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Global Internet usage refers to the number of people who use the Internet worldwide.
As of 2025, an estimated 6 billion people worldwide were using the Internet, representing approximately 74 percent of the global population. This figure shows continued growth compared with the previous year's estimate of around 5.8 billion users.[1] Despite this progress, significant disparities remain with about 2.2 billion people still offline, underscoring persistent digital divides related to economic development, affordability and infrastructure.[2] Reports on global connectivity emphasize the need for expanded digital infrastructure, affordable services and digital skills training that ensures the expanding Internet access benefits a broader range of population worldwide.[3]
As of 2025, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimates that approximately 6 billion people, or 74% of the global population, are using the Internet. This reflects a significant increase from 60% in 2020, with an estimated 1.3 billion individuals coming online during that five-year period. Despite this steady growth, a "digital divide" remains, leaving 2.2 billion people offline. The gap is particularly stark in low-income countries, where only 23% of the population uses the Internet, compared to 94% in high-income economies. This disparity in "meaningful connectivity" is increasingly defined by differences in connection speed, affordability, and digital skills.[4]
These maps illustrate the growth in the percentage of individuals using the Internet from 1990 to 2014.[10]
Number of Internet users in 2011
This map illustrates the total number of Internet users in a country as well as the percentage of the population that had Internet access in 2011. Source: Information Geographies at the Oxford Internet Institute.[11]Global internet access graph, 2000–2018
This map presents an overview of broadband affordability, as the relationship between average yearly income per capita and the cost of a broadband subscription (data referring to 2011). Source: Information Geographies at the Oxford Internet Institute.[19]
The Internet Systems Consortium provides account for the number of the worldwide number of IPv4 hosts (see below). In 2019, this Internet domain survey was discontinued as it does not account for IPv6 hosts, and therefore might be misleading.[20]
The Web index is a composite statistic designed and produced by the World Wide Web Foundation. It provides a multi-dimensional measure of the World Wide Web's contribution to development and human rights globally. It covers 86 countries as of 2014, the latest year for which the index has been compiled.[22][23] It incorporates indicators that assess the areas of universal access, freedom and openness, relevant content, and empowerment, which indicate economic, social, and political impacts of the Web.
Map showing the score of the countries included in the Web index.
The Carna Botnet was a botnet of 420,000 devices created by hackers to measure the extent of the Internet in what the creators called the "Internet Census of 2012".[24][25]
World map of 24-hour relative average utilization of IPv4 addresses observed using ICMP ping requests as part of the Internet Census of 2012 (Carna Botnet), June – October 2012.[26] Key: from red (high), to yellow, green (average), light blue, and dark blue (low).
↑Due to legal concerns the OpenNet Initiative does not check for filtering of child pornography and because their classifications focus on technical filtering, they do not include other types of censorship.
↑"Internet Enemies"Archived 2014-03-12 at the Wayback Machine, Enemies of the Internet 2014: Entities at the heart of censorship and surveillance, Reporters Without Borders (Paris), 11March 2014. Retrieved 24June 2014.
