How many of us?

[+Say_Cheese]

Hi all,

 

Quick question. Roughly how many cachers are there worldwide?

 

Thanks.

[+Castle Mischief]

Hi all,

 

Quick question. Roughly how many cachers are there worldwide?

 

Thanks.

 

Quick answer:

 

There are 781,830 active caches worldwide. In the last 7 days, there have been 725,059 new logs written by 90,527 account holders. Check out the recent logs or photos.

 

Go here:

 

http://www.geocaching.com/

 

Look at the bottom of the page.

Edited April 23, 2009 by Castle Mischief

[+StarBrand]

Tough question - there are 2.1 million+ accounts and growing but hard to say how many folks that represents.

 

Some cachers have multiple account names, some accounts are Team names and the individuals in that team also have accounts, many accounts were never used to find even 1 cache, some accounts represent whole familes of Geocachers. There are multiple listing sites. Folks have died. etc etc......

 

Only Groundspeak knows for sure but I would guess somewhere in the neighborhood of about 250,000 - 350,000 folks that you could label as active geocachers (those that find at least 1 cache a month or so consistently). - but that is just a totally wild guess.

[+Say_Cheese]

Thanks for the info. I would love to know for sure but as you say it's impossible to tell. I suppose it'll have to remain a mystery.

[+Kabuthunk]

I've made a topic in the past where I was compiling exactly the type of information you're wondering about:

EDIT: Not the 'how many active' part... but the number of accounts being created part.

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=184055

 

Unfortunately, that only shows the number of geocaching accounts... I couldn't even begin to guess how many are actually active though. And it depends on your definition of 'active' too. It'd be kinda nice if there was some chart of how many accounts have been active for the current day, current week, month, year, two years, etc. Would be somewhat interesting to see what the dropoff rate is for accounts.

 

Heck, one could even use those statistics to try to figure out why it's dropping off (if say... it tends to happen mostly after 1 month or whatever) and try to come up with a solution to keep 'em more interested.

Edited April 24, 2009 by Kabuthunk

[BRTango]

I've been curious about this myself, so I did a random sampling of several days to see how many cachers signed up, how many used their accounts after they signed up and how many have signed onto their accounts within the last six months (what I consider active).

 

using my definitions, this is what I came up with:

 

On 13 Feb 2009 at 09:36am EST.

There were 2,126,827 accounts. Of which 16% of were active, of which 30% had premium accounts.

 

Therefore, on that day there were 340,292 active cachers of which 102,088 were premium members.

 

As of 09:36am EST, 13 Feb 09 (when I had time to kill)

 

There were:

 

2,126,827 accounts.

 

Sample Days:

28 Jun 05: 543 accounts created

21 Oct 01: 158 accounts created

-------------------

Total: 701 accounts created

 

Used for less than 1 month (most never used after account creation):

28 Jun 05: 209

21 Oct 01: 61

38%

 

More than 6 months since last login:

28 Jun 05: 249

21 Oct 01: 46

46%

 

Used within the previous six months (What I consider active):

28 Jun 05: 85

21 Oct 01: 25

16%

 

Of those used within the previous six months:

30% were premium accounts

 

Extrapolating:

340,292 cachers active within the last six months

102,088 premium members