How many Bitcoin nodes are there?

There is no exact count of Bitcoin nodes, because anyone can run one without registering. As of October 2026, the crawler BTC Nodes reported 25,799 reachable nodes in a snapshot taken on October 21, 2026. That figure covers only nodes that accept incoming connections, so the real total is higher.

What is the Bitcoin node count right now?

Node counts come from crawlers that connect to peers, ask them for addresses of other peers, and repeat. Bitnodes, created by Addy Yeow, was the best-known of these. Its site now says it is being rebuilt as an independent project run by Rodrigo Martínez, who also runs BTC Nodes.

BTC Nodes' headline figure on October 21, 2026 was 25,799 reachable nodes. The same page also listed other "live" and "pending" totals without defining them, which shows how much counts depend on method. Different trackers can report quite different numbers on the same day, so treat any figure as an estimate tied to its date and source.

What do Bitcoin node maps show?

Node maps plot reachable nodes by the country or network their IP address points to. In BTC Nodes' October 21, 2026 country table, the United States led with 2,823 nodes, followed by Germany with 1,411 and France with 537.

Maps miss nodes that do not accept incoming connections. A 2026 analysis by researcher b10c, using Bitnodes and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology data, found more reachable nodes on home internet providers than on hosting companies, and estimated only modest growth in home nodes after Bitcoin Core v30.0 tried to make them easier to reach.

What is the difference between reachable and non-reachable Bitcoin nodes?

The Bitcoin Wiki explains that listening nodes accept incoming connections and serve blocks and transactions to peers, which is the default. Non-listening nodes still fully validate everything, but only make outgoing connections. Many home nodes sit behind routers that block inbound connections, which is why Bitcoin Core v30.0 turned on a router feature (NAT-PMP) by default to help them become reachable.

Non-reachable nodes are much harder to count. A 2021 study from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology estimated about 31,000 unreachable peers active per day at the end of 2020, and said its method likely caught only about half of them. It also cited another site that listed roughly ten unreachable peers for every reachable one at the time, while noting that site counted differently.

What are the Bitcoin node types?

The Bitcoin Wiki describes a few main kinds:

• Full nodes download and check every block against the consensus rules.
• Pruned nodes do the same checks but delete old block data to save disk space.
• Lightweight (SPV) clients do not check every rule and rely on full nodes.

Node software includes Bitcoin Core and alternatives such as Bitcoin Knots. For a general explanation, see what is a node, and for setup steps, how to run a Bitcoin node.