IPv6 has been "coming soon" for about twenty years. In 2026 it is simply here for a lot of people and completely missing for a lot of others, and the line between the two groups is not where most people would guess.
We pulled the per network estimates that APNIC Labs publishes, added them up by country, and matched them against how many IPv4 addresses each country actually holds according to the five regional internet registries. Here is what came out.
How the numbers were measured
APNIC Labs runs a small test inside online ads. When the ad loads, your browser is quietly asked to fetch a few tiny files, some only reachable over IPv4 and some only over IPv6. Millions of these tests run every day, and APNIC turns them into an estimate for each network (each "AS", the number a network uses to identify itself on the internet).
The file we used lists 36,402 networks with an estimated 4.16 billion users between them. For each network it gives an estimated user count and the share of those users that could fetch over IPv6. We summed users and IPv6 users per country. For IPv4 holdings we counted every allocated or assigned IPv4 address in the registry files of AFRINIC, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC and RIPE NCC dated 22 and 23 October 2026.
Two honest limits. User counts are estimates, so treat a country's number as accurate to a few points, not to the decimal. And "can use IPv6" means the connection worked over IPv6 for the test, not that every app on that device prefers it.
IPv6 by the numbers: the 25 biggest internet countries
| Country | Internet users (est.) | IPv6 share | IPv4 addresses held | IPv4 per user |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | 827 million | 50.1% | 343.0 million | 0.41 |
| India | 591 million | 76.1% | 42.0 million | 0.07 |
| United States | 250 million | 61.3% | 1,606.2 million | 6.42 |
| Brazil | 164 million | 58.7% | 79.3 million | 0.48 |
| Indonesia | 117 million | 27.6% | 18.3 million | 0.16 |
| Japan | 113 million | 61.3% | 188.7 million | 1.67 |
| Russia | 111 million | 3.6% | 45.2 million | 0.41 |
| Mexico | 91 million | 57.9% | 29.0 million | 0.32 |
| Philippines | 73 million | 20.5% | 6.3 million | 0.09 |
| Germany | 71 million | 72.8% | 126.4 million | 1.79 |
| United Kingdom | 65 million | 54.1% | 138.7 million | 2.13 |
| Nigeria | 64 million | 5.4% | 3.2 million | 0.05 |
| Turkey | 64 million | 21.3% | 16.8 million | 0.26 |
| Iran | 62 million | 13.8% | 10.8 million | 0.18 |
| France | 54 million | 84.8% | 81.6 million | 1.51 |
| Vietnam | 54 million | 64.3% | 16.5 million | 0.31 |
| Egypt | 53 million | 5.0% | 24.2 million | 0.46 |
| South Korea | 51 million | 28.5% | 112.5 million | 2.20 |
| Thailand | 45 million | 51.5% | 8.9 million | 0.20 |
| Spain | 42 million | 10.6% | 31.9 million | 0.75 |
| Italy | 38 million | 18.8% | 54.1 million | 1.41 |
| Argentina | 38 million | 34.1% | 19.4 million | 0.51 |
| Canada | 36 million | 44.5% | 67.8 million | 1.87 |
| Pakistan | 36 million | 23.1% | 5.6 million | 0.15 |
| South Africa | 36 million | 3.8% | 27.2 million | 0.76 |
Across all 237 countries and territories in the data, 1.82 billion of 4.16 billion users could use IPv6. That is 43.8%.
Who leads
Among countries with more than 5 million internet users, the top of the table looks like this:
- France, 84.8%. Orange alone delivers IPv6 to about 92% of its roughly 20 million users.
- India, 76.1%. This is the single biggest IPv6 population on the planet. Reliance Jio, with an estimated 272 million users, runs at 96.6%. Bharti Airtel's mobile network is at 89.8%.
- Saudi Arabia, 74.0%.
- Malaysia, 72.9%.
- Germany, 72.8%. Deutsche Telekom is at 81.3%.
- Belgium, 71.0%.
- Vietnam, 64.3%.
- Israel, 63.5%.
- United States and Japan, 61.3% each.
India deserves a second look. Around 450 million Indians reach the internet over IPv6, more people than live in the entire United States.
Who is still on IPv4 only
At the other end, among countries with more than 5 million users:
| Country | IPv6 share |
|---|---|
| Cuba | 0.0% |
| Ethiopia | 0.2% |
| Algeria | 0.2% |
| Azerbaijan | 0.2% |
| Cambodia | 0.3% |
| Tanzania | 0.4% |
| Syria | 0.6% |
| Lebanon | 0.6% |
| Iraq | 1.0% |
| Ghana | 1.7% |
| Uganda | 1.9% |
| Russia | 3.6% |
| South Africa | 3.8% |
| Egypt | 5.0% |
| Nigeria | 5.4% |
Some of these are the result of a single dominant operator. Telecom Egypt's main network, with an estimated 34 million users, measures 0.09%. Ethio Telecom, about 21 million users, measures 0.05%. When one company carries most of a country's traffic, that company's decision is the country's number.
The networks that move the needle
Country averages hide the real story, which is that IPv6 is switched on (or not) one ISP at a time. A few examples from the same data:
| Network | Country | Users (est.) | IPv6 share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reliance Jio | India | 272 million | 96.6% |
| T-Mobile US | United States | 18.0 million | 94.5% |
| Sky UK | United Kingdom | 13.5 million | 93.4% |
| Orange | France | 19.8 million | 92.0% |
| BT | United Kingdom | 17.2 million | 89.9% |
| Bharti Airtel (mobile) | India | 137 million | 89.8% |
| Comcast | United States | 42.1 million | 85.4% |
| AT&T | United States | 28.7 million | 85.3% |
| Deutsche Telekom | Germany | 27.5 million | 81.3% |
| Charter (Spectrum) | United States | 12.3 million | 66.0% |
| China Telecom backbone | China | 209 million | 42.9% |
| MTN Nigeria | Nigeria | 37 million | 5.7% |
| Virgin Media | United Kingdom | 12.3 million | 0.4% |
| Telecom Egypt | Egypt | 34 million | 0.1% |
The UK is the clearest case. BT and Sky customers are almost all on IPv6. Virgin Media customers almost all are not. Two people on the same street in Manchester can get completely different answers from an IPv6 test depending on whose router is on the shelf.
Does running out of IPv4 push a country to IPv6?
You would expect so. The United States holds 1.61 billion IPv4 addresses, 43.6% of every IPv4 address ever handed out, which works out to about 6.4 addresses per internet user. India holds about 0.07 per user. It makes sense that India had to move.
But the pattern does not hold across the board. We took the 39 countries with more than 20 million internet users and split them in two:
- 24 countries with fewer than 0.5 IPv4 addresses per user averaged 28.5% IPv6.
- 15 countries with 0.5 or more per user averaged 41.4% IPv6.
So the address poor group is, on average, behind. Nigeria (0.05 addresses per user, 5.4% IPv6), the Philippines (0.09, 20.5%) and Pakistan (0.15, 23.1%) all share addresses heavily through carrier grade NAT instead of moving to IPv6. Meanwhile France, Germany and the US, which are comparatively rich in IPv4, are well ahead.
What actually predicts a high number is a large mobile operator that decided to go IPv6 first. Jio did it from launch in 2016. T-Mobile US runs its network on IPv6 and translates to IPv4 only when it must. Once a carrier that size flips, the country average follows.
Why you might not have IPv6 even if your country does
If a test tells you there is no IPv6 and your country is near the top of the table, the usual reasons are:
- Your ISP is the exception. See Virgin Media above.
- Your router has it turned off. Many routers ship with IPv6 disabled or set to "passthrough" that does nothing. Look for an IPv6 or "DHCPv6 / prefix delegation" setting.
- Your VPN blocks it. Many VPN apps disable IPv6 completely to avoid leaks, so your real connection might support it while the VPN hides it.
- You are on Wi-Fi at work or school. Corporate networks often stay IPv4 only on purpose.
- Mobile versus home. Your phone on mobile data may have IPv6 while the same phone on home Wi-Fi does not, because those are two different networks.
You can see which case you are in with our IPv6 test. It checks IPv4 and IPv6 at the same time and shows the address you get on each. If you want the background on how the two address types differ, our guide on IPv4 vs IPv6 covers it.
What it means for you
For browsing, almost nothing. Every popular site still answers over IPv4, and they will for years.
It matters more if you game online, host anything from home, or use apps that need direct connections. On an IPv4 only connection behind carrier grade NAT you share one public address with dozens or hundreds of other customers, which can break port forwarding, cause strict NAT warnings on consoles, and get you caught in blocks aimed at someone else on the same address. With IPv6 your devices get their own public addresses again.
It also matters for privacy in a way people do not expect. Your IPv6 address can be different from your IPv4 address, and a site may see either one. If you run a VPN that only handles IPv4, your real IPv6 address can slip out. Our VPN leak test checks for exactly that.
The bottom line
IPv6 now reaches about 44% of internet users. France, India, Germany, the US and Japan are past 60%. Russia, Egypt, Nigeria and much of North Africa are under 6%. The gap is driven less by how many IPv4 addresses a country holds and more by whether its biggest ISPs, especially mobile ones, have switched IPv6 on. To find out where you stand, run an IPv6 test: it takes a few seconds and tells you more than any country average can.