How many people play Wordle? Plays, players and top words
Wordle was played 5.3 billion times, The New York Times says, up from 4.8 billion.
Wordle was played 5.3 billion times in 2024, The New York Times told TODAY, up from 4.8 billion in 2023. That’s a long way from 1 November 2021, when Josh Wardle’s game had 90 players, The New York Times reported.
Wordle asks you to guess a five-letter word in six tries, and it took the internet by storm after it went public in October 2021. Sharing results as grids of green and yellow squares on social media made it go viral. For more on the wider market, see our look at the size of the video game industry.
Wordle key statistics
- 5.3 billion: Wordle plays in 2024.
- 4.8 billion: Wordle plays in 2023.
- 4.2 billion: Wordle puzzles solved in 2025.
- 300,000: daily players on 2 January 2022, up from 90 on 1 November 2021.
- 2.8 million: people who used the same start word every day in 2024.
- 46: Wordle scores shared every second on average in 2025.
How many people play Wordle?
Wordle went from 90 players to more than 300,000 in two months
- On 1 November 2021, Wordle had 90 players.
- By 2 January 2022, more than 300,000 people were playing every day.
- The New York Times bought Wordle on 31 January 2022 for a price in the “low seven figures”, the company announced.
- In January to March 2022, Wordle brought tens of millions of new users to The New York Times, TechCrunch reported.
| When | Players |
|---|---|
| 1 November 2021 | 90 |
| 2 January 2022 | more than 300,000 a day |
| January to March 2022 | tens of millions of new users for The New York Times, led by Wordle |
Wordle grew astonishingly fast for such a simple game, all within a few months of going public.
Wordle was played 5.3 billion times in 2024
| Year | Wordle | All New York Times Games puzzles |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 4.8 billion plays | more than 8 billion plays |
| 2024 | 5.3 billion plays | 11.1 billion puzzles solved |
| 2025 | 4.2 billion puzzles solved | 11.2 billion puzzles solved |
The 2023 figures come from The New York Times Company, and the 2025 figures from TODAY.
Is Wordle dying? No. Plays rose from 4.8 billion in 2023 to 5.3 billion in 2024. The 2025 figure of 4.2 billion counts solved puzzles, a different measure, so it isn’t a like-for-like drop.
Wordle player stats
2.8 million people used the same start word every day in 2024
- The 1,000th Wordle ran in March 2024.
- 2.8 million people started with the same word every day in 2024, and the most popular start word was ADIEU.
- The most played puzzle of 2024 was ROVER on 23 April, and CORER ended 5.6 million streaks on 15 October.
- In 2025, BONGO was the hardest Wordle, snapping 36,337 streaks on 14 May.
- The most shared puzzle of 2025 was on 22 April, with 3 million shares.
| Year | Stat | Word |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Most popular start word | ADIEU |
| 2024 | Most played puzzle, 23 April | ROVER |
| 2024 | 5.6 million streaks ended, 15 October | CORER |
| 2025 | 36,337 streaks snapped, 14 May | BONGO |
The New York Times’ own Wordle analysis tool suggests TROPE or TRACE as better openers than ADIEU, because a good mix of common consonants and vowels gives you a better shot at solving in fewer guesses.