Digital Life
How many emails go unread every day?
More than a third of all email sent today will never be opened. About 392 billion emails go out every day in 2026, and between 35% and 45% of them stay unread: 137 to 177 billion a day, close to 1.6 million every second. Spam accounts for a large share, but even legitimate email goes unread at scale. Marketing mail averages a 20 to 25% open rate, so three out of four promotional messages are deleted or ignored.
Roughly 2M emails every second.
Source: Radicati Group Email Statistics Report 2023-2027; Mailchimp Email Marketing Benchmarks.
Last checked: 18 October 2026
What your unread email count is actually doing to your stress
Globally, about 137 billion emails are never opened every day. For most professionals, that stat is also personal: a survey by Adobe found the average knowledge worker spends 5.4 hours a day on email, yet a significant chunk, particularly newsletters and marketing, goes unread regardless. The unread count in your inbox is the symptom. The volume problem is structural.
Workers who checked email less frequently reported lower stress and better concentration, according to UC Irvine researchers. The reason is not the email itself but the context switching it triggers: recovering full attention after an interruption takes an average of 23 minutes. Even a quick glance at a message that needs no reply costs nearly half an hour of productive focus.
No one has ever reached inbox zero by spending more time on email. The volume expands to fill whatever time you give it. Workers who batch email at fixed times, treating notifications as opt-in rather than default, consistently report lower stress and less lost focus.
Email by the numbers: 392 billion sent, ~137 billion ignored (2026)
Radicati 2023-2027: ~392.5 billion emails sent and received per day in 2026, up from 376.4B/day in 2025 and on track for 408.2B/day by 2027
Global email users: 4.73 billion in 2026, up from 4.59 billion in 2025 and projected to reach 4.85 billion in 2027, over 57% of the world population
Average marketing email open rate: ~20-25%; ~35-45% of all emails are estimated never to be opened
At a 35% unread rate: ~137 billion emails per day go unopened in 2026, ~1.6 million unread emails every second
Email volume has grown every year for 20+ years; by 2027, global email traffic will exceed 408 billion messages/day
Email history: from ARPANET to inbox overload
- 1971First email sent by Ray Tomlinson; "@" symbol established for email addresses
- 1998Spam becomes a major problem; first anti-spam laws begin in various countries
- 2010Radicati: ~294B emails/day; smartphone email access becomes mainstream
- 2019293.6 billion emails/day; 3.9 billion users; Gmail dominant with 1.8B+ users
- 2024361.6 billion emails/day; 4.48 billion users, ~56% of world population
- 2025Radicati: 376.4 billion emails/day; 4.59 billion users; ~132 billion unread/day at 35% unread rate
- 2026Radicati: 392.5 billion emails/day; 4.73 billion users; ~137 billion unread/day at a 35% unread rate
- 2027Radicati forecast: 408.2 billion emails/day; 4.85 billion users
Email volume growth: from millions to 392 billion per day (2026)
Email volume has grown from roughly 205 billion messages per day in 2015 to ~392 billion in 2026 (Radicati Group 2023-2027 series), on track for ~408 billion/day by 2027. Average open rates have fallen from ~25% to under 20% over the same period, meaning the absolute number of unread emails climbs every year even as senders compete harder for attention.
| Year | Rate (/s) | Daily total | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 828K/s | 71.5B | Steady growth era; mobile email becomes dominant |
| 2019 | 1.2M/s | 102.4B | Pre-COVID; 3.9B users |
| 2022 | 1.3M/s | 116.3B | Post-COVID; 4.26B users |
| 2024 | 1.5M/s | 126.5B | Continued ~4%/year growth; 4.48B users |
| 2025 | 1.5M/s | 131.8B | Radicati 2023-2027: ~4.1% YoY growth; 4.59B users |
| 2026 | 1.6M/s | 137.4B | Radicati 2023-2027: ~4.3% YoY growth; 4.73B users |
| 2027 (forecast) | 1.7M/s | 142.9B | Radicati projection; 4.85B users |
Inside the unread pile: a significant share are phishing attacks waiting to be clicked
A significant fraction of unread email is phishing, malicious messages designed to steal credentials or money. Most are never opened, but enough are to make phishing a multi-billion dollar criminal industry.
The inbox overflow: why most email is never read
The inbox overload
Email has kept growing for two decades despite repeated predictions that messaging apps would replace it. The reason is structural: email is still how almost every digital service authenticates identity, sends transaction confirmations, and delivers notifications. The average professional now receives between 100 and 120 emails a day, and email management consumes about 28% of the working day, more than any other single task. Most of that time goes to email that requires no action at all.
Spam and the unread majority
Spam accounts for somewhere between 40% and 80% of total email traffic depending on which methodology you use, though most of it is caught by filters before it reaches an inbox. Even after filtering, the unread share stays high. Newsletters, promotional offers, automated CC notifications, and low-priority alerts get mass-deleted every day without ever being read. Commercial senders track this closely: average open rates across industries sit at 20 to 25%, which means three in four marketing emails are simply never seen.
Research data
| Year | Finding | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Radicati 2015: ~205 billion emails/day; 2.6 billion email users; spam ~60% of all email | 205 billion emails/day (2015) | Statista |
| 2019 | Radicati/Statista 2019: 293.6 billion emails/day; 3.9 billion users | 294 billion emails/day (2019) | Statista |
| 2020 | Radicati 2020: 306.4 billion emails/day; COVID boosts email-based communication | 306 billion emails/day (2020) | Statista |
| 2022 | Statista 2022: 333.2 billion emails/day; 4.26 billion users | 333 billion emails/day (2022) | Statista |
| 2023 | Statista 2023: 347.3 billion emails/day; 4.37 billion users | 347 billion emails/day (2023) | Statista |
| 2024 | Radicati/Statista 2024: 361.6 billion emails/day; 4.48 billion users | 362 billion emails/day (2024) | Statista |
| 2025 | Radicati 2023-2027: 376.4 billion emails/day; 4.59 billion users (~57% of world population) | 376 billion emails/day (2025) | The Radicati Group, Inc. |
| 2026 | Radicati 2023-2027: 392.5 billion emails/day; 4.73 billion users | 393 billion emails/day (2026) | The Radicati Group, Inc. |
| 2027 | Radicati 2023-2027 forecast: 408.2 billion emails/day; 4.85 billion users | 408 billion emails/day (2027 forecast) | The Radicati Group, Inc. |
| 2028 | Radicati 2024-2028 (Dec 2024 edition): 4.481 billion email users in 2024, forecast to reach 4.970 billion by 2028; updates and confirms 2023-2027 trajectory | 5.0B email users forecast (2028) | The Radicati Group, Inc. |
In perspective
At 392.5 billion emails a day, every person on Earth would receive about 48 of them. Most would go unread. That is before counting the ones that never make it out of the spam folder.
137 billion unread emails take about 5 seconds each to glance at and delete. In aggregate, that is around 685 billion seconds of attention, every day, spent on email nobody wanted.
Frequently asked questions
- How many emails are sent per day globally?
- About 392.5 billion emails are sent and received globally per day in 2026, according to the Radicati Group's Email Statistics Report 2023–2027. That is up from 376.4 billion in 2025, with the forecast reaching 408.2 billion by 2027. About 4.73 billion people worldwide use email, which works out to roughly 83 messages per user per day on average, though the professional share is far higher.
- What percentage of emails are never opened?
- Across industries, marketing emails average a 20 to 25% open rate, so three-quarters of commercial email is never read. Factoring in spam and automated alerts, about 35 to 45% of all emails go unopened, which in 2026 amounts to roughly 137 to 177 billion per day.
- Is email still growing despite messaging apps?
- Yes, consistently. Email has grown at about 4% per year despite competition from Slack, Teams, and WhatsApp. Its position as the universal authentication layer for online accounts makes it structurally hard to displace: every new service still requires an email address to register. The Radicati Group projects the user base will pass 4.85 billion by 2027.
Cite this rate
AnythingCounter derived rate, last checked October 2026: about 1.6 million emails per second (about 137.4 billion emails per day).
Method: Based on The Radicati Group, Inc. 2023, converted to a per-second rate (daily total ÷ 86,400).
Suggested citation: AnythingCounter, "Emails nobody ever opened," October 2026, https://anythingcounter.com/unread-emails-per-day
Primary source: The Radicati Group, Inc..
How this number is calculated, and how much to trust it
Radicati Group Email Statistics Report 2023-2027: ~376.4 billion emails sent and received per day in 2025, rising to 392.5 billion/day in 2026 at ~4% CAGR. Applying a 35% never-opened rate (mid-range of published open-rate benchmarks, kept constant across datapoints for consistency): 392.5B × 35% = 137.4 billion unread/day ÷ 86,400 seconds = ~1,590,278 unread emails per second. The live counter uses this 2026 value; projected 2027 rate is ~1,653,588/sec.
Open-rate benchmarks draw from Mailchimp's annual Email Marketing Benchmarks report, aggregated from billions of commercial sends, and Campaign Monitor's annual data. Unread-email estimates derive from combining the total volume figure with industry open-rate averages; there is no single dataset that counts unopened emails directly.
Sources: see below. More detail on our methodology page.
Sources
Statista - Number of Emails Sent Worldwide per Day (archive, superseded by Radicati 2023-2027) - Radicati Group - Email Statistics Report 2023-2027 (daily traffic, users, forecasts).
Worth a look... Phishing emails - New internet users - Internet traffic.