Omdia puts YouTube at 29 billion videos as of December 2025, while YouTube itself reported over 20 billion uploads as of April 2025. The platform, owned by Google since 2006, does not publish a live catalog total. This guide answers how many videos are on YouTube using each published count, then covers the daily upload rate, the Shorts share of new uploads and how viewing time splits across the library.
How Many Videos Are There on YouTube
Counting YouTube’s Videos: 29 Billion, 20 Billion or 14.76 Billion?
Three recent totals exist, and each measures something different at a different date. Putting them side by side shows the range, not a single answer.
Omdia: 29 Billion Videos (December 2025)
Omdia counted 29 billion YouTube videos as of December 2025, in research released on January 28, 2026.
The firm credited Shorts, AI-generated content and expansion in markets such as India for the growth. Its release does not describe how the count was built.
Source: Omdia, December 2025 estimate (released January 2026)
YouTube: Over 20 Billion Uploads (April 2025)
YouTube reported over 20 billion uploaded videos as of April 2025, including music, Shorts and podcasts. The number appeared in the blog post marking the platform’s 20th birthday.
This is the company’s own figure. YouTube reports inside Google, which bought it for $1.65 billion in stock in 2006.
Source: YouTube Official Blog, April 2025
UMass Amherst TubeStats: 14.76 Billion (April 2024)
Researchers at the UMass Amherst Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure estimate YouTube’s size by testing random video addresses and scaling up the hit rate. Private videos are not counted.
| Estimate date | Estimated number of YouTube videos |
|---|---|
| December 2023 | 13.325 billion |
| April 2024 | 14,760,753,574 |
Source: UMass Amherst iDPI (TubeStats), December 2023 and April 2024
How Many Videos Are Uploaded to YouTube Every Day?
YouTube averages over 20 million video uploads per day, based on its own figure as of April 2025.
Source: YouTube Official Blog, April 2025
Shorts make up more than 90% of all new uploads, Omdia reported. The firm did not publish the Shorts share of the full catalog.
Source: Omdia, January 2026
For a full calendar year, UMass Amherst researchers estimated that over 4 billion videos were posted to YouTube in 2023.
Source: UMass Amherst (Ethan Zuckerman), December 2023
More than 1 million channels used YouTube’s AI creation tools daily on average in December 2025, CEO Neal Mohan wrote. Wider creator economy statistics track the business side of those channels.
Source: YouTube CEO Neal Mohan’s 2026 letter, January 2026
Engagement is reported on a separate scale. YouTube users averaged over 100 million comments a day in 2024, and videos received over 3.5 billion likes per day.
Source: YouTube Official Blog, 2024 data (published April 2025)
Total Videos on YouTube vs. Watch Time: Top 1% Takes 91%
The top 1% of YouTube videos generate 91% of total viewing time, according to Omdia. The remaining 99% account for 9%.
Omdia equates the full library to 280,000 years of video content, most of it rarely watched.
Senior analyst Daoud Jackson said the catalog forms the backbone of Google’s video training data for its Gemini models.
Source: Omdia, January 2026
What Does a Random YouTube Video Look Like?
UMass Amherst drew a random sample of YouTube videos instead of following recommendations. The results, published in December 2023, describe the typical upload rather than the typical view.
Most sampled videos had no likes (88.7%) and no comments (72.6%). Only 13% had more than 1,000 views, and 4.9% had none.
The top 16 videos in the sample accounted for more than half of all its views.
Source: UMass Amherst iDPI, random YouTube sample published December 2023
Ethan Zuckerman put the median at 39 views per video. Videos with 10,000 or more views made up roughly 4% of the dataset but drew most of the views.
Source: UMass Amherst (Ethan Zuckerman), December 2023
Which Languages Are YouTube Videos In?
English leads but covers under a third of videos where language could be detected.
| Language | Share of sampled videos with detectable language |
|---|---|
| English | 32% |
| Hindi | 10.5% |
| Spanish | 8% |
| Portuguese | Slightly below Spanish (no exact figure published) |
| Arabic | Just over 6% |
Source: UMass Amherst iDPI, random YouTube sample published December 2023
Uploaders filed almost 56% of sampled videos under the default “people and blogs” category and a bit under 13% under gaming. When researchers hand-coded a subsample, nearly 30% were about video games.
Source: UMass Amherst iDPI, December 2023
YouTube Viewing Time by Content Type: Professional Video at 46%
Professionally filmed content makes up 46% of YouTube viewing time, Omdia found.
Music videos account for 33%. MTV, once built on the format, now rarely plays music videos on its main channel.
News takes 10% and ranks third. Video podcasts reach 5%, which Omdia describes as rapid growth for the format.
Omdia reports each category on its own line. The shares are not presented as parts of one total, so they should not be added together.
Source: Omdia, January 2026
Is the Number of Videos on YouTube Still Growing in 2026?
Omdia projected in January 2026 that YouTube was on track to reach 30 billion videos in early 2026. We found no published confirmation of that milestone from Omdia or YouTube as of September 2026.
Source: Omdia, January 2026
TubeStats shows the same direction over a shorter window: 13.325 billion videos in December 2023 and 14.76 billion by April 2024.
Source: UMass Amherst iDPI (TubeStats), December 2023 and April 2024
Shorts averaged 200 billion daily views, according to Neal Mohan’s January 2026 letter. TV-screen viewing is tracked separately in these streaming industry statistics.
Source: YouTube CEO Neal Mohan’s 2026 letter, January 2026
FAQs
How many videos are on YouTube in 2026?
About 29 billion, based on Omdia’s estimate for December 2025. Omdia projected 30 billion for early 2026. YouTube’s own last reported total was over 20 billion uploaded videos as of April 2025.
How many videos are uploaded to YouTube every day?
Over 20 million on average, according to YouTube, as of April 2025. UMass Amherst researchers estimated over 4 billion videos were posted during 2023.
What percentage of YouTube videos are Shorts?
More than 90% of new uploads are Shorts, according to Omdia’s January 2026 research. Neither Omdia nor YouTube has published the Shorts share of the full catalog.
Is it true, as Reddit threads often claim, that most YouTube videos get almost no views?
Largely, yes. UMass Amherst researchers reported a median of 39 views per video in December 2023. In their random sample, 4.9% of videos had zero views and only 13% had more than 1,000.
Why do estimates of YouTube’s video count differ?
They measure different things at different dates. UMass Amherst counts publicly visible videos only, YouTube counted all uploads as of April 2025, and Omdia’s December 2025 figure comes from its own research model.
