YouTube Users by Country 2026

In 2005, friends and former PayPal co-workers Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karem introduced YouTube to the world. At first, the concept of the site was much more social than the “anything and everything goes” format it is today. The creators initially wanted it to be a place where amateurs could easily upload and share their videos and maybe even connect with other video makers, like a matchmaking site.

Of course, today, the service has expanded to a great degree. YouTube is now owned by Alphabet, the high-tech powerhouse that controls Google, Gmail, and several other integrated online services. It’s now seen around the world, and when ads were introduced, it made it possible for some video makers to make money from their contributions.

As of 2023, YouTube has more than 2.7 billion active users and is considered the second most visited site worldwide – Facebook is still first with about 2.9 billion. About 52 percent of YouTube users access it at least once a month, and 720,000 hours of new content are uploaded daily.

Breaking down who’s watching, India currently has the most annual viewers, with 1.428 billion. China is approaching this number with 1.425 billion annual users – an interesting number because the service is blocked by the Chinese government.

India is also dominant from another perspective: the number of residents in a country that watch YouTube regularly. In this case, as of 2024, India had about 462 million unique monthly users, representing about 18 percent of total YouTube users.

This number is followed by the United States with 239 million users. Next comes Brazil with 144 million users, Indonesia with about 139 million users, and Mexico with about 83 million users. These numbers shift slightly over time: as of July 2023, the number of users still had India at 247 million, the United States at 246 million, Brazil at 142 million, and Indonesia at 139 million. YouTube is officially banned in Iran, North Korea, Turkmenistan, South Sudan and Eritrea.

YouTube’s “penetration rate” varies by country. This is the figure for how much of the population uses it. Although India and the United States have high viewership based on their large populations, Bahrain and Qatar are at the top of the list with 98.2% and 95.2% penetration, respectively. Lebanon follows with 95%, and UAE with 93.2%.