Key stats:
- In 2026, humanity will take approximately 1.95 trillion photos worldwide, according to Rise Above Research's latest public forecast.
- Globally, we capture about 5.3 billion photos daily, or roughly 61,800 per second.
- The average American takes 20 photos per day.
- Unique digital photos saved are approaching 13.6 trillion in 2026, while the all-in number is higher if you count backups, duplicates, prints, and analog photos.
- Smartphones are expected to account for about 94% of all photos taken in 2026.
- Google Image Search indexes an estimated 136 billion images, but Google has not confirmed a current official count since 2010.
- 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 2026, around 1.95 trillion photos will be taken worldwide, according to the February 2026 Worldwide Image Capture Forecast from Rise Above Research.
That is lower than Photutorial's earlier 2025 projection of 2.1 trillion, so I now treat 1.95 trillion as the cleaner current benchmark. Forecasts differ because most photo activity happens on private phones and cloud libraries, not on public platforms that publish exact upload counts.
Here are more trends and facts:
- Rise Above Research expects photo capture to grow by about 5% in 2026 and continue rising at a steady linear rate through 2030.
- 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.
- A 2025 Rise Above Research forecast expected annual photo capture to exceed 2.5 trillion images by 2029. The newer 2026 public summary is more conservative, but it still points to steady growth.
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 (Photutorial estimate) |
| 2025 | 1.9 to 2.1 trillion (estimate range) |
| 2026 | 1.95 trillion (Rise Above Research forecast) |
How many photos are taken per second, minute, hour, etc?
Over 1.95 trillion photos per year sounds impressive (that's 1,950,000,000,000), but it becomes even more impressive when we put this number into perspective. In essence, humanity takes about:
- 61,800 photos per second
- 3.7 million photos per minute
- 223 million photos per hour
- 5.3 billion photos per day
- 163 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 the boom in recent years, here's the most useful current way to frame it:
- Unique digital photos saved are approaching 13.6 trillion in 2026, based on earlier Rise Above Research reporting.
- More than 12 trillion photos were expected to be saved by 2025.
- Around 2 trillion new photos are captured each year, but not every photo is saved long-term.
- The broader "photos in existence" number is higher if you include backups, duplicates, printed photos, scanned film, and analog photographs.
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. I would treat any 2030 projection here carefully because Google's current index size is not public and AI-generated images have changed the growth curve.
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 the share is expected to reach about 94% in 2026.
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, 2026 Worldwide Image Capture Forecast: 2025 – 2030, Rise Above Research, February 2026.
- Gary Pageau, Rise Above Research estimates more than 2.5 trillion images will be taken worldwide in 2029, The Dead Pixels Society, February 13, 2025.
- How Many Photos Will be Taken in 2022?, Mylio, 2022.
- 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 July 2026.
Matic Broz
Matic is an experienced stock media creator at Photutorial. He's dedicated to promoting proper and responsible licensing of stock photography, footage, and audio. With a Ph.D. candidacy under his belt, Matic is passionate about making the stock media world a safe and better understood place. When he's not creating, you can find Matic exploring the great outdoors, hanging out with dogs, and diving into the exciting world of AI research.
