User:AmericanLemming/Four billion words
Yearly statistics
[edit]As of November 2021, there are approximately 4 billion words in all English Wikipedia articles, about 624 words per article, and about 24 billion characters, assuming that each word is six characters long (five letters for each word on average plus a space or punctuation mark). For the most recent word count, please see the Special:Statistics page.
The table below shows only the number of words in all content pages, meaning the 6,907,992 articles; it does not include words in other namespaces like Talk, User, or Wikipedia. Data for 2002 through 2010 is from the old Wikistats-1 and thus only precise to the month rather than a specific day within a month. Data for 2018 to the present is from the Special:Statistics page, as saved on that date by the Internet Archive. There is no record of the number of words from January 2010 to December 2017; Wikistats-1 no longer includes the number of words after January 2010, and the Special:Statistics page only started showing the number of words in all content pages in December 2017. Note that the Internet Archive does not always have an archived version of the Special:Statistics page on the first day of the year.
| Date | Word count | Increase during preceding year |
% Increase during preceding year |
Average increase per day during preceding year |
Average number of words per article |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002-01 | 4,800,000 | 4,800,000 | — | 13,151 | 267 |
| 2003-01 | 32,100,000 | 27,300,000 | 569% | 74,795 | 309 |
| 2004-01 | 61,400,000 | 29,300,000 | 91% | 80,279 | 315 |
| 2005-01 | 127,000,000 | 65,600,000 | 107% | 179,726 | 288 |
| 2006-01 | 353,000,000 | 226,000,000 | 177% | 619,178 | 403 |
| 2007-01 | 709,000,000 | 356,000,000 | 101% | 967,123 | 473 |
| 2008-01 | 1,082,000,000 | 373,000,000 | 53% | 1,021,918 | 515 |
| 2009-01 | 1,437,000,000 | 355,000,000 | 33% | 972,603 | 553 |
| 2010-01 | 1,798,000,000 | 361,000,000 | 25% | 989,041 | 599 |
| 2011 to 2017 | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2018-01-03 | 3,077,580,920 | 159,947,625A | 8.9%B | 438,213C | 555 |
| 2019-01-17 | 3,302,922,240 | 225,341,320 | 7.3% | 617,373 | 570 |
| 2020-01-01 | 3,497,842,238 | 194,919,998 | 5.9% | 534,027 | 584 |
| 2021-01-01 | 3,755,065,625 | 257,223,387 | 7.3% | 702,796 | 604 |
| 2021-11-01 | 3,987,982,865 | 232,917,240D | — | — | 623 |
- A Average increase per year from 2010 to 2018; total increase of 1,279,581,000 words over the same time period
- B Average percent increase per year from 2010 to 2018; overall increase of 71% over the same time period
- C Average increase per day from 2010 to 2018
- D So far this year
Monthly statistics
[edit]The table below includes the total number of words in all articles and the number of words added at the start of each month since January 2020.
| Date | Word count | Increase during preceding month |
|---|---|---|
| 2020-01-01 | 3,497,842,238 | — |
| 2020-02-01 | 3,515,781,525 | 17,939,287 |
| 2020-03-01 | 3,533,853,569 | 18,072,044 |
| 2020-04-01 | 3,556,915,740 | 23,062,171 |
| 2020-05-01 | 3,584,029,618 | 27,113,878 |
| 2020-06-03 | 3,611,432,972 | 27,403,354 |
| 2020-07-01 | 3,631,265,076 | 19,832,104 |
| 2020-08-01 | 3,653,369,248 | 22,104,172 |
| 2020-09-01 | 3,673,339,409 | 19,970,161 |
| 2020-10-01 | 3,692,222,212 | 18,882,803 |
| 2020-11-01 | 3,713,395,900 | 21,173,688 |
| 2020-12-01 | 3,733,824,980 | 20,429,080 |
| 2021-01-01 | 3,755,065,625 | 21,240,645 |
| 2021-02-01 | 3,776,685,968 | 21,620,343 |
| 2021-03-01 | 3,811,006,931 | 34,320,963 |
| 2021-04-01 | 3,839,532,258 | 28,525,327 |
| 2021-05-01 | 3,889,436,965 | 49,904,707A |
| 2021-06-01 | 3,901,873,166 | 12,436,201B |
| 2021-07-01 | 3,910,030,230 | 8,157,064C |
| 2021-08-01 | 3,928,967,545 | 18,937,315 |
| 2021-09-01 | 3,948,128,338 | 19,160,793 |
| 2021-10-01 | 3,967,621,552 | 19,493,214 |
| 2021-11-01 | 3,987,982,865 | 20,361,313 |
- A There was an unusually large increase in the number of words in April 2021 (49,904,707), followed by an unusually small increase in the number of words in May 2021 (12,436,201). Averaging the two gives 31,170,454.
- B Of note, in May 2021 the number of words initially increased to about 3,915,000,000, then decreased to 3,901,873,166 by the end of the month. It is unclear whether this decrease was real or if the software was correcting for overcounting words the previous month.
- C Like May 2021, June 2021 was associated with an unusually small increase in the number of words (8,157,064).
Other language editions of Wikipedia
[edit]| Rank | Language | Article count | Total number of words | Average number of words per article |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | 6,410,341 | 4,000,129,529 | 624 |
| 2 | Cebuano | 5,798,858 | 1,133,030,453 | 195 |
| 3 | Swedish* | 2,869,907 | 554,187,156 | 193 |
| 4 | German* | 2,633,928 | 1,371,867,034 | 521 |
| 5 | French | 2,375,039 | 1,455,423,310 | 613 |
| 6 | Dutch* | 2,071,866 | 350,042,301 | 169 |
| 7 | Russian | 1,771,576 | 864,798,899 | 488 |
| 8 | Spanish* | 1,732,337 | 1,004,609,868 | 580 |
| 9 | Italian* | 1,726,906 | 809,795,169 | 469 |
| 10 | Polish* | 1,497,172 | 428,331,733 | 286 |
| 11 | Egyptian Arabic | 1,379,812 | 263,860,931 | 191 |
| 12 | Japanese* | 1,301,338 | 1,241,470,027 | 954 |
| 13 | Vietnamese | 1,270,100 | 296,895,040 | 234 |
| 14 | Waray-Waray* | 1,265,577 | 148,504,147 | 117 |
| 15 | Chinese | 1,241,688 | 555,619,022 | 447 |
| 16 | Arabic* | 1,143,857 | 383,567,056 | 335 |
| 17 | Ukrainian | 1,123,360 | 377,872,433 | 336 |
| 18 | Portuguese | 1,077,435 | 466,490,337 | 433 |
Other Wikimedia projects
[edit]Please note that Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and Wikispecies are multilingual.
| Rank | Wikimedia project | Content page count | Total number of words | Average number of words per content page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wikidata* | 95,868,410 data items | 10,730,523,694 | 112 |
| 2 | English Wikipedia | 6,410,341 articles | 4,000,129,529 | 624 |
| 3 | English Wiksource | 907,771 content pages | 919,463,608 | 1,013 |
| 4 | English Wiktionary | 6,852,872 entries | 197,504,739 | 29 |
| 5 | English Wikibooks | 94,113 pages | 91,884,915 | 976 |
| 6 | Wikispecies* | 780,754 content pages | 76,472,516 | 98 |
| 7 | English Wikiquote | 41,095 articles | 65,301,248 | 1,589 |
| 8 | English Wikiversity | 28,908 content pages | 42,217,582 | 1,460 |
| 9 | English Wikivoyage | 30,532 travel articles | 40,981,686 | 1,342 |
| 10 | Wikimedia Commons* | 76,699,658 pages | 18,979,904 | 0.25 |
| 11 | English Wikinews* | 21,670 news articles | 9,910,365 | 42 |