Trying to wrap your head around the size of the internet is a bit like trying to imagine how big the universe is. There’s so much out there that it’s hard to know where to even begin.
Of course, the internet isn’t actually infinite, even if scrolling through it sometimes feels that way. But figuring out exactly how big it is turns out to be surprisingly complicated.
For starters, what would we even measure? The number of websites? The amount of information stored online? The people using it?
According to the International Telecommunication Union, around 6 billion people were using the internet in 2025. That’s roughly three-quarters of the world’s population, and every day, those billions of people are adding more content to an already enormous collection.
To put that into perspective, Netcraft’s July 2026 survey counted nearly 1.5 billion websites across the web. That’s an almost ridiculous number, especially considering that a single website can contain thousands of individual pages.
And the numbers keep changing as new sites appear and others disappear. So even if someone somehow managed to count every single page today, their answer wouldn’t stay accurate for very long.
Even Google doesn’t have a complete picture of everything that’s out there. Its search index contains hundreds of billions of web pages, but plenty of online content never makes it into search results.
Google uses automated programs called crawlers that follow links from one page to another, collecting information as they go. So when you Google something, you’re actually searching through Google’s enormous collection of information about the web.
All those websites and pages have to reach our screens somehow, which brings us to another surprising fact about the internet. Despite how wireless everything feels these days, a huge part of the system relies on actual cables running across the ocean floor.
TeleGeography’s 2026 submarine cable map shows 694 cable systems, including those already in service and others still being planned. It’s pretty wild to think that the history meme you just scrolled past might have reached your screen through a cable at the bottom of the ocean.
Of course, there’s a lot more happening behind the scenes whenever you open a website. As Cloudflare explains, information travels across the internet in small pieces called packets.
These pieces move through networks before being put back together by your device. It’s how you can open a page full of pictures without having to think about the complicated journey each one takes.
