Infrastructure
How much data flows through the internet every day?
About 34 exabytes of data flow across the internet every day, about 7.2 billion DVDs, or roughly 395 TB per second. Traffic has grown from 1.5 ZB in 2017 to 4.8 ZB in 2022. Video drives more than 60% of it: YouTube and Netflix each average between 1.5 and 1.6 GB per user per day on measured networks.
Roughly 395 terabyte every second.
Source: AppLogic Networks (formerly Sandvine) Global Internet Phenomena Report 2025; Cisco VNI 2022; DE-CIX Internet Exchange statistics 2025.
Last checked: 18 October 2026
What ~395,000 GB per second means for your everyday internet experience
You encounter internet traffic as network experience, not as numbers. Video buffering during peak hours (typically 8 to 10 PM) is congestion: more traffic arriving than the network can route cleanly. A website loading in 40ms instead of 200ms means your request traveled through a backbone built to handle this throughput at scale.
The most direct personal effect is pricing. Carriers invest billions annually in capacity upgrades to stay ahead of traffic growth. In markets with real competition, prices per gigabyte fall as capacity expands. In concentrated markets, they do not. The number above is, in practical terms, a measure of infrastructure investment pressure.
Data centers and network infrastructure consume about 1 to 2% of global electricity. Streaming accounts for over 60% of total traffic. Switching from 1080p to 4K video quadruples data throughput for that one session. Multiplied across billions of simultaneous users, individual choices are a real fraction of the figure above.
Internet traffic by the numbers: the scale in concrete terms
AppLogic/Sandvine GIPR 2025: average 5.6 GB downloaded per user per day; scaled globally ≈ 34 EB/day across ~6.1 billion internet users
AppLogic GIPR 2025: YouTube averages 1.5 GB/user/day (+21% YoY), Netflix 1.6 GB/user/day (+15% YoY), Amazon Prime 644 MB (+51% YoY)
Cisco VNI: global IP traffic grew from 1.5 ZB/year (2017) to 4.8 ZB/year (2022), a 3× increase; modelled estimates now exceed 12 ZB/year
Video streaming accounts for approximately 60-70% of all downstream internet traffic; live-streamed sports produced all top-10 US traffic days in 2024
DE-CIX Frankfurt, the world's largest IXP, regularly exceeds 20 terabits per second peak throughput
Internet traffic vs. data center energy, today
Every byte transferred requires energy to store, process, and transmit. Video and AI are driving the surge; data center electricity demand is rising in step.
From kilobytes to zettabytes: the internet traffic timeline
- 2000Global internet traffic ~1 EB/month; dot-com boom drives rapid growth
- 2010Cisco VNI: ~20 EB/month; YouTube and Netflix begin dominating bandwidth
- 2017Cisco VNI: 1.5 ZB/year; streaming video surpasses peer-to-peer as #1 traffic source
- 2020COVID: traffic surges 30-40% in Q1-Q2; Zoom, Netflix, Teams drive peak demand
- 2022Cisco VNI: 4.8 ZB/year; mobile exceeds 71% of total IP traffic
- 2024Sandvine: 33 EB/day; AI API traffic emerges as new fast-growing category
- 2025AppLogic Networks (formerly Sandvine) GIPR 2025: 5.6 GB/user/day; live-streamed sports drive all top-10 US traffic days; AI assistants scale up
Global internet traffic growth, 2017-2025
Global internet traffic has grown by roughly 30-35% per year since 2010, surging from around 240 exabytes per year in 2010 (Cisco VNI: about 20 EB/month) to an estimated 12+ zettabytes in 2025. Video streaming still dominates: users on AppLogic-measured networks download an average of 5.6 GB/day (2025), with YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ alone accounting for several gigabytes per user per day.
| Year | Rate (TB/s) | Annual | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 47.6 TB/s | 1.5 ZB/year; 122 EB/month | Streaming surge; mobile growth accelerating |
| 2020 | 101.5 TB/s | ~3.2 ZB/year; COVID surge | Pandemic drives 30-40% spike in traffic |
| 2022 | 152.2 TB/s | 4.8 ZB/year; 396 EB/month | Post-COVID normalisation; mobile dominant |
| 2025 | 395.0 TB/s | ~12.4 ZB/year; ~34 EB/day (AppLogic GIPR 2025) | Video still dominant; live sports drive peaks; AI assistants scale up |
| 2028 (forecast) | 571.0 TB/s | ~18+ ZB/year; AI inference traffic adds new layer | AI model inference, 8K video, AR/VR drive continued growth |
How the internet grew to carry over 12 zettabytes of traffic per year
The data deluge
Between 2000 and 2024, internet traffic went from about 1 exabyte per month to over 33 exabytes per day, a thousandfold increase in 24 years. Three things made it possible: fibre optic capacity kept improving (pushed by Shannon's law), content delivery networks moved data closer to users, and video codecs got better at compression with each generation (H.264, then H.265/HEVC, then AV1). Without the codec improvements alone, video would consume roughly four times as much bandwidth as it does today.
What "traffic" actually measures
Internet traffic statistics are measured in different ways by different organisations. The Cisco VNI measured all IP packets routed globally; IXP traffic data captures inter-network peering at physical interconnection points; AppLogic Networks (formerly Sandvine) measures application-layer traffic in carrier networks. These methods yield very different numbers for the same underlying phenomenon. AnythingCounter uses AppLogic's carrier-network estimate scaled to 6.1 billion global users (~395 TB/sec, ~34 EB/day), which is designed to reflect total global traffic. Directly measured IXP peering traffic (~79 EB/year at major exchanges, ~2.5 TB/sec) is verifiable but covers only a fraction of what flows globally.
Research & measurement: how traffic is counted
| Year | Finding | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Cisco VNI: 1.5 ZB/year global IP traffic; 122 EB/month; mobile 18% of total IP traffic | 1.5 ZB/year (2017) | Cisco |
| 2019 | Cisco VNI: ~2.5 ZB/year; projected tripling to 4.8 ZB by 2022; video ~79% of total | 2.5 ZB/year (2019 estimate) | Cisco |
| 2020 | COVID: internet traffic surges 30-40% in 2020 as remote work, streaming, and gaming spike | 3.2 ZB/year (2020 COVID surge) | Cisco |
| 2022 | Cisco VNI: 4.8 ZB/year; 396 EB/month; mobile 71% of IP traffic; video ~82% | 4.8 ZB/year (2022) | Cisco |
| 2024 | Sandvine 2024: ~33 EB/day (~12 ZB/year); 7.8B connections; average 4.2 GB/user/day | 12 ZB/year (2024 est.) | Sandvine |
| 2025 | AppLogic Networks GIPR 2025 (Mar 2025): average 5.6 GB/user/day; YouTube 1.5 GB (+21% YoY), Netflix 1.6 GB (+15%); 95%+ of traffic classified; live sports drive all top-10 US traffic days | 12 ZB/year (2025 est.) | AppLogic Networks |
In perspective
34 exabytes per day is roughly 260,000 times the plain text of all published books (about 130 million titles at ~1 MB each)
Every second, the internet moves enough data to fill roughly 84,000 single-layer DVDs (4.7 GB each)
Frequently asked questions
- How much data is transferred on the internet every day?
- AppLogic Networks' 2025 Global Internet Phenomena Report (formerly Sandvine, March 2025) puts average download at 5.6 GB per user per day. Scaled to roughly 6.1 billion global internet users (DataReportal Digital 2026), that implies about 34 exabytes per day, or 395 terabytes per second. For comparison, that is enough to fill about 84,000 single-layer DVDs every second.
- What type of content makes up most internet traffic?
- Video. Streaming services (Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Disney+, TikTok) account for about 60 to 70% of downstream internet traffic. YouTube averages roughly 1.5 GB per user per day (+21% year-on-year); Netflix 1.6 GB (+15%), according to AppLogic's 2025 report. Social media, web browsing, gaming, and cloud services make up the rest, none of them close.
- How fast is internet traffic growing?
- Cisco VNI projected 26% compound annual growth from 2017 to 2022. Since then growth has moderated to about 15 to 25% per year, as better codecs and CDNs offset rising consumption. Live sports now set the single-day peaks: in 2024, all ten of AppLogic's busiest traffic days in the US fell on days with major live sports events. AI-related data transfer (model downloads, API calls) is a new growth category, though still small by volume.
Cite this rate
AnythingCounter derived rate, last checked October 2026: about 395 Terabyte per second (about 34.1 million Terabyte per day).
Method: Based on AppLogic Networks 2025, converted to a per-second rate (daily total ÷ 86,400).
Suggested citation: AnythingCounter, "Global internet traffic," October 2026, https://anythingcounter.com/internet-traffic-per-second
Primary source: AppLogic Networks.
How this number is calculated, and how much to trust it
The live counter uses ~395 TB/sec, based on AppLogic Networks' 2025 Global Internet Phenomena Report (formerly Sandvine), which estimates ~5.6 GB/user/day across tens of millions of sampled fixed and mobile subscribers; scaled to the ~6.1 billion global internet users (DataReportal Digital 2026) this implies roughly 34 EB/day, or ~395 TB/sec globally. Directly measured throughput at major global Internet Exchanges (IXPs) in 2025 (~79 Exabytes combined ÷ 31,536,000 seconds ≈ 2.5 TB/sec) is a much smaller, but directly and publicly measured, subset of total internet traffic — about 150× lower than the AppLogic-modelled full-network total. Cisco's last published Annual Internet Report (2022) projected 5,016 EB/year ≈ 159 TB/sec. The AppLogic-derived estimate is used for the counter because it reflects total global internet traffic rather than only inter-network peering; the IXP figure is shown for context as the more conservative, directly measured subset.
AppLogic uses a library of over 2,500 application signatures to classify more than 95% of traffic in representative fixed and mobile networks. Historical context comes from Cisco's Visual Networking Index (VNI) and Annual Internet Report, the benchmark used by ISPs, governments, and equipment manufacturers until Cisco discontinued it in 2022. OECD Broadband Statistics and publicly reported throughput figures from Netflix, Google, and Cloudflare provide independent cross-checks.
Sources: see below. More detail on our methodology page.
Sources
Cisco - Annual Internet Report / Visual Networking Index - AppLogic Networks (formerly Sandvine) - 2025 Global Internet Phenomena Report (Feb/Mar 2025).
Worth a look... New internet users - New websites created - Data center energy.