Key stats:
- In 2025, humanity will take approximately 2.1 trillion photos. In comparison, 1.9 trillion photos were taken in 2024 worldwide.
- Globally, we capture 5.3 billion photos daily, or 61,400 per second.
- The average American takes 20 photos per day.
- There are approximately 14.3 trillion photos in existence.
- Smartphones account for 94% of all photos taken in 2024.
- Google Image Search indexes an estimated 136 billion images.
- 14 billion images are shared daily on social media, with WhatsApp leading at 6.9 billion.
This research covers the number of photos humanity takes in a year (or day or second), how many the average person takes in a day, the total number of photos ever taken, the number of photos on Google, and much more.
Unless indicated otherwise, all the information presented on this page is original content from Photutorial and has been researched by Matic Broz. We kindly ask that you give appropriate credit to Photutorial and its authors when using our data.
Table of contents:
- How many photos are taken each year?
- How many photos are taken per second, minute, hour, etc?
- How many photos are there in the world?
- How many images are on Google?
- Photos taken every day by region
- Images shared over social media
- Smartphones vs. cameras
- How many photos does the average person have?
How many photos are taken each year?
In 2025, around 2.1 trillion photos will be taken worldwide, according to our latest estimates. In 2024, 1.9 trillion photos were taken, and approximately 1.7 trillion and 1.8 trillion in 2022 and 2023.
Here are more trends and facts:
- The number of photos taken increases by 6% to 8% every year as camera technology becomes more accessible and affordable, both in smartphones and cameras.
- Due to lockdowns and travel restrictions, people took 25% fewer photos than expected in 2020 and 20% fewer in 2021. In 2022, the number of photos taken returned almost to its normal trajectory, to approximately 1.72 trillion.
- This upward trend will likely continue at the same pace until the year 2030, when approximately 3 trillion will be taken a year.
Here’s a table with yearly photos taken worldwide since 2013:
| Year | Number of photos taken each year |
|---|---|
| 2013 | 660 billion |
| 2014 | 880 billion |
| 2015 | 1 trillion |
| 2016 | 1.10 trillion |
| 2017 | 1.20 trillion |
| 2018 | 1.33 trillion |
| 2019 | 1.44 trillion |
| 2020 | 1.15 trillion |
| 2021 | 1.20 trillion |
| 2022 | 1.71 trillion |
| 2023 | 1.81 trillion |
| 2024 | 1.94 trillion |
| 2025 | 2.1 trillion (prediction) |
How many photos are taken per second, minute, hour, etc?
Over 2.1 trillion photos per year sounds impressive (that’s 2,100,000,000,000), but it becomes ever more impressive when we put this number into perspective. In essence, humanity takes:
- 61,400 photos per second
- 3.7 million photos per minute
- 221 million photos per hour
- 5.3 billion photos per day
- 162 billion photos per month
If you take a photo every second, it will take almost a day to match the number of photos people take in one second. To match the total number of photos taken globally in a year, it would take over 61,000 years.
How many photos are there in the world?
The first photograph, entitled “View from the Window in Le Gras“, was taken in 1826. Then, in 1861, the first color photograph was taken, followed by Fujifilm, which introduced the first digital camera in 1988. Despite the quick development of imaging technology, photos were scarce until smartphones were equipped with digital cameras. Nowadays, billions of photos are taken every day.
Considering the relatively slow start of photography and a boom in the recent years, here’s the most recent data:
- There are about 14.3 trillion photos in the world in 2024.
- Every year, almost 2 billion new photos are taken.
- By 2030, there will be at least 30 trillion photos worldwide. However, this number might get much higher depending on the growth of AI image generators.
How many images are on Google?
According to Photutorial’s data, there are an estimated 136 billion indexed images on Google Image Search in 2023. The number of indexed images could reach 382 trillion by 2030.
But Google doesn’t tell us the number of images in Google Images. The most recent confirmed data comes from 2010 when Google boasted about 10 billion indexed images. We also know that when Google Images was launched in 2001, 250 million images were indexed. This number increased to 1 billion in 2005. Since then, no official number has been confirmed.
Photos taken every day by region
An average US citizen takes 20.2 photos per day. Asia-Pacific follows the US with 15 photos per day, Latin America with 11.8 photos per day, Africa with 8.1 photos per day, and Europe with 4.9 photos per day.
Keep in mind that these numbers are higher than the global average for all people. This is because we’re looking specifically at individuals who actively take photos. Many people worldwide don’t have access to cameras or choose not to take photos for various reasons.
Images shared over social media
Accurate, up-to-date information on the number of photos uploaded or shared on social media platforms is scarce, as most available data is several years old. To provide a current estimate for 2024, I extrapolated from the available 2013 statistics.
Today, users share a staggering 14 billion images daily through social media. WhatsApp makes the majority at 6.9 billion images daily, followed by 3.8 billion on Snapchat, 2.1 billion on Facebook, and 1.3 billion on Instagram. Flickr has seen less growth, with only about 1 million images shared daily.
Comparing these numbers to 2013 data, we can see a significant increase from 27,800 images per minute on Instagram, 208,300 on Facebook, 8,796 images per second (or 527,700 per minute) on Snapchat, and 700 images per minute on Flickr.
Why do these numbers surpass the reported daily count of photos taken? Social media platforms enable users to share not only original photos but also a variety of image-based content, such as screenshots and memes. Additionally, individual images may be shared with multiple users, further driving up the total number of shares.
Smartphones vs. cameras
While professionals still shoot with interchangeable lens cameras (ILC), most photos are taken with smartphones. Smartphones’ ubiquity, price, and ease of use have been the main reasons for their widespread adoption in photography recently. As a result, 89% of photos were taken with smartphones in 2020, 92.5% in 2023, and 93% in 2023.
Google reports that its Android devices take 93 million selfies per day, and in one poll, 18-to-24-year-olds reported that every third photo they take is a selfie.
How many photos does the average person have?
According to Gigaom, the average user had 630 photos and 24 videos stored on their phone in 2015. Then, the average iOS user took 182 photos per month, while the average Android user took 111 photos per month. Since then, the number of photos people take every day has drastically increased, and smartphones can store many more images than they used to.
According to our 2024 data, the average user has around 2,000 photos on their smartphone, with iOS users closer to 2,400 photos and Android users around 1,900 photos.
Other sources
- Datacommons.org, 2021.
- Mathew Brogie, Average Number of Photos Taken Per Day Around the World, Repsly, 2021.
- Ed Lee, 2021 Worldwide Image Capture Forecast: 2020 – 2025, Rise Above Research, June 10, 2021.
- Nina Pantic, How Many Photos Will Be Taken in 2021?, Mylio, updated February 2, 2022.
- Minda Zetlin, Taking Selfies Destroys Your Confidence and Raises Anxiety, a Study Shows. Why Are You Still Doing It?, Inc., May 31, 2019.
- Nate Smith, Product Manager, Google Images, Ooh! Ahh! Google Images presents a nicer way to surf the visual web, Google Official Blog, July 20, 2010.
This article was originally published in February 2022. The most recent update was in May 2025.
