How often is Wikipedia updated?

Live edit statistics, measured right now from the Wikimedia stream — not an estimate.

connecting to the live stream…

Wikipedia is updated continuously, with no publishing schedule: across its ~300 language editions it is edited about 3 to 6 times every second — a few hundred edits every minute, on the order of half a million edits on a typical day. Every number above refreshes every few seconds from Wikimedia EventStreams, the public firehose of every change saved on Wikipedia. The pace follows the sun: European editions peak in European daytime, East Asian editions in theirs, and automated bots can briefly push the rate far above its usual range at any hour.

Wondering about size rather than speed? See how many articles Wikipedia has — across languages, editors, and gigabytes. Prefer pictures? Watch the world being photographed, live on the same globe. Or leave the globe running as a free screensaver for a TV or second monitor.

What's being edited right now

Geo-located article edits in the last minute, by language edition.

See the edits on a globe

Every geo-located edit counted here lights up, live, on a realistic 3D globe — where the article's subject actually is on Earth. It is free, open source, and strangely calming.

Watch Wikipedia edit itself, live →

Frequently asked

How often is Wikipedia updated?

Continuously. Every few seconds someone, somewhere saves an edit — around 3 to 6 every second across all language editions. There is no editorial cycle: an article can be updated within minutes of news breaking, and the live counters above show today's pace as it happens.

Is Wikipedia updated in real time?

Yes. There is no publishing delay: the moment an editor clicks save, the change is live and readable, and it appears in the public Wikimedia EventStreams feed within about a second. The counters on this page are driven by that same feed, so what you see is happening right now.

How long does a Wikipedia edit take to appear?

Almost instantly — a saved edit shows on the article immediately, with no review queue for the vast majority of pages. On a small number of protected or flagged articles an edit can wait for a reviewer before logged-out readers see it, but that is the exception.

How often is Wikipedia updated per hour?

At a few hundred edits a minute, Wikipedia receives roughly 20,000 edits per hour across all language editions — the exact figure rises and falls with the time of day and with bursts of bot activity. The "per hour at this pace" counter above projects the current live rate.

How many times is Wikipedia edited per day?

Measured live from the Wikimedia recent-changes stream, Wikipedia typically receives a few hundred edits per minute across all of its roughly 300 language editions — on the order of half a million edits in a typical day. The rate varies with the time of day and with bursts of automated bot activity.

How can I see how many times one Wikipedia article has been edited?

Open the article and click View history at the top to see every edit ever made to it. For an exact total, open Tools → Page information and read the "Total number of edits", or use an external tool such as XTools. The live counters above measure the whole of Wikipedia, not a single article.

Which language edition is edited the most?

English Wikipedia is usually the most actively edited, but at any given moment the mix shifts with the sun: European languages peak during European daytime, East Asian languages during theirs, and bot activity can put smaller editions on top for minutes at a time. The live table above shows the current mix.

How often is Wikipedia wrong or vandalized?

Vandalism happens constantly on a site anyone can edit — and most of it is reverted within minutes, often within seconds by automated tools. On accuracy, a well-known 2005 study in Nature found Wikipedia's science articles broadly comparable to Encyclopædia Britannica; quality varies most on new and little-watched articles, and every claim can be checked against its cited sources.

Who edits Wikipedia the most?

A mix of long-time volunteers and maintenance bots. The most prolific human editor has made more than five million edits, and several bots have made even more. Most edits, though, come from the long tail: hundreds of thousands of people who fix a sentence here and a date there every month.

Notes on the numbers

The counters above double as a live Wikipedia edit count — total saved edits, not unique articles. An "edit" here is a saved change to an article (the main namespace), including those made by bots. Rates are one-minute rolling counts, so they move constantly. Only edits to articles with map coordinates — about a fifth of Wikipedia — appear in the geo count and on the globe. This page holds one lightweight connection to the same feed the globe uses; nothing is sampled or cached.