YouTube in numbers: Monthly views, most popular video, and more fun stats!

YouTube is big. Really big. It’s the most popular video streaming platform on the planet and the second most visited website in the world. But you probably already knew that, didn’t you? That’s why we did some research and prepared a bunch of interesting YouTube stats and data you likely aren’t familiar with. These include how many users the platform has on a monthly basis, how much YouTube is worth, who is the highest-paid YouTuber, and much more. Let’s dive in!

Two billion monthly users

YouTube has hit a new milestone this year. The streaming platform has crossed two billion logged-in monthly users, which is insane. That’s around a quarter (25%) of the entire population. According to some reports, 62% of users are men and 38% are women.

500 hours of fresh content per minute

A few months ago, Google revealed that more than 500 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every single minute. That translates to 30,000 hours per hour and 720,000 hours per day. To put it another way, you’d need around 82 years to watch all the new content uploaded to YouTube in just a single day. Wow.

$1.65 billion purchase price

YouTube was launched in 2015 by three former PayPal employees — Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley, and Steve Chen. The domain name was activated on February 14, 2005, but the first video was uploaded to the platform on April 23 of the same year. The platform quickly became a success, with Google acquiring it for $1.65 billion in November 2016.

$140 billion market value

The $1.65 billion price tag Google paid for YouTube was well worth it. According to some reports, YouTube brings in over $20 billion in revenue annually and is worth more than $140 billion. That puts it right up there with Netflix, which has more than 150 million paid users.

6.3 billion views for the most popular video

The most popular video on YouTube at the moment is Despacito, a music video by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee. At the time of writing, it has amassed around 6.3 billion views. It’s followed by Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You (over 4.3 billion) and Wiz Khalifa’s See You Again (over 4.1 billion) music videos. Out of the top 10 YouTube uploads in terms of views, only one is not a music video. Sitting in fourth place on the list, the video titled Masha and the Bear – Recipe for Disaster has received over 4 billion views so far.

5 billion videos watched daily

According to some reports, users watch five billion videos on YouTube every single day, which translates to roughly 150 billion per month. However, the data is from last year, which means the number is likely a bit higher now. We don’t know for sure since YouTube doesn’t share these stats with the public regularly. What we do know is that people use YouTube way more than Netflix. Reports claim that users watch a little more than a billion hours of Netflix content per week, while YouTube users watch around the same amount per day.

$22 million in revenue for the highest-paid YouTuber

According to Forbes, Ryan Kaji was the highest-paid YouTube star in 2018, bringing in $22 million with his videos. What’s interesting is that Ryan is only seven years old and reviews toys on his channel, which is called Ryan ToysReview. He has more than 21 million subscribers and has amassed more than 31 billion views so far.

107 million subscribers for the most popular channel

PewDiePie was the most popular YouTube channels for a number of years, but that changed this March when it was overtaken by T-Series — a channel owned by an Indian music label. At the moment, T-Series has more than 107 million subscribers, while PewDiePie “only” has around 98 million.

70% of watch time comes from mobile devices

The vast majority of videos watched on YouTube are done so via mobile devices, which includes both smartphones and tablets. This makes sense, as it’s the most convenient option, allowing us to watch videos at home as well as on the go. The other 30% is made up of other internet-connected devices like PCs and TVs.

40 minutes is the average YouTube viewing session

YouTube can be very engaging, with the average viewing session lasting around 40 minutes. There are just so many great videos on the platform that’s it’s hard to put down your phone and stop watching them. For reference, the average Facebook session is much shorter at around five minutes, according to Statista.

16 million thumbs down for the most disliked video

Believe it or not, the most disliked YouTube video is actually made by Google. It’s the 2018 edition of YouTube Rewind, which is very cringy and has received 16 million dislikes so far. Not everyone hates it, though, as the video also received 2.5 million likes. Check it out here and decide for yourself whether it’s good or bad (it’s bad).

80 languages and 91 countries

YouTube is popular all around the world. To attract as many users as possible, YouTube can be accessed in 80 languages, which covers around 95 percent of the internet population. The service is available in 91 countries across the globe.

These are some of the most interesting YouTube stats we’ve found. If we missed any major ones, do let us know in the comments below!