About 1.30 billion people in China use the internet, 92% of its population and more than in any other country, followed by India with about 942 million (65%) and the United States with about 322 million (95%), based on World Bank data for 2024 that combine the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) share of people online with each country's population. Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Russia, Mexico, Japan and Nigeria complete the top ten. Worldwide, about 5.8 billion people, 71% of humanity, used the internet in 2024, but the rate ranges from over 94% in North America to about a third in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Measuring internet users: the ITU definition and the 2024 data
An internet user, in the ITU's definition, is anyone who went online at least once in the previous three months, from any device, including a mobile phone. National statistics offices and household surveys supply the raw numbers, the ITU turns them into a percentage for each country, and the World Bank publishes that series in its World Development Indicators. The user counts in this article multiply each country's 2024 percentage by its 2024 population in the same database and round the result.
National agencies sometimes report very different figures, because their surveys use their own age limits and time windows. China's own China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) counted about 1.09 billion users at the end of 2023, 77.5% of the population, well below the ITU-based estimate. Any ranking should therefore say whose figures it uses and for which year. Either way, China has had the world's largest online population since 2008.
| Rank | Country | Internet users, 2024 | Share of population |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 1.30 billion | 92.0% |
| 2 | India | 942 million | 64.9% |
| 3 | United States | 322 million | 94.7% |
| 4 | Indonesia | 206 million | 72.8% |
| 5 | Brazil | 179 million | 84.5% |
| 6 | Pakistan | 144 million | 57.3% |
| 7 | Russia | 136 million | 94.4% |
| 8 | Mexico | 109 million | 83.1% |
| 9 | Japan | 106 million | 85.5% |
| 10 | Nigeria | 96 million | 41.2% |
Eight of the ten are among the world's ten most populous countries, so the ranking is driven mostly by headcount. The share of each population online tells the other half of the story, and it is easiest to see region by region.
The totals are still rising quickly. On the same World Bank data, the world gained about 217 million internet users in a single year, from about 5.58 billion in 2023 to 5.80 billion in 2024, and India alone added roughly 76 million of them. That still left about 2.3 billion people offline in 2024, most of them in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, so the ranking below the top three will keep shifting as the least connected large countries catch up.
East Asia: China’s 1.3 billion and Japan’s 106 million
East Asia and the Pacific is the largest online region by far, with about 2.07 billion users in 2024, and China alone accounts for well over half of them. China connected to the internet permanently on 20 April 1994, and for its first decade use was almost entirely urban; in 2003 fewer than 0.2% of rural people had been online. Government programmes such as the Connecting Every Village Project, begun in 2004, pushed telephone and internet links into the countryside. The Chinese internet is also separate in a way no other on this list is: foreign sites are widely blocked by the Great Firewall, users must register under their real names, and most people use domestic apps in place of foreign ones.
The rural push is the reason China's share has climbed above 90%. By 2011 about 90,000 rural telecentres had been built, each with at least a telephone, a computer and an internet connection, and mobile networks later reached far beyond them. With about 1.41 billion people in 2024 and 92% of them online, China had only around 113 million people still offline, fewer than Nigeria's roughly 137 million, even though its population is six times larger.
Japan, ninth in the world with about 106 million users, has a lower share online (85.5%) than most rich countries. South Korea, with about 51 million users, is the most connected large country in the region at 97.9%.
South Asia: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh
South Asia had about 1.05 billion internet users in 2024, 62.8% of its people, and India holds about nine in ten of them. India's jump came with cheap 4G. Reliance Jio opened its network to the public on 5 September 2016 and is now the country's largest mobile operator, with more than 500 million subscribers, selling 4G data to hundreds of millions of first-time users. Even so, about 35% of Indians, more than 500 million people, were still offline in 2024, the largest unconnected population of any country. For the population behind those numbers, see our guide to the population of India.
Pakistan ranks sixth in the world with about 144 million users, but only 57.3% of its roughly 251 million people are online. Bangladesh, eighth most populous country in the world, just misses the top ten with about 93 million users and a rate of 53.4%.
Southeast Asia: Indonesia leads, Vietnam and the Philippines follow
Indonesia, fourth in the world with about 206 million users, is the regional leader. Connecting a country of thousands of islands has been slow: commercial internet only began in 1994, when the government licensed the first provider, and as late as 2016 about two-thirds of users were on the single island of Java. By 2024, 72.8% of Indonesians were online. The rest of Southeast Asia is smaller but often more connected: Vietnam had about 85 million users (84.2%), the Philippines about 78 million (67.3%) and Thailand about 65 million (90.9%).
The Americas: the United States, Brazil and Mexico
North America has the highest rate of any region, 94.4%, and the United States, third in the world with about 322 million users, dominates it; Canada adds about 39 million at a similar rate. In Latin America and the Caribbean, 81.7% of people were online in 2024, about 541 million users in total. Brazil leads with about 179 million (84.5%), fifth in the world, followed by Mexico with about 109 million (83.1%), eighth. Colombia and Argentina each have about 41 to 42 million users.
Across both halves of the Americas, many of the people still offline live in remote and rural places where laying cable is expensive. Satellite broadband is one answer: SpaceX's Starlink, which began launching satellites in 2019, provides service in about 160 countries and territories and had more than 12 million subscribers by June 2026. Because the ITU counts anyone who goes online from any device, satellite users count exactly like everyone else.
Europe and Russia: Russia online at 94%, Germany first in the EU
Europe and Central Asia is the second most connected region, at 90.9% and about 844 million users. Russia, which spans both Europe and Asia, is the largest online population in the region and seventh in the world, with about 136 million users and a rate of 94.4%. Within the European Union, Germany leads with about 78 million (93.5%), followed by France with about 61 million and Italy with about 53 million, while the United Kingdom has about 66 million users at 95.5% and Turkey about 75 million. Further down, Spain has about 47 million users (95.8%), Poland about 32 million (88.6%) and Ukraine about 31 million (82.5%), a figure measured against a population much reduced by war and emigration since 2022. With rates above 90% in most of the largest countries, there is little room left to grow.
Africa, the Middle East and Oceania: Nigeria, Egypt, Iran and Australia
Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest share of people online, 33.6% in 2024, or about 433 million users, and Nigeria, the continent's most populous country, is its leader and the tenth-largest online population in the world, with about 96 million users. Only 41.2% of Nigerians are online, and almost all of them connect over mobile networks: in 2024 the country had fewer than 0.1 fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people, against about 71 mobile subscriptions per 100. Ethiopia, Africa's second most populous country, has about 29 million users but a rate of just 21.9%, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo about 21.5 million at 19.7%. More on the country behind the African leader is in our guide to the population of Nigeria.
The continent's other large markets are better connected. Egypt, in North Africa, has about 87 million users (74.6%), the largest online population in the Arab world, and South Africa about 50 million (78.4%). In the Middle East, Iran leads with about 78 million users (85.3%), while Saudi Arabia and Bahrain both report that 100% of their populations are online. The World Bank's Middle East and North Africa group, which also takes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, had about 500 million users in 2024, 61.5% of its people; after Egypt, the largest Arab online populations are Iraq at about 37.5 million users (81.5%), Algeria at about 36 million, Saudi Arabia at about 35 million and Morocco at about 35 million (91.2%). Oceania is the smallest region by numbers: Australia leads it with about 26 million users, 96.1% of its people. The number of users is only one measure of a country's internet, and the countries at the top of this list rank very differently for connection quality in our guide to the countries with the fastest internet.