There are about 8,300,678,395 people alive today. This site tracks them across 240 countries and territories and 31,365 cities and towns — every figure sourced, dated and linked back to where it came from.
Note on the counters: world population and annual growth come from the UN series, while births and deaths are summed from national vital rates covering 213 of 240 countries. The two are derived independently, so births minus deaths will not exactly equal the growth figure. A live ticking counter arrives with the interactive layer.
Hover a country for its figures, or click through to its profile. Every number here is also in the tables below.
Observed to 2024, then the UN medium-variant projection.
| Year | Population |
|---|---|
| 1950 | 2,493,092,848 |
| 1960 | 3,015,470,894 |
| 1970 | 3,694,683,794 |
| 1980 | 4,447,606,236 |
| 1990 | 5,327,803,110 |
| 2000 | 6,171,702,993 |
| 2010 | 7,021,732,148 |
| 2020 | 7,887,001,292 |
| 2030 | 8,569,124,911 |
| 2040 | 9,177,190,203 |
| 2050 | 9,664,378,587 |
| 2060 | 9,989,232,292 |
| 2070 | 10,189,241,959 |
| 2080 | 10,283,078,029 |
| 2090 | 10,271,565,070 |
| 2100 | 10,180,160,751 |
The twenty largest of 240 countries and territories.
The record holders on the measures people ask about most.
Where the world's people live.
All continents: 8.22B
| Name | Value | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Asia | 4.83B | 58.7% |
| Africa | 1.55B | 18.8% |
| Europe | 746.6M | 9.1% |
| North America | 613.1M | 7.5% |
| South America | 438.1M | 5.3% |
| Oceania | 47.3M | 0.6% |
50 countries · +0.64% a year · median age 32.6
58 countries · +2.27% a year · median age 19.7
53 countries · +0.28% a year · median age 42.9
38 countries · +0.67% a year · median age 35.3
14 countries · +0.57% a year · median age 33.1
27 countries · +1.44% a year · median age 33.7
The twenty largest metropolitan areas, from the 140 cities we hold metro-area figures for.
Population, to scale.
| Name | Population |
|---|---|
| India | 1.46B |
| China | 1.41B |
| United States | 341.8M |
| Indonesia | 285.7M |
| Pakistan | 255.2M |
| Nigeria | 237.5M |
| Brazil | 212.8M |
| Bangladesh | 175.7M |
| Russia | 143.5M |
| Ethiopia | 135.5M |
How long each additional billion took.
First billion, roughly 200,000 years into human history.
Second billion — 123 years later.
Third billion in just 33 years.
Fourth billion in 14 years, the fastest yet.
Fifth billion, 13 years on.
Sixth billion in 12 years.
Seventh billion in 12 years.
Eighth billion — the gap stopped shrinking.
Dates for the first billions are historical estimates and are approximate; the 2022 date for eight billion is the UN's. The next billion is projected to take longer than the last — the first time that has happened.
The world adds about 68.4M people a year, but the rate has more than halved since the 1960s. Population is still rising because the base is much larger, not because families are getting bigger.
Countries tend to move from high birth and death rates to low ones. Deaths fall first, which is what produces a population boom; births follow a generation or two later. Most of the world is now somewhere in the later stages.
About 2.1 births per woman keeps a population stable over the long run. More than half the world's people now live in countries below that level, though populations there keep growing for decades through momentum.
A country with many young adults grows even at low fertility, simply because so many people are of childbearing age. That momentum is why population keeps climbing long after birth rates fall.
More than half of humanity now lives in urban areas, and almost all future population growth is expected to be urban. The 140 metro areas tracked here hold a substantial share of the world's people.
Migration does not change world population, but it dominates national growth in much of Europe, North America and the Gulf. For several countries in our data, all current growth is net migration.
Ten things the numbers on this site add up to.
The world population is about 8,300,678,395 as of 1 January 2026, according to the UN World Population Prospects 2024 medium variant. It is growing by roughly 68.4M people a year, or about 2.2 every second.
India, with 1,463,865,525 people — about 17.6% of everyone alive. China is second with 1.41B.
About 0.82% a year. That rate has fallen by more than half since the late 1960s, when it exceeded 2%. Because the population base is far larger now, the absolute number added each year has fallen much less than the rate.
Tokyo, Japan, with a metropolitan population of about 37,400,068. Rankings differ depending on whether they measure the metro area or the city proper — by city proper the answer is different.
Under the UN medium variant, world population peaks at about 10.3B around 2084, then slowly declines. The high and low variants disagree substantially — the low variant has population falling from the 2050s.
Falling fertility, principally. As child mortality drops, incomes rise and education expands, families get smaller. More than half the world now lives in countries with fertility below the replacement level of about 2.1 births per woman.
There are 195 UN member and observer states. This site covers 240 countries and territories, because dependencies and special administrative regions publish their own statistics — which means some populations here are also counted within their administering state.
Short-run projections are quite reliable, because most people alive in twenty years are already born. Long-run projections depend on fertility assumptions that no one can verify in advance, which is why the UN publishes several variants rather than a single number.
Population history and projections from UN World Population Prospects 2024; most indicators from the World Bank; median age, schooling, HDI, happiness, CO₂ and obesity from Our World in Data; city coordinates from GeoNames.
Every value is the most recent published observation for that country, so years differ between indicators. The year is shown beside each number rather than being smoothed away.
Where no public source covers a country, the value is marked as an archive estimate or shown as unavailable. Missing data is never filled with a zero or an average.