How BirthRank works

Your number is an estimate of how many humans were born before you, plus one. It is built from two published sources.

Everyone born before 1950

The Population Reference Bureau's study How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth? (November 2022 update) estimates the running total of births at benchmark years: 55.0 billion by 1 CE, 81.6 billion by 1200, 94.4 billion by 1650, 97.6 billion by 1750, 101.6 billion by 1850, 104.5 billion by 1900 and 107.9 billion by 1950. BirthRank uses those totals exactly. Within each period, births are spread in proportion to population times birth rate, with population growing steadily between benchmarks.

Everyone born since 1950

From 1950 BirthRank counts the United Nations' estimate of births in each year (World Population Prospects 2024, via Our World in Data), and the UN medium projection for years still to come. Within a year, births are spread evenly by day. The two sources agree closely: PRB's total for 2022 and the total BirthRank reaches by adding the UN's yearly births to PRB's 1950 figure differ by about 0.05%.

People alive on a date

World population comes from HYDE, Gapminder and UN World Population Prospects 2024, as compiled by Our World in Data, interpolated between mid-year values.

Famous people

Birthdays, nationalities and names in each language come from Wikidata. People are ranked by how many language editions of Wikipedia have an article about them, and only exact, day-level birth dates are used. Dates before 1583 are shown in the Gregorian calendar.

How exact is it?

Nobody counted the first hundred billion births. The total before 1950 rests on assumptions about prehistoric populations and birth rates, so treat your number as a careful estimate, not a measurement. Ordering is more reliable than the absolute figure: someone born a day after you will always have a higher number.