Key YouTube numbers
- As of 2025, there are 4.3 billion YouTube videos.
- 1.1 billion (26%) of those are YouTube Shorts, while the remaining 3.2 billion are standard videos.
- YouTube is going to keep growing at the rate of around 600 million videos per year.
- Every second, 6 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube.
- The average YouTube video length is 12 minutes and 26 seconds.
YouTube doesn’t tell us exactly how many videos there are. So to get this number, I had to get creative. I evaluated that there are currently 4.3 billion YouTube videos, give or take 100 million.
Note: I update this article monthly to keep the numbers fresh.
Currently, YouTube is growing faster than ever, thanks to the addition of YouTube shorts, which make up about a quarter of all YouTube videos. I assume this trend will continue in the following months.
Table of contents:
- How many videos are there on YouTube?
- How many YouTube videos are uploaded every second?
- How long are YouTube videos?
How many videos are there on YouTube?
In 2023, the number of YouTube videos increased by almost 1 billion, the single largest year-over-year growth of the platform ever, given that there were 3.08 billion videos on YouTube at the end of 2022, thanks to the boom of Shorts.
Now, in 2025, there are 4.3 billion videos on YouTube. While still a big YoY increase, the growth has slowed due to YouTube putting a halt to Shorts spam (or simply people getting bored with them?). Although this explosive trend is already slowing down, I estimate there will be around 10 billion videos on YouTube in 2030.
Unless something unexpected happens, it’s fair to assume YouTube is slowly going to continue to grow at a rate of about 500 to 700 million videos per year, with current trends showing 20 to 30% YOY growth.
| Year | Number of YouTube videos | YOY growth |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 0.5 billion | |
| 2016 | 0.6 billion | +100 million |
| 2017 | 0.9 billion | +300 million |
| 2018 | 1.0 billion | +100 million |
| 2019 | 1.5 billion | +500 million |
| 2020 | 2.0 billion | +500 million |
| 2021 | 2.7 billion | +700 million |
| 2022 | 3.1 billion | +400 million |
| 2023 | 3.9 billion | +800 million |
| 2024 | 4.3 billion | +400 million |
How many HD videos are on YouTube?
There are 2.75 billion HD or higher-quality videos available on YouTube. This means 71% of videos are at least in HD quality. In 2015, a total of 284 million videos were HD or higher, making up 54.6%.
How many YouTube videos are uploaded every second?
Over 8.33 hours of video content are uploaded to YouTube every second. This means 500 hours per minute, 30,000 hours of video uploaded every hour, and over 720,000 hours daily.
Creators upload over 21 million hours of YouTube content per month and over 262 million hours of YouTube videos per year. That’s 30,000 years of content in one year.
With 4.3 billion videos on YouTube, each averaging 12 minutes and 26 seconds, it would take over 53 billion minutes or almost 1 billion hours to watch every video. That’s the equivalent of about 36.8 million days or more than 101,000 years of continuous viewing.
How long are YouTube videos?
I calculated that on average, a YouTube video length is 12 minutes and 26 seconds. Most videos are between 4 and 20 minutes long. 1.46 billion videos are shorter than 4 minutes (34%), 1.94 billion videos range from 4 to 20 minutes (45%), and 903 million videos exceed 20 minutes (21%).
In recent years, there’s been a trend of longer and longer videos on YouTube. In 2015, the average video was just over 9 minutes long. Back then, videos up to 20 minutes long made up 91% of all videos, while only 9% of videos were longer than 20 minutes.
This article was originally published in November 2023. The most recent update was in May 2025.
