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Locale Lab

Which language to add next

Load the languages a product already ships, then read what that list reaches and what it misses.

250territories
5.8Bpeople online
581languages
Unicode CLDR · World Bank Open Data

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English

English reaches 21% of the world's online population.

That is 1.2B people across 145 markets, and 33% of world GDP.

Share of each country's population that speaks a selected language.

0% covered100%
No datatap or hover for detail · + / − to zoom

Speaker shares include second languages, capped at 100% per country. These figures rank markets; they are not audience forecasts.

Biggest gaps

Hover a row to find it on the map.

These 6 markets hold 59% of the 4.6B online users this list does not reach.

Languages worth adding

Each figure is what a language adds on top of today’s coverage. “Can pay” counts adults with a bank or mobile-money account (Findex). The chips are the engineering side: script and layout work relative to the list above, the planning rate multiplier, and plural forms.

  • Simplified Chinese zh+1.2Bonline$28.4T GDP · can pay: 89% · mostly China, MalaysiaNew script: CJK1.2× rate
  • Hindi hi+407.2Monline$5.4T GDP · can pay: 89% · mostly India, South AfricaNew script: Devanagari
  • Spanish es+379.8Monline$11.2T GDP · can pay: 68% · mostly Mexico, ArgentinaNo new script
  • Arabic ar+224Monline$6T GDP · can pay: 48% · mostly Egypt, Saudi ArabiaRight-to-leftNew script: Arabic6 plural forms
  • Portuguese pt+190.8Monline$4.3T GDP · can pay: 83% · mostly Brazil, AngolaNo new script
  • Russian ru+184.8Monline$7.5T GDP · can pay: 81% · mostly Russia, KazakhstanNew script: Cyrillic4 plural forms

Next: score the markets this language leaves open.

Rank the candidatesWrite the memo

Compare, profile, and group markets

Compare markets

Up to four countries side by side, from speaker counts down to date formats.

Open

Language profiles

What one language is worth across every country that speaks it, not just its biggest market.

Open

Regional groupings

How few languages it takes to cover the Nordics, MENA, or Southeast Asia.

Open

Load your own usage data to add a penetration view to every page.

Full dataset

Languages and population from Unicode CLDR; internet use and income from World Bank Open Data. Read the methodology.