When I started sharing my photos for free on Unsplash on May 13, 2018, I could not have imagined numbers like these. I had around 80,000 photos on my hard drive, many of them unpublished. Unsplash was an experiment for me: would the photos be seen? And, more importantly, would anyone actually find them useful?
Today, the answer is quite clear. On August 17, my portfolio of more than 4,900 published photos reached 1.5 billion views; around three weeks later, it reached 9 million downloads. Calculated backwards from the API’s daily figures, the view count rose from 1,499,736,777 to 1,500,155,044 that day. At the time of writing, the API showed exactly 1,509,093,355 views and 8,996,393 downloads. The counters keep moving, so the two figures in the title are deliberately rounded.
From 50 million to 1.5 billion views
After my first year on Unsplash, I took stock in the article “1 year of Unsplash: a conclusion”. At that point, my photos had passed 50 million views and reached almost 150,000 downloads. Just a few months later, both numbers had multiplied.
My LinkedIn posts from the following years now form a remarkable timeline:
| Date | Views | Downloads |
|---|---|---|
| 05/31/2019 | over 50 million | almost 150,000 |
| 09/23/2019 | 151,000,669 | 444,788 |
| 03/22/2020 | around 290 million | around 910,000 |
| 03/30/2020 | 300 million | 945,529 |
| 08/03/2020 | 400 million | over 1.4 million |
| 12/11/2020 | 504,595,017 | 1,921,937 |
| 06/16/2021 | 650 million | almost 2.6 million |
| 01/05/2022 | 803,308,772 | 3,678,043 |
| 06/08/2022 | 889,891,720 | 4,514,644 |
| 02/22/2023 | 1,000,012,068 | 5,364,044 |
| 08/17/2026 | 1,500,155,044 | 8,918,697 |
| 09/09/2026 | 1,508,323,918 | 9 million according to the Unsplash notification |
| 09/12/2026 | 1,509,093,355 | 8,996,393 |
In 2019, I was one of the year’s ten most successful contributors for both views and downloads, out of more than 170,000 photographers. By March 2020, I had uploaded 1,545 photos, 466 of which had been selected by Unsplash for the Editorial feed. In February 2024, that number reached another milestone: 1,000 of my photos had appeared in the Editorial feed.
Why downloads matter more to me
Views are impressive, but downloads have been the more meaningful number to me since my first year. A view means that a photo was loaded on Unsplash or through an API integration. A download shows that someone deliberately chose an image and most likely intended to use it.
In 2021, a fairly ordinary photo showed me just how unpredictable that use can be. It shows my hand holding a phone with the Instagram start screen. The photo had collected around 20,000 downloads since I uploaded it in March 2020. Then the numbers suddenly took off in August 2021. Within roughly a month, it was downloaded more than 250,000 times, and I never found out what triggered the surge. During those 30 days, my photos ranked as the eighth most downloaded portfolio on Unsplash worldwide.
That example reminds me that the most spectacular photo is not always the most useful one. A technically sound, well tagged and versatile image can be exactly what a great many people are looking for.
Growth became slower – and more sustainable
In October 2020, I set personal records of 4.9 million views and more than 29,000 downloads in a single day. Spikes like that became less common over time. When I was approaching 890 million views in June 2022, more than 296,000 contributors were active on the platform. Today, the Unsplash statistics list almost 430,000 contributors. More photos and more photographers also mean more competition for visibility.
At the same time, Unsplash changed its homepage. The Photo of the Day used to appear as a large hero image above everything else. A photographer selected for that spot was almost impossible to miss for an entire day. That placement was a powerful driver of views and downloads, and several of my photos occupied it for 24 hours each over the years. When Unsplash redesigned the homepage in October 2023, that dominant stage disappeared. Photo of the Day still exists, but it is now one of several rotating modules alongside collections, trending searches and other content. As a result, a single feature no longer generates the same guaranteed attention it once did.
Downloads nevertheless continued to grow steadily. Around 837,000 were added between January and June 2022 alone. Since passing the first billion views in February 2023, my photos have been downloaded another 3.6 million times. That is the most rewarding part of this milestone for me: the photos are not merely displayed; people continue to find and use them.
What began in 2018 with photos that might otherwise have remained on my hard drive has achieved a reach I could not have imagined at the time. It is difficult to picture 1.5 billion views. Nine million downloads, on the other hand, represent nine million deliberate decisions to choose one of my photos. That is why this number feels particularly special.