Top Languages by Native Speakers Among YouTube Users

Using the country-wise YouTube user data found here combined with the share of each country’s population by native language, we can estimate how many YouTube users speak each language as their first language. Below are the top 21 languages, ranked by the number of native-speaking YouTube users, along with brief notes on how the estimate was derived:

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#1 Spanish – ~286 million users.

This is one of the two largest language groups on YouTube. Spanish is the dominant first language in Mexico (~99% of Mexico’s 83.1M YouTube users en.wikipedia.org), almost all of Latin America (e.g. Colombia ~99.5% translatorswithoutborders.org, Argentina ~98%, etc.), and is also spoken at home by about 13.7% of U.S. residents en.wikipedia.org (≈33 million of the U.S.’s 239M users). These contributions make native Spanish speakers the largest group of YouTube users by language.

#2 English – ~282 million users.

A very close second, English leads in the United States and many other countries. Around 78–80% of U.S. YouTube users speak English as their home language pewresearch.org (≈187 million). The vast majority of users in the U.K. (56M users, ~92% English native) and large portions of Canada (57% English native en.wikipedia.org) and Australia (~76% racismnoway.com.au) also contribute to this total. English is the primary native language for the great majority of users in these countries, hence its large share.

#3 Hindi – ~190 million users.

India has the world’s largest YouTube audience (462M users), and about 41% of Indians are native Hindi speakers worldatlas.comworldatlas.com. That yields roughly 189–190 million Hindi-speaking users in India alone. (Hindi is not widely spoken as a first language outside India, so India accounts for virtually all of this figure.)

#4 Portuguese – ~149 million users.

Nearly all of Brazil’s 144M YouTube users speak Portuguese as their mother tongue (over 99% of Brazil’s population are native Portuguese speakers worldpopulationreview.com). Adding Portugal’s ~7M users (virtually all native Portuguese worldpopulationreview.com) brings the total to roughly 149 million.

#5 Arabic – ~130 million users.

Arabic is the primary language across many high-usage countries in the Middle East/North Africa. For example, Egypt (44.7M users) is ~93% Arabic-speaking worldpopulationreview.com, Saudi Arabia (28.3M) has ~60%+ native Arabic speakers (since ~40% of residents are expatriates), Iraq (22.8M) is ~79% Arabic en.wikipedia.org, and Morocco (21.2M) ~75% Arabic native en.wikipedia.org. Summing major Arab countries (and smaller ones like Jordan, Tunisia, Lebanon, etc.) gives roughly 130 million Arabic-native YouTube users.

#6 Russian – ~88.7 million users.

Nearly all of Russia’s 89.6 million YouTube users are native Russian speakers, as Russian is spoken as a first language by about 99% of the population. However, YouTube’s dominance in the country has been challenged recently. In December 2024, VKontakte (VK) overtook YouTube in monthly reach for the first time, according to Mediascope data reported by RBC. VK’s audience reached 92 million users aged 12+ that month, compared to YouTube’s 89.6 million.

#7 Japanese – ~78 million users.

Japan has ~78.6 million YouTube users, and almost all are native Japanese speakers (Japanese is virtually universal as a first language in Japan worlddata.info). There is little contribution from outside Japan, as Japanese is not widely spoken elsewhere, so this total is essentially Japan’s user count.

#8 German – ~73 million users.

Germany’s 67.8M users are >95% native German-speaking en.wikipedia.org, contributing about 63–64 million. Austria (7.3M users, ~88% German-native en.wikipedia.org) adds ~6.4M, and Switzerland (6.9M users, ~63% German-native) adds ~4.3M en.wikipedia.org. In total, roughly 73 million YouTube users speak German as their first language.

#9 Bengali – ~70 million users.

Bengali is the dominant language of Bangladesh (98% of Bangladeshis speak Bangla natively virtualbangladesh.com; ~33.6M Bangladeshi users). In India, Bengali is the #2 language with about 8% of the population worldatlas.com – approximately 37 million of India’s YouTube users. Combined, roughly 70 million users are native Bengali speakers across these countries.

#10 French – ~59 million users.

France contributes the largest share with ~50.7M users – about 87–92% of France’s population speaks French as a native language blog.rosettastone.com (≈47–48 million users). In Canada, roughly 20% of the 31.9M users are native French speakers en.wikipedia.org (~6.4M). French-speaking Belgians (~3.7M of 9.2M users) and Swiss (~1.6M of 6.9M) add a few more. Total native French-speaking users are on the order of 58–60 million.

#11 Vietnamese – ~54 million users.

Vietnam has 63.0M YouTube users, and about 85% of the population are ethnic Viet (Kinh) who speak Vietnamese as their mother tongue documents.worldbank.org. This gives ~54 million native Vietnamese-speaking users (with minimal additions from diaspora communities).

#12 Turkish – ~51 million users.

Around 88–90% of Turkey’s 57.5M YouTube users speak Turkish as their first language web.sas.upenn.edu, yielding approximately 50 million. (Neighboring Azerbaijan contributes a small number of Turkish/Azeri speakers, but it’s negligible in comparison.)

#13 Indonesian – ~44 million users.

Javanese, a major language of Indonesia, is the most common first language in Indonesia (spoken by about 32% of the population en.wikipedia.org). Applying this to Indonesia’s 139M users gives roughly 44 million Javanese-speaking users. (Note: These users are largely bilingual in Indonesian as well, but here we count their native tongue.)

#14 Korean – ~44 million users.

South Korea’s 44.3M YouTube users are almost entirely native Korean speakers, as Korea is one of the most linguistically homogeneous countries (virtually 100% of the native population speaks Korean worlddata.info). There is only a small contribution from the Korean diaspora elsewhere, so ~43–44 million total.

#15 Italian – ~40 million users.

Italy’s 42.8M user base is over 90% native Italian-speaking (about 93% of Italians speak Italian as their first language languageknowledge.eu, yielding ~39.8M). A few hundred thousand from Swiss Italians and others bring it to around 40 million.

#16 Punjabi – ~40 million users.

Punjabi is widely spoken in Pakistan (~39% of Pakistanis speak Punjabi as a first language translatorswithoutborders.org; ~26–27 million of Pakistan’s 71.7M users) and in northern India (~2.8% of Indians worldatlas.com; ~13 million of India’s users). Taking both countries together, roughly 39–40 million YouTube users are native Punjabi speakers. (This includes Punjabi in both Shahmukhi and Gurmukhi scripts.)

#17 Thai – ~39 million users.

Thailand has 44.2M YouTube users. The national language, Thai (including its regional variants), is spoken as a first language by about 90% of Thai expatica.com. That yields roughly 39 million native Thai-speaking users.

#18 Telugu – ~33 million users.

Telugu is the fourth most-spoken first language in India, about 7.2% of Indians worldatlas.com. Applying that share to India’s 462M users gives an estimated ~33 million Telugu-native users (almost entirely from India’s Andhra/Telangana states).

#19 Marathi – ~32 million users.

Marathi speakers form ~7.0% of India’s population worldatlas.com. This suggests about 32 million of India’s YouTube users speak Marathi natively (concentrated in Maharashtra). There is little additional usage outside India.

#20 Tamil – ~30 million users.

In India ~5.9% of the population are native Tamil speakers worldatlas.com (~27 million of India’s users). Tamil is also a primary language in Sri Lanka (~11–15% of the population; contributing ~1 million users) and Singapore (Tamil Indians ~5%, a few hundred thousand users). Combined, roughly 30 million users speak Tamil as their mother tongue.

#21 Urdu – ~30 million users.

Urdu is the national language of Pakistan but is the mother tongue of only ~9% of Pakistanis gallup.com.pk (~6–7 million of Pakistan’s users). However, India’s large Urdu-speaking minority (~5.0% of Indians worldatlas.com, especially in Uttar Pradesh/Bihar) contributes around 23 million users. In total, about 29–30 million YouTube users are native Urdu speakers.

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Sources: We derived these estimates by multiplying the number of YouTube users in each country by the percentage of that country’s population that speaks a given language as a first language. Sources for language percentages include national censuses and linguistic surveys (e.g. India’s 2011 census for Hindi, Bengali, etc. worldatlas.com, U.S. Census data for Spanish in the US en.wikipedia.org, Brazil’s statistics for Portuguese worldpopulationreview.com, etc.). All figures are approximate, but they give a clear picture of the most widely understood native languages among YouTube’s user base in 2025.