Quick Answer
How many people use YouTube in 2025?
YouTube has 2.2 billion monthly active users.
The YouTube video platform was launched on February 14, 2005 by Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and Steve Chin.
Since its introduction to the online world, it’s become the second most visited website across the globe.
In 2021, YouTube gained even more popularity, which could be due to the lockdowns from the pandemic, homeschooling, etc.
Plus, YouTube started offering live videos and other features for creators.
This platform has 2.2 billion monthly active users who create and/or watch videos. It’s used for entertainment, making money online, sharing passions, and expression.
The following facts will discuss how many people use YouTube in the world, what they are watching, how often they are watching, how long they are watching, and other data.
Whether you’re a content creator, brand, influencer, marketer, business owner, or a person who simply enjoys watching videos, these stats, facts, and figures are pertinent to you.
How Many People Use YouTube in 2025?
YouTube has a massive 2.2 billion monthly active users.
With that out of the way, we can discuss more about YouTube’s users.
First let’s look at the data about YouTube users according to the top five countries.
- India is number one of YouTube users with over 225 million users.
- The USA is second at more than 197 million YouTube users.
- Brazil has over 83 million users on YouTube.
- YouTube has more than 60 million users in Japan.
- Russia is fifth with over 8 million YouTube users.
Here are some fast facts about YouTube users:
- 100 countries offer localized versions of the YouTube platform.
- YouTube is available in 80 different languages.
- 95% of internet users watch YouTube videos.
- While the active monthly users equal over 2 billion, the number of active daily users on YouTube is 30 million.
Why Users Love to View Videos
Why do people watch 1 billion hours of YouTube videos every day across 5 billion videos?
Here is a breakdown of the reasons YouTube users watch videos.
- 69% view videos purely for the entertainment factor.
- 13% of users watch videos to learn how to do something.
- Another 13% of users watch to find out more about an industry, hoppy, or other interest.
- 3% watch videos to learn more about products or services.
- 6% of YouTube users fall into the “other” category which can include watching their favorite influencers or celebrities on the platform. Others watch to find trends and watch news stories.
This data is great for influencers, business owners, marketers, and other content creators.
This tells you why people watch videos so that you can create an effective video creation strategy.
What Users Watch on YouTube
When you need to about YouTube user demographics, you also need to know what YouTube users watch.
This section will discuss the top ten of the most watched types of videos.
1. Tutorial Videos
How-to, or tutorial videos are the most popular type of YouTube videos that users watch. These videos are educational or show you how to do things.
Some even teach you things like how to sing, how to play the guitar, how to talk to certain types of people, how to make friends, and the list just goes on from there.
As a content creator, you can create tutorials or how-tos across multiple niches and attract a large audience.
2. Ask Me Anything Videos
This is a kind of a spinoff of how-to videos where you ask your audience to ask you anything.
You can bring your ideas, thoughts, and expertise to the video with answers to questions people want to know the most.
Again, the sky’s the limit, though it should be relevant to your channel’s niche.
3. Whiteboards
Whiteboard videos are popular considering the simplicity of this content. These videos can be used to explain a concept like math, algebra, etc.
These videos are used to discuss and explain products and their features. You don’t even have to show your face in this kind of video content if you don’t want to.
However, if you have a sparkling personality, there’s no reason not to let yourself shine.
4. Listicles
Just when you thought listicles were merely articles with a list of the best this or the top that. You can create top lists using multiple slides or videos to stitch together a 10- to 12-minute video listicle.
5. Product Review Videos
You have probably seen popular influencers who make product review videos. Social proof is one of the advantages to product review videos for brands and businesses.
These videos combine your thoughts on the product while you try it and show your audience how to use it.
Informative, engaging, and entertaining product reviews are some of the most watched by YouTube viewers.
More than 90% of people say that they discover and learn about brands and products on YouTube.
6. Educational
Again, people like to learn things for free. Educational videos sort of combine how-to, tutorials, reviews, and educational topics across videos.
69% of people would rather watch videos than to read information about products, services, or an educational topic.
Educational videos can introduce, show you how to use, or how to troubleshoot a product. They can also tell you a lot about services and how to get the most from a service or product.
7. Challenges
You know what challenges are. You have seen the weight loss challenges, the ice bucket challenge, and things to do with your pet challenges on YouTube and other platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels.
These get a lot of attention from YouTube users. Surely you can come up with a strategy for your brand or business to create a fun and unique challenge for your audience.
8. Unboxing Videos
At number eight as the most popular kind of video, obviously thousands of YouTube users want to watch people perform unboxing.
Some ideas for unboxing include smartphones or other electronic devices. This kind of video is often related to gaming systems.
Content creators that make unboxing videos are usually showcasing a specific product or multiple products coming from those subscription-based companies.
9. Behind the Scenes
One of the things that people like to see nowadays is the inner workings of a company or of someone’s life. It’s kind of like reality shows, only you’re opening the doors to your business or life.
Behind the Scenes (BTS) videos are often used by businesses to show their company culture, what their workers do, use them for onboarding new hires, and to show the brand’s human side.
They might show you what a day in the life of a certain job might look like if you worked there. It’s like a sneak peek into a company before you work for them.
10. Explainer
Explainer videos are another form of visual content that teaches people about services or products. 96% of potential buyers say they have watched explainer videos for this reason.
11. Entertainment
Entertaining videos that teach YouTube users something are wildly popular on the platform.
For instance,
Canal Kondzilla has 65.4 million subscribers on his channel.
Justin Bieber has 67.8 million subscribers.
Ed Sheerhan has 51.3 million subscribers.
Katy Perry has 42.5 million.
Taylor Swift has 45.8 million subscribers.
These entertainers also have hundreds of videos on their channels.
Fast Facts About YouTube
Did you know that the longest video on YouTube takes 23 days to watch to the end?
This video is 571 hours, 1 minute, and 41 seconds long.
It’s a slideshow of photographic images from a trip to Chile uploaded by Jonathan Harchick, with the channel Moldytoastermedia.
You probably already know that Google owns the YouTube platform.
They bought it in 2006 for $1.65 billion.
Since this platform has grown and become wildly popular, it seems that it has provided a great return on their investment.
Did you know that PayPal actually funded the launch of YouTube?
That’s right.
Steven Chen, Jawed Karim, and Chad Hurley once worked for PayPal and used their funds from the eBay buyout to fund YouTube’s early development.
Conclusion
As you can see, YouTube users are plentiful across several niches and video types.
They watch mostly to be informed or to learn something they either don’t know, or want more information about.
If you are a content creator, a business owner, a brand, or an influencer, you need to know how many YouTube users there are and how they use it.
We gathered some data for you about what they watch the most and what kind of videos are the most popular.
More than 5 billion YouTube videos have been shared since its launch in 2005, and over 500 hours of video is uploaded each minute.
The competition is fierce, but with the right content strategy, you can build an audience and thrive by showing your own unique style through YouTube videos.
If you’re one of the people who use YouTube primarily for watching videos, you now know that you are part of something huge in the industry.
You have been playing your role in creating demographics and data that drives engagement on YouTube.
Either way, now you know how many people are on YouTube every month in 2025.
