Internet Censorship Statistics 2026

A data-backed look at how internet censorship is spreading worldwide: how many people are affected, which countries are the most and least restrictive, and how online freedom has changed over time. Every figure is sourced and dated.

Key Figures

Internet freedom keeps declining for 15 years straight

Online freedom has fallen for the 15th year in a row. Of the 72 countries assessed in Freedom on the Net 2025, conditions worsened in 28 and improved in only 17. The slide is not limited to authoritarian states: half of the 18 countries rated “Free” saw their scores drop during the coverage period.

One-year score change on Freedom House’s 100-point scale. Source: Freedom on the Net 2025.

Internet shutdowns are tracked separately - see our Internet Shutdown Statistics page.

How many people live without a free internet?

About 5 billion. Freedom House finds that only ~16% of the world’s internet users live in a “Free” online environment, leaving ~84%. Applied to the ITU’s estimate of ~6 billion internet users in 2025, that works out to roughly 5 billion people. The full derivation is in the Methodology below.

Internet censorship by country

Source: Freedom House, Freedom on the Net 2025.

Egypt, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey and Venezuela have seen the most extreme declines over the past 15 years.

Internet censorship by region

Europe holds the strongest scores in the index almost across the board, led by Iceland, Estonia, and the Nordic and Baltic states.

Asia shows the widest split: stable democracies like Japan and South Korea score high, while China, Myanmar, and Vietnam anchor the bottom.

Eurasia has no Free-rated countries at all, Russia, Belarus, and Turkey are all rated Not Free, and Turkey's score has fallen over 20 points since 2011.

Source: Freedom House, Freedom on the Net 2025.

Spotlight: Russia

Internet freedom in Russia hit a new low in 2025, as authorities intensified efforts to isolate the population from the global internet. Roskomnadzor expanded the blocking and throttling of platforms carrying user-generated content and independent news, moved to block end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, and began throttling internet access nationwide in May 2025, officially citing the threat of drone strikes. Russia's Freedom on the Net score has kept falling as a result: 21 out of 100 in the 2023 report, down to 17 in 2025, placing it among the two or three lowest-scoring countries in the world.

Source: Freedom House, Russia: Freedom on the Net 2025 Country Report.

How we get the ~5 billion figure

Freedom House (Freedom on the Net 2025) reports that 16% of the world’s internet users live in countries rated Free, implying 84% do not. Applied to the ITU’s 2025 estimate of ~6 billion internet users:

We round because both inputs are themselves estimates. Caveats: Freedom on the Net assesses 72 countries (~89% of internet users), so the remaining ~11% are outside the sample. The FOTN 2025 coverage period is June 2024 - May 2025; ITU data is for 2025.

Sources

• Freedom House - Freedom on the Net 2025: An Uncertain Future for the Global Internet, Published 13 Nov 2025

• ITU - Facts and Figures 2025, Published 17 Nov 2025