: DataReportal, Pew Research Center, YouTube Press, Alphabet Investor Relations, YouTube Blog

Recent Developments

• April 29, 2026: Alphabet’s Q1 2026 earnings reported YouTube ad revenue of $9.88 billion, up 10.7% year over year, alongside 350 million paid Alphabet consumer subscriptions.
• April 10, 2026: YouTube began rolling out price increases for YouTube Premium and YouTube Music subscriptions in select markets, citing rising content licensing and creator-payout costs.
• February 4, 2026: Sundar Pichai announced YouTube full-year 2025 revenue surpassed over $60 billion, with over 325 million paid subscriptions across Alphabet consumer services.
• YouTube Press update: YouTube Shorts is now averaging over 200 billion daily views.
• YouTube Press update: Localized versions of YouTube run in over 100 countries across 80 languages, with over 20 million videos uploaded daily.

Global YouTube User Count and Year-Over-Year Change

• YouTube reaches approximately 2.70 billion monthly active users worldwide as of February 2026.
• At the start of 2025, YouTube ads reached 2.53 billion users around the world, equivalent to 30.9% of all the people on Earth, per DataReportal.
• The audience grew by 39.7 million users (around +1.6%) over the past 12 months reported by DataReportal.
• Global ad-reach was flat quarter over quarter from October 2024 to January 2025, around the slowest sequential reading on DataReportal’s running tracker.
• YouTube ads reached around 45.5% of the world’s internet users at the start of 2025.
• The gap between the February 2026 monthly-user figure and the January 2025 ad-reach figure is roughly 170 million users, attributable in part to organic growth and in part to methodology revisions.

Source: DataReportal, Global Media Insight aggregation

Two methodologies underpin every “YouTube user” figure: DataReportal counts ad-addressable accounts; Global Media Insight blends those counts with Statista’s behavioural panels. Neither matches the other.

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YouTube Users by Country

• India had the largest YouTube audience of any country, with around 491 million users in early 2025.
• The United States ranked second with 253 million users, just over half of India’s total.
• Brazil had 144 million YouTube users, narrowly ahead of Indonesia at 143 million.
• Mexico ranked fifth with 83.6 million users, ahead of Japan’s 78.7 million.
• Germany was the largest European YouTube market at 65.5 million users.
• Vietnam, the Philippines, and Turkey rounded out the global top 10 with 62.3 million, 57.7 million, and 57.5 million users, respectively.
• The top 10 countries combined account for approximately 1.44 billion YouTube users, or roughly 57% of the global ad-reach audience.

Key finding: According to DataReportal, India had around 491 million YouTube users in early 2025, nearly double the United States’ 253 million. India’s audience is roughly 3.4 times the size of the third-ranked Brazilian audience and represents close to 19% of YouTube’s global ad-addressable footprint.

For comparison with the broader YouTube workforce footprint, see our YouTube workforce data.

YouTube Penetration Rates: Where the Platform Hit Saturation

• Saudi Arabia leads the world in YouTube penetration at approximately 95.8% of online users.
• Israel ranks second with a YouTube penetration rate of 93.3% among internet users.
• Singapore follows at 91.8%, the third-highest market penetration globally.
• Three markets. Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Singapore sit at penetration rates above 90% of their online populations. In those markets, YouTube has effectively converted every internet user it can convert. The next user must come from a person who is newly coming online, not from a non-user who switches to YouTube.
• By comparison, the United States’ ad-reach audience of 253 million sits within a national online population of roughly 310 million, implying a penetration rate near 82%, below the saturation tier.
• The saturation pattern matters for forecasting: future global YouTube growth will skew toward markets with sub-50% penetration, where rising smartphone ownership directly translates to first-time YouTube usage.

YouTube Audience Demographics by Age (Global)

• Users aged 25 to 34 represent 21.7% of YouTube’s global audience, the largest single age group.
• Users aged 35 to 44 represent 18.5% of the audience.
• Users aged 18 to 24 represent 15.8% of the audience.
• Adults aged 18 to 44 account for approximately 56.0% of YouTube’s global audience.
• The age skew matters for advertiser planning: More than half the global audience falls inside the prime 18 to 44 consumer demographic, which carries higher disposable income than the platform-wide skew on TikTok or Snap.

Source: Global Media Insight, DataReportal ad-audience methodology

YouTube Audience Demographics by Gender

• Men represent approximately 54.3% of YouTube’s global audience.
• Women represent approximately 45.7% of the global audience.
• In Pew Research Center’s 2025 survey of US adults, 86% of men and 83% of women use YouTube.
• The global gender gap on YouTube is approximately 8.6-percentage points, wider than the gap reported on Instagram or TikTok in comparable measurement frameworks.

Source: Global Media Insight, Pew Research Center

US YouTube Usage by Age and Education (Pew Research)

• 84% of US adults use YouTube as of Pew Research Center’s February to June 2025 survey, the highest of any social platform Pew tracks.
• Adults aged 18 to 29 use YouTube at 95%, the highest age-group rate.
• Adults aged 30 to 49 use YouTube at 92%.
• Adults aged 50 to 64 use YouTube at 85%.
• Adults aged 65 and older use YouTube at 64%, a 31-point gap with the 18 to 29 cohort.
• 78% of US adults with high school or less education use YouTube, rising to 87% with some college and 89% of college graduates.

US YouTube Usage by Race, Income, and Geography (Pew Research)

• 92% of Asian US adults use YouTube, the highest rate by race or ethnicity in Pew’s 2025 sample.
• 88% of Hispanic US adults use YouTube, with 85% of Black adults and 82% of White adults reporting usage.
• By household income, approximately 89% of US adults in the highest bracket use YouTube, compared with 77% in the lowest bracket.
• By geography, 87% of suburban residents use YouTube, 85% of urban residents, and 79% of rural residents.
• The income gap between the top and bottom Pew brackets is approximately 12-percentage points, narrower than the corresponding gap on platforms like TikTok or LinkedIn.

The Pew vs DataReportal Measurement Gap

• Pew Research Center reports 84% of US adults use YouTube, based on a survey conducted February 5 to June 18, 2025.
• DataReportal reports 253 million YouTube users in the United States, based on the platform’s ad-addressable audience methodology around early 2025.
• Pew Research Center’s 84% rate, applied to the roughly 265 million US adult population, implies approximately 223 million US YouTube users, about 30 million fewer than DataReportal’s count of 253 million.
• Pew counts behaviour: a respondent who answers “yes” to using YouTube. DataReportal counts ad-addressable accounts. The same person can be one Pew “user” and several DataReportal accounts. Both numbers are correct within their methodology.

By the numbers: Pew Research Center’s 2025 survey found 84% of US adults use YouTube, while DataReportal counts 253 million US YouTube ad-reach accounts. The roughly 30-million-account discrepancy reflects two valid definitions of “user”, recent behaviour versus ad-targetable account, that produce different national totals depending on which question a researcher is answering.

Source: Pew Research Center, DataReportal

YouTube Premium and Subscription Audience

• YouTube Music and Premium passed more than 125 million paid subscribers worldwide in March 2025, including trial users.
• The milestone is up from 100 million subscribers reported in February 2024, an increase of more than 25 million in roughly 13 months.
• As of February 4, 2026, Alphabet reported over 325 million paid subscriptions across consumer services, including YouTube Premium, YouTube TV, and Google One.
• By Q1 2026, that figure had grown to 350 million paid subscriptions, with Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler stating that YouTube subscriptions were growing faster than YouTube ads.
• On April 10, 2026, YouTube began rolling out price increases for Premium and Music plans in select markets, citing rising content licensing and creator-payout costs.

YouTube Shorts Logged-In Audience

• 2 billion logged-in monthly users were watching YouTube Shorts as of mid-2023, the most recent figure Google has officially disclosed for the logged-in segment.
• YouTube Shorts is now averaging over 200 billion daily views, per the YouTube Press page.
• The 200-billion daily views figure represents a significant acceleration from the 70-billion daily Shorts views YouTube reported in March 2024, suggesting Shorts has become a dominant slice of all YouTube viewing.
• The ratio between current daily Shorts views (over 200 billion, per the YouTube Press page) and the prior milestone (70-billion daily Shorts views) is approximately 2.86x.
• The Shorts logged-in figure isolates account-bound users from broader ad-reach audiences and signals heavy Shorts adoption.

Source: TechCrunch reporting on Alphabet earnings, YouTube Press

Daily Time Spent on YouTube

• US users spend an average of 49 minutes per day on YouTube, second only to TikTok in average daily social-media time.
• People watch over 1 billion hours of video on YouTube every day, per the YouTube Press page.
• At 49 minutes per day, the average US user spends approximately 24.5 hours on YouTube each month, equivalent to a full day of viewing.
• Time-spent metrics matter more than user counts for advertiser yield. A platform with a flat user count but rising daily minutes still grows ad inventory; a platform with rising users but falling minutes does not.

Source: Global Media Insight, eMarketer

Mobile vs Desktop YouTube Use

• Approximately 90% of YouTube visits come from mobile devices.
• Desktop and other non-mobile traffic accounts for roughly the remaining 10% of YouTube traffic, given mobile’s approximately 90% share.
• Localized versions of YouTube run in over 100 countries across 80 languages, supporting the mobile-first audience profile.
• The mobile dominance pattern is structural. YouTube built Shorts for vertical mobile attention, and the daily Shorts view count maps directly to the mobile usage share.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Conclusion

YouTube’s audience story has shifted from raw growth to saturation arithmetic. The platform reaches approximately 2.70 billion monthly active users worldwide as of February 2026. India had around 491 million YouTube users and the United States had 253 million users in early 2025, per DataReportal. Pew Research found 84% of US adults watch YouTube in its 2025 survey. Year-over-year growth of around 1.6% in the global ad-reach audience signals a maturing platform.

Future expansion depends on first-time internet users in low-penetration markets, not on converting existing online populations where over 90% of online users already watch YouTube.

Subscription growth is led by more than 125 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers as of March 2025. Alphabet reported 350 million paid subscriptions across consumer services by Q1 2026, with YouTube subscription revenue growing faster than YouTube ad revenue.

For advertisers, creators, and platform analysts, the practical takeaway is to stop quoting a single “YouTube user” number. The right figure depends on the question.