This year, worldwide internet traffic rose by 19 percent, according to Cloudflare in its “Cloudflare Radar 2025 Year in Review,” which analyzes online activity throughout the past year.
As more individuals are spending additional time on the internet, the digital gap is beginning to exhibit signs of closing. This year marked the definitive conclusion of AOL dial-up internet, while satellite providers such as Starlink broadened internet access to isolated regions.
The report offers insights into the web’s condition in 2025. Cloudflare, a crucial provider of internet infrastructure, emphasized its significance after a Cloudflare outage resulted in downtime for major platforms and applications including Spotify, Google, Snapchat, Discord, and Nintendo.
Cloudflare, serving as a traffic gatekeeper for numerous websites, presents a distinctive viewpoint on the current state of the online landscape.
The complete report is available for viewing, but here are some key highlights.
AI bots play a major role in traffic
AI firms are using crawlers and bots to collect data from the internet, resulting in heightened bot activity across various websites. Cloudflare reports that AI bots now represent 4.2 percent of all HTML requests.
Internet traffic surged during the second half of the year
Cloudflare observes that global internet traffic kept increasing, with a trend beginning in mid-January as online activities stabilized after the New Year. Traffic remained steady from January through July and then rose in the latter part of the year.
Google continues to dominate online
Despite competing with OpenAI for the future of AI, Google remains the most utilized internet service, followed by Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. ChatGPT did not rank in the top 10. Google also leads in traffic with GoogleBot as the premier search engine and Chrome as the most-used browser.
Android overtakes iOS in usage
Cloudflare reveals that Android devices account for 65 percent of online traffic, while iOS comprises the rest. This varies by region, with iOS penetration hitting 70 percent in certain areas. In the U.S., iOS represents 56 percent of mobile traffic.
Starlink accelerates internet growth
Elon Musk’s Starlink has significantly fueled internet expansion, boasting a 2.3x growth rate over the past year. Starlink and SpaceX reached a milestone by launching their 10,000th satellite.
ChatGPT tops AI service rankings
ChatGPT stands as the leading AI service, despite recent developments with Gemini 3. Google Gemini secured the fourth position, following Claude/Anthropic and Perplexity.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, the parent company of Mashable, initiated legal action against OpenAI in April, claiming copyright infringement in the training and operation of its AI systems.