World population, from the Common Era to 2100

People on Earth

A compact, live-updating population model built from UN World Population Prospects 2024 data, Worldometer’s 2026 current-year table, and long-run historical estimates.

Estimated people alive right now 8,290,650,000 +2.2 people per second modelled from 2026 growth

Year 1 estimate ~200M Early estimates vary widely; 200–300M is commonly cited.

Today 8.29B Live estimate anchored to the 2026 UN/Worldometer midpoint series.

Projected peak 10.29B UN medium variant peaks around 2084.

2100 projection 10.18B Population begins a slow decline after the mid-2080s.

Historical + projection curve

Two thousand years in one line

Historical estimate Current model Projection

Explore a year 2026 — 8.30B

The hockey stick is recent

Humanity took roughly eighteen centuries to reach one billion people, then added seven billion more in about two centuries. The chart keeps the full timeline visible so the long, flat early centuries sit beside the modern acceleration.

Growth is slowing

The 2026 growth rate is around 0.84%, or roughly 69 million people per year. In the UN medium variant, the annual increase keeps shrinking until the global total turns slightly negative after the 2084 peak.

“Live” means modelled

There is no census of every birth and death in real time. The counter updates every second from a published annual-growth estimate, so it is best read as a transparent, up-to-the-minute model rather than an exact headcount.

Sources and methodology

UN DESA, World Population Prospects 2024, medium-fertility variant.
Worldometer tables for historical annual values and projections through 2100, which cite UN WPP 2024.
Early Common Era value uses the commonly cited ~200M estimate; uncertainty is explicitly called out because year-1 estimates vary.

Built May 9, 2026. Live counter seed: 8,290,650,000 people at 2026-05-09T23:00:00Z; growth rate: 69,065,325 people/year.