Church Growth by the Numbers: From Six Members to 17.9 Million

On April 6, 1830, six people became the first official members of the restored Church, with about 50 people gathered in a log home in Fayette, New York. Church Growth by the Numbers follows how that small room became a Church with members in more than 150 countries and territories, one year at a time.

These are from the First Presidency's statistical report, released at the April 2026 general conference. Membership counts are records of baptized and blessed members. They don't measure attendance or faith.

The Million Clock

It took 117 years, until 1947, to reach the first million members. The eighth million took two.

The pace by decade

• 1830s: from 280 members to 16,865 in ten years, about 51% a year.
• 1850s: the slowest decade, while the Saints settled the West and lived through the Utah War.
• 1960s: the fastest modern decade, about 5.6% a year.
• 2020s: steady growth of about 1.4% a year so far.

February 28, 1996

Church statisticians estimated that at the end of February 1996, more members lived outside the United States than inside it, by about a thousand people: 4,720,000 outside and 4,719,000 inside. By the end of 2025 it was 10,957,442 outside and 6,929,770 inside.

Where the Church is today

• A close race: Brazil reports 1,573,360 members and Mexico 1,572,287, just 1,073 apart, the two largest memberships outside the U.S.
• The highest share: in Tonga, about 7 in 10 people are members: 69,594 among roughly 100,000.
• The fastest growth: among countries with 10,000 or more members, nine of the ten biggest 10-year gains are in Africa. Nigeria nearly doubled, from 142,033 to 274,043.

A record year for baptisms

In 2025, 385,490 converts were baptized, up almost 25% from 308,682 in 2024 and the highest yearly total in Church history. That's about 1,056 on an average day, or one every 82 seconds. Another 91,835 children of record were added.

What the numbers don't show

Membership of record is not attendance, activity or testimony, and no one can count faith. These charts show how far the Church has spread, not how strong any person's faith is.

Questions

Why do some articles give different numbers for the same year?

Each report counts members as of December 31 and is released the next April. Some articles label figures by the release year, so an end-of-2018 count can appear as “2019.”

Is this an official Church resource?

No. By the Numbers is an independent Weak Things project. The figures come from official Church reports and other published sources, listed on the page.

Keep exploring

• The Restoration by the Numbers: how six names became the first 280
• Missionaries by the Numbers: from one mission to 506
• Temples by the Numbers: 385 temples in 80 countries and territories

See all the projects on the By the Numbers page.

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