Most common languages used on the internet 2017, by users

Published by
Ani Petrosyan,
Aug 25, 2023
The statistic shows the most common languages on the internet, by number of internet users. As of March 2017, English was the most popular language online, representing 952.1 million worldwide internet users. Chinese was ranked second with 763.3 million online speakers. The top ten languages accounted for 77.5 percent of global internet users.

Most common languages used on the internet as of March 2017, by number of speakers (in millions)

CharacteristicOnline language users in millions
English 952.1
Chinese 763.3
Spanish 293.8
Arabic 173.5
Portuguese 155
Malaysian language 154.7
Japanese 118.5
Russian 104.5
French 100.6
German 83.9
Other 839.7
Showing entries 1 to 11 (11 entries in total)
Created with Highcharts 7.2.2Online language users in millions952.1952.1763.3763.3293.8293.8173.5173.5155155154.7154.7118.5118.5104.5104.5100.6100.683.983.9839.7839.7EnglishChineseSpanishArabicPortugueseMalaysian languageJapaneseRussianFrenchGermanOther
0501001502002503003504004505005506006507007508008509009501,0001,050

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Sources

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Release date

June 2017

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

as of March 31, 2017

Special properties

Internet users who speak the respective language

Supplementary notes

The source assigned only one language per person in order to have all the language totals add up to the total world population (zero-sum approach). No adjustments have been made for infants or illiteracy in the Internet penetration rate calculations.

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