Every figure on this page links to the organization that produced it, and each was re-checked against that source before publishing. How many Americans watch worship online and how many worship only on screens, how many congregations stream and how many people watch a typical stream, how church giving moved online, what YouTube, Facebook and music licences require, what churches in other countries count, and where the popular church streaming numbers came from.
26% of U.S. adults watched religious services online or on TV in the past month in June 2026, 10 points below the 36% of July 2020. (Pew Research Center; our calculation)See details
About 20% of Americans who take part in worship at least monthly do so only on screens: 8% of all adults, in Pew's 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study. (Pew Research Center; our calculation)See details
69% of U.S. congregations offered online or virtual worship in fall 2025, which we estimate at 246,000 to 257,000 congregations. (Hartford Institute; our calculation)See details
Before the pandemic, 20.2% of U.S. congregations live streamed their service; the share now offering online or virtual worship is about 3.4 times that, though the two surveys ask different questions. (National Congregations Study; Hartford Institute; our calculation)See details
The median congregation that streams counts 20 online attendees a weekend, and the mean is 13 times higher: a few large streams draw most viewers. (Hartford Institute; our calculation)See details
Only 2% of U.S. congregations worshipped online only in 2023, while 73% were hybrid. (Hartford Institute)See details
76% of Americans who both watch services on screens and attend in person prefer going in person. (Pew Research Center)See details
69% of congregations used online giving in 2023, and online gifts were about 30% of what a congregation received, up from 10% in 2020. (Hartford Institute)See details
In a Church of England example, about 98% of the 100,000-plus Facebook 'views' of a weekly service lasted a few seconds. (Church of England)See details
The '33% found their church online' line traces to a church-website company's 2012 talk; Lifeway's 2023 measure: 37% of church switchers who searched for a new church used church websites. (CRC Network; Lifeway Research)See details
The '70% increase in online donations' from streaming was one customer's share of gifts received online, on a streaming vendor's 2017 page. (Livestream, 2017)See details
How many Americans watch church services online?
About a quarter of U.S. adults. In June 2026, 26% said they had watched religious services online or on TV in the past month, in a Pew Research Center survey of 9,750 adults (Pew Research Center, October 2026; sample). That is 10 percentage points below July 2020 (our calculation), when 36% had watched online or on TV and only 13% had attended in person (Pew Research Center). By October 2024 the order had flipped: 27% had watched in the past month and 32% had attended in person (Pew Research Center). Pew's question counts television as well as streams, and counts anyone who watched once in the month, including people who also went in person.
Measured as a habit, the share is smaller. In Pew's 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study of 36,908 adults (Pew Research Center), 16% of U.S. adults said they watch religious services online or on TV at least once a week (Pew Research Center) and 23% at least once a month (Pew Research Center). Gallup asks about the past seven days and gets lower numbers: 27% of adults had attended remotely in April 2020, against 4% in person (Gallup), and 5% in May 2023, when 26% had attended in person (Gallup). That is a fall of 81% in three years (our calculation). Of the adults who had attended a service in that May 2023 week, 16% did so remotely (Gallup).
Online worship among U.S. adults, as each survey owner asked it. Figures link to their sources; bold figures are first cited here.
The surveys do not disagree so much as ask different questions. A past-month question catches occasional viewers; a past-week question catches regulars; a "primarily online" question, below, catches people who have stopped going. None of these four series has a pre-2020 reading of the same question, so there is no like-for-like pre-pandemic baseline for adults as a whole.
Does watching online replace going to church in person?
For a minority of viewers. In Pew's November 2022 survey of 11,377 adults (Pew Research Center), 27% of U.S. adults regularly watched religious services on screens (Pew Research Center) and 10% watched only on screens without regularly attending in person (Pew Research Center). So 37% of regular viewers were not also regular attenders (our calculation). In the 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, 8% of adults took part only online or on TV at least monthly, against 16% who took part both ways and 17% only in person (Pew Research Center): about 20% of monthly participants, one in five, worship only on screens (our calculation).
People who do both prefer the room. Among adults who watch on screens and attend in person, 76% prefer going in person and 11% prefer watching (Pew Research Center). Regular viewers watch mainly for convenience, named as a major reason by 43% (Pew Research Center), and 32% say they feel they are watching "without truly being an active participant" (Pew Research Center). 68% of regular virtual viewers are extremely or very satisfied with the sermons they hear on screens, against 74% of regular attenders with sermons in person (Pew Research Center). Viewing is especially common in historically Black Protestant denominations, where 58% watch at least monthly (Pew Research Center).
Few expected the switch to stick. In July 2020, 72% of adults who had attended at least monthly before the pandemic had watched services online or on TV in the past month (Pew Research Center), but just 2% of regular attenders said they might substitute screens for in-person attendance afterwards (Pew Research Center). Two years later, 15% of adults said they watched online or on TV more often than before the pandemic and 5% less often (Pew Research Center); in October 2024 it was 13% and 6% (Pew Research Center).
Lifeway Research's surveys of U.S. Protestant churchgoers show the same arc. Before COVID, in 2019, 4% watched services online 18 or more times a year (Lifeway Research). In February 2021 it was 32% (Lifeway Research) and in September 2022 15% (Lifeway Research), still 3.75 times the 2019 rate (our calculation; Lifeway says "nearly four times"). In 2022, 39% had watched a livestream instead of going in person on more than five occasions in the past year (Lifeway Research), and 17% said a livestream was the main way they connect with their church (Lifeway Research). Streams also reached people outside the pews: in September 2021, 45% of U.S. adults had watched a Christian church service online during the pandemic, including 15% who do not normally attend in person (Lifeway Research).
Churchgoers who mainly worship online. Each survey defines churchgoers its own way; read across a row, not down a column.
Women are likelier than men to worship remotely: 30% of women churchgoers against 20% of men in January 2026, by the American Bible Society's count (American Bible Society). And an online-only church would lose people: 40% of U.S. Christians told Barna in 2022 they would be unlikely to attend if the internet became their church's only gathering place (Barna Group). Lifeway, Barna and the American Bible Society all work with or sell to churches; their samples, field dates and methods are in the evidence table.
How many churches live stream their services?
About seven in ten U.S. congregations. In fall 2025, 69% offered online or virtual worship, down from 75% in 2023, in the Hartford Institute for Religion Research's survey of 7,453 congregations (Hartford Institute, April 2026, Internet Archive capture; sample). Applied to the 356,642 congregations counted by the 2020 U.S. Religion Census, that is about 246,000 congregations; with Hartford's own estimate of 373,000 congregations it is about 257,000 (our calculations). Before the pandemic about one in five streamed, so the share has risen about 3.4 times since 2018-19 (our calculation from two different surveys; see the table).
Streaming is now routine where it exists. The share of congregations using livestreams "a lot" rose from 32% in 2020 to 66% in 2025 (Hartford Institute), and 83% of congregations that stream expect to still offer an online option in five years; 3% said no and 15% were unsure (Hartford Institute, 2025 questionnaire). Almost nobody went online-only for good: in summer 2021, 80% of Christian congregations offered hybrid worship (Hartford Institute) and 5% worshipped only online (Hartford Institute); in 2023, 73% of congregations of all faiths were hybrid (Hartford Institute), 25% in person only and 2% online only (Hartford Institute).
Share of U.S. congregations streaming worship, by source. The definitions differ: some count any online service, some only live streams, some recorded services too.
Period
Source and who answered
What was counted
Share
2018-19
National Congregations Study (Duke University), a nationally representative sample of congregations
The pre-pandemic figures disagree because they ask different things, and Hartford's two recall questions disagree with each other (20% against 26% for 2019): we show both rather than pick one. The surveys designed to represent all congregations (Duke, Hartford and Lifeway's random sample of pastors) put streaming at about a fifth to a quarter of congregations in 2019. The vendor figure for late 2025 runs well above Hartford's 69% for the same season; it is not a sample designed to represent all congregations.
Size and tradition decide most of it. In 2023, 92% of congregations with more than 250 attenders worshipped in a hybrid format, while congregations of 50 or fewer were the most likely to meet in person only (Hartford Institute). 48% of Catholic and Orthodox congregations held worship only in person, the highest share of any tradition (Hartford Institute). Before the pandemic, a website was already standard: 71.6% of congregations had one in 2018-19, against 17.1% in 1998 (National Congregations Study). When Pew Research Center searched 38,630 church websites in 2019, 6,431 made it into its dataset of sermons posted online between April 7 and June 1 (Pew Research Center, The Digital Pulpit).
Do streaming churches grow? The data show an association, not a cause. Hybrid Christian congregations reported attendance growth of 4.5% from 2019 to 2021, the only worship-mode group that grew (Hartford Institute). In 2023, hybrid congregations with more worshippers online than in person had more than doubled, a 102% increase on their pre-pandemic numbers (Hartford Institute), but only 13% of hybrid congregations had more virtual than in-person attenders (Hartford Institute). Those figures combine in-person and online attendance as leaders estimated them, and larger, better-resourced congregations are the likeliest to stream.
How many people watch a typical church's live stream?
About 20 a weekend. Congregations offering online worship in fall 2025 estimated a median of 20 online attendees across their weekend services, and a mean of 262 (Hartford Institute, 2025 questionnaire). The mean is 13 times the median (our calculation): a small number of large streams account for most online viewing. Median in-person attendance in the same survey rose to 70, above pre-pandemic levels and the first rise in 25 years of tracking (Hartford International University), up from 65 in Faith Communities Today 2020, a median that had halved over 20 years (Theology Today).
Most people worship in large congregations, though most congregations are small. The median U.S. congregation had 70 regular participants in 2018-19, while the median churchgoer attended one with 363 (National Congregations Study; National Congregations Study), 5.2 times larger (our calculation). The largest 9% of congregations hold about half of all churchgoers (National Congregations Study). There are about 1,850 Protestant megachurches, with weekly attendance of about 2,000 or more (Hartford Institute), drawing about ten million weekly worshippers, roughly one in six worshippers on a given weekend (Hartford Institute).
A platform view is not a worshipper. The Church of England's statistician gave the example of a weekly service that Facebook credited with over 100,000 "views", of which about 98% lasted a few seconds, likely because of autoplay; it was watched in full a few thousand times (Church of England, Statistics for Mission 2023). The Church gave the example to explain why it does not publish national totals of online views. A church comparing its stream with its pews should count people who stay, not plays.
Few churches pay someone to run it. In 2018-19, 4.5% of congregations had a paid staff member spending at least a quarter of their time on social media (National Congregations Study). In May 2025, religious organizations employed an estimated 1,220 audio and video technicians (BLS OEWS) and 140 film and video editors (BLS OEWS). Those BLS counts cover only employers in the unemployment-insurance system, from which churches are generally exempt, so they are floors. Budgets are moving: 52% of church leaders in Pushpay's February 2025 survey reported higher technology budgets and 10% lower (Pushpay; Pushpay sells church giving and live-streaming software).
How many congregations and churchgoers are there in the U.S.?
About 357,000 congregations by the last full count. The 2020 U.S. Religion Census counted 356,642 congregations and 161,224,088 adherents, 48.6% of the population, across 372 religious bodies (U.S. Religion Census, Table 1; U.S. Religion Census). Its release-day press release gave 356,739 congregations and 161,371,931 adherents (U.S. Religion Census press release; press release); we use the published table. The Hartford Institute estimates about 373,000 congregations, midway between that count and a survey-based estimate of 384,000 (Hartford Institute).
Government counts see only part of that. County Business Patterns counted 186,801 employer establishments in religious organizations in 2023, with 1,576,295 paid employees (U.S. Census Bureau; U.S. Census Bureau), and 115,035 of those establishments had fewer than 5 employees (U.S. Census Bureau). BLS's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which covers only employers in the unemployment-insurance system, counted 26,260 private religious-organization establishments and 204,667 workers in 2025 (BLS QCEW; BLS QCEW). For clergy, BLS's occupational survey estimated 57,200 wage-and-salary jobs in May 2025, at a median annual wage of $60,810 (BLS OEWS; BLS OEWS), while its Employment Projections put clergy employment at 242,000 in 2025, growing 2 percent by 2035 (BLS, Internet Archive capture; BLS).
In-person attendance has stabilized at a lower level. 31% of U.S. adults said they attended weekly or nearly weekly in 2025, and 57% seldom or never, in Gallup's surveys (Gallup), against an average of 42% in 2000-2003 (Gallup). Pew's 2023-24 study found 33% attending at least monthly (Pew Research Center) and 25% in person at least weekly (Pew Research Center), with a wide age gap: 25% of adults ages 18 to 24 attend monthly against 49% of those 74 and older (Pew Research Center; Pew Research Center). 62% of U.S. adults describe themselves as Christian (Pew Research Center).
Membership figures depend on how the question is asked. Gallup's telephone series fell from 70% of adults belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque in 1999 (Gallup) to 47% in 2020 (Gallup) and 45% in 2025 (Gallup trend data). Pew, surveying mostly online and by mail, found 37% who are members of a house of worship in 2023-24 (Pew Research Center); Pew notes that phone surveys produce higher estimates of religious attendance. Both are shown.
How much church giving happens online?
Most congregations now take gifts online, but most gifts still do not arrive that way. In 2023, 69% of U.S. congregations used online giving at all and 48% used it "a lot" (Hartford Institute). Online gifts were about 30% of the financial gifts a congregation received in 2023, up from 10% in 2020 (Hartford Institute), and about 20% of a congregation's participants gave online, up from about 15% (Hartford Institute). Among U.S. Protestant churchgoers, 23% gave through their church's website in 2022 (Lifeway Research), and 62% of those who give used no electronic method at all (Lifeway Research).
Share of U.S. congregations that take gifts online, by source and year.
Before the pandemic, congregations with digital options received on average 22% of their giving digitally (Lake Institute), and 24% of their regular adults made at least one digital gift a year (Lake Institute). Fifty-five percent of congregations let people set up recurring gifts through their bank or card (Lake Institute), which is a different measure from the "half" with digital giving, although roundups often cite it as one. In spring 2020, when services moved online, giving to congregations in Lake Institute's sample fell 4.4% from March to June against the same months of 2019 (Lake Institute).
Hybrid congregations take in the most per person. In 2023, congregations with hybrid worship had median per capita income of $2,353, against $2,000 for in-person-only congregations (Hartford Institute), 18% more (our calculation). Congregations with only online services had $691 (Hartford Institute), about 35% of the in-person figure (our calculation). That is a correlation, not an effect of streaming: larger congregations are the most likely to be hybrid, and per capita figures depend on how leaders count attendance.
The money involved is large. Giving USA estimates that Americans gave $151.58 billion to religion in 2025, the largest of its recipient groups (Giving USA), up 2.4% in current dollars and flat after inflation (Giving USA), out of $617.20 billion in all charitable giving (Giving USA): 24.6% of the total (our calculation). The median congregation took in about $169,000 from all sources in 2017 (Lake Institute); in 2023 the typical congregation had median income of $165,000 and spent $160,000 (Hartford Institute), with staff the largest cost at 43% of spending (Hartford Institute). In 2024, 29% of U.S. Protestant pastors said their church had not made its budget on giving (Lifeway Research).
Giving inside the stream is still rare. In a January 2026 survey by Ministry Brands, which sells church giving software, only 24% of U.S. Protestant churches that offer digital giving let people give during livestreamed services (Ministry Brands), and those churches said 41% of their 2025 giving came through digital methods (Ministry Brands). In England, Church of England parishes saw a 44% real-terms increase (£15 million) in receipts collected at services after 2020, which the Church credits to new digital giving methods (Church of England, Parish Finance Statistics). Its churches raised almost £25m in digital income in 2025 (Church of England), and the average contactless gift was £8.76 against £35.73 for the average online gift (Church of England).
What do YouTube, Facebook and music licences require of a church live stream?
A verified channel and a 24-hour wait on YouTube, an account at least 60 days old with 100 followers on Facebook, and a streaming licence for the music. The platform rules below are as each company publishes them, read on October 29, 2026; several help pages refuse scripts, so they were read in dated Internet Archive captures.
Live-streaming rules a church runs into, from each platform's own help or developer pages.
Rule
YouTube
Facebook (Meta)
Before you can go live
Verified channel, no live streaming restrictions in the past 90 days; the first stream may take up to 24 hours to enable (YouTube Help; YouTube Help)
Account at least 60 days old and a Page or professional profile with at least 100 followers, since June 10, 2024 (Meta for Developers; Meta for Developers)
Streaming from a phone
At least 50 subscribers; under 1,000 subscribers, viewers may be limited and the archive is private by default (YouTube Help; YouTube Help)
Same account rules
Longest stream and archive
Streams under 12 hours can be archived automatically (YouTube Help)
Up to 8 hours live (Meta for Developers); new live videos stay on Facebook for 30 days since February 19, 2025, then are removed (Meta Newsroom)
Delay
Low latency: under 10 seconds for most viewers; ultra-low: under 5 seconds, with more buffering (YouTube Help; YouTube Help)
Every live stream is scanned; a match can put up a placeholder image, then interrupt or end the stream (YouTube Help)
Not compared here
The music in a service is the usual problem. U.S. copyright law exempts performing religious and nondramatic musical works "in the course of services at a place of worship or other religious assembly" (17 U.S.C. §110(3), U.S. Copyright Office), but the 1976 House Report on the law says the exemption "would not extend to religious broadcasts or other transmissions to the public at large, even where the transmissions were sent from the place of worship" (House Report 94-1476, via Cornell LII). That is why streaming licences exist. This page is not legal advice.
The licensing bodies size their own coverage. CCLI's Streaming License covers live-streamed or uploaded services with church musicians performing more than 450,000 songs (CCLI); its Church Copyright License, for reproducing lyrics and music, covers more than 600,000 songs (CCLI) and is used by more than 230,000 churches and ministries worldwide (CCLI). ONE LICENSE says more than 25,000 churches and other organizations use it (ONE LICENSE, Internet Archive capture); its About page gives a catalog of over 80,000 titles (ONE LICENSE, Internet Archive capture) while its 2022 mailer said 175,000 songs (ONE LICENSE), and its streaming licences allow up to three times as many views as the top of the church's attendance category (ONE LICENSE, 2020). Christian Copyright Solutions, a licensing company, says its WORSHIPcast licence covers more than 43 million songs (Christian Copyright Solutions), for churches streaming from their own ministry-owned domain or website (Christian Copyright Solutions).
Church streaming companies publish their own reach, unaudited. Life.Church says 38,428 churches have joined its free Church Online Platform since 2011 (Church Online Platform). Subsplash says it is trusted by 20,000 churches and ministries (Subsplash), Resi by 30,000+ weekly streams (Resi), and BoxCast says its protocol powers over 10,000 live broadcasts a week (BoxCast).
How many people worship online outside the U.S.?
In England, about one in twenty regular Church of England worshippers now worships mainly at home. Approximately 5% of the Church's Worshipping Community at the end of 2024 worshipped entirely or predominantly through Church at Home services, mostly online (Church of England, Statistics for Mission 2024), out of a Worshipping Community of 1,009,000 people (Church of England): about 50,000 people (our calculation). Average weekly in-person attendance was 702,000 (Church of England). Church at Home attendance in 2024 was about 30% of its 2021 level (Church of England).
Church of England: churches offering Church at Home services (online, phone, email or post) each October, and worshippers who worship mainly at home. Two editions give different shares for 2020-2022 because they compare different sets of returns; both are shown.
During the March-July 2020 lockdown, 78% of Church of England churches offered Church at Home services and 69% offered them online, live-streamed or pre-recorded (Church of England, Church at Home 2020; Church of England). In October 2021, 90% of the churches still offering them did so online (Church of England). By January 2022 its first 100 national online services had been seen 16.5 million times (Church of England press release), and parishes had added more than 17,000 livestreamed services to its A Church Near You website (Church of England press release). Across the UK in April 2020, 24% of adults said they had watched or listened to a religious service since lockdown began, on radio, TV or online (Savanta ComRes for Tearfund).
In Scotland, 45,000 people worshipped online with the Church of Scotland in 2021 (Church of Scotland, Internet Archive capture), against about 60,000 in person on a Sunday (Church of Scotland), 75% as many (our calculation); before the pandemic about 88,000 attended on a Sunday (Church of Scotland). A Scotland-wide survey of church leaders, as the Church of Scotland reported it, found 18% of churches offered online worship before the 2020 lockdown and 96% during it (Church of Scotland, Internet Archive capture; Church of Scotland). Baptist Union of Great Britain churches reported combined online attendance of 19,060 for 2022, the first year it was collected, 18,201 for 2024 and 20,848 for 2025 (Baptist Union; Baptist Union; Baptist Union), equal to 21.2% of their 98,126 members in 2025 (our calculation); the Union does not define online attendance.
Elsewhere: 11% of Australians were regular online attenders of religious services in 2021, while 21% attended in person at least monthly (NCLS Research; NCLS Research), and 17% of Australian church attenders also attended services elsewhere online (NCLS Research). In Canada, 77% of people who attended at least monthly before the pandemic had streamed a service by March 2021 (Angus Reid Institute). In Germany, 81% of responding Protestant congregations offered digital worship in spring 2020 (midi for the EKD), and congregations estimated the reach of their digital Sunday services at 287% above their usual in-person Sunday attendance (midi for the EKD). By 2022, 11% of German Protestant and Catholic church members took part in online services several times a year or more, against 39% in person, and 2% weekly or more online (EKD, sixth church membership survey; EKD; EKD). In the international CONTOC study of pastors, almost 95% had not offered their own digital worship before the spring 2020 ban on gatherings (CONTOC, reported in Euxeinos).
What the popular church streaming numbers really say
Most church streaming statistics in circulation come from a few pages that copy each other, and most of those pages are written by companies that sell streaming, websites or giving software to churches. We traced the twelve figures they repeat most to the earliest document we could read. Repeating pages are linked only as dated evidence of how a number changed, never as a source for it. Where we could not find an original, we say so and do not mark the number as a figure.
"33% of churchgoers found their church online"
A church-website company's conference talk in 2012, about where attenders first heard of their church. The oldest copy we found, from August 1, 2012, reports research by Monk Development, which builds church websites, presented at a conference in July 2012: "In 2012, 33% say the internet was the first place where they learned about their church" (CRC Network). No sample size, field dates or method appear in any copy we found, and Monk's own report did not load. In May 2017 the Livestream blog, which sold streaming plans to churches, printed "33% of parishioners first learned about their church online" (Livestream, Internet Archive capture). WebTribunal credits it to "Vimeo Livestream" (33%, WebTribunal), and Dacast's church streaming page, republished in January 2026, still says 33% of churchgoers "have found their current churches online", with no date or survey (Dacast).
Use instead: in Lifeway Research's 2023 survey of 1,001 Protestant churchgoers who had switched churches, 37% of those who searched for a new church used church websites (Lifeway Research).
"44% of people prefer to be alone while they pray and worship"
Gallup asked former churchgoers why they stopped going. In a March 2017 Gallup poll, 44% of people who attended monthly growing up but seldom or never attend now rated "prefer to worship on my own" a major reason, one of nine reasons they could pick (Gallup). In July 2019 Restream, which sells multistreaming software, wrote that "more than 44% of Americans not attending church" list it as "the primary reason" (Restream, Internet Archive capture). Dacast's 2026 page turns it into "44% of people prefer to be alone while they pray and worship" (Dacast). Former churchgoers became "people", and "worship on my own" became "alone".
"Online donations increased 70% after a church started streaming"
One customer's share of giving, not a growth rate. Livestream's May 2017 houses-of-worship page said that since using Livestream, Champions Centre Church "now receives 70% of total donations online", with no period, baseline or method (Livestream, Internet Archive capture). REACHRIGHT, which sells church marketing, made it "increased digital donations by 70%. That's just from live streaming." (REACHRIGHT), and Dacast says the church's online donations "increased by 70%" when it began to stream (Dacast). There is no measured giving effect of streaming to use instead; the Hartford comparison in the giving section is a correlation.
"$2.2 billion in church donations were raised online"
That total is all nonprofits in one software company's data, in 2015. Blackbaud's 2015 Charitable Giving Report drew on "online giving data from nonprofit organizations representing $2.2 billion in online fundraising" across all sectors, not religion (Blackbaud). Livestream's 2017 page listed "$2.2B was donated online", credited to Blackbaud but placed among church statistics (Livestream, Internet Archive capture). WebTribunal now says "more than $2.2 billion in church donations were raised online in a year" (WebTribunal). Use instead: Giving USA's $151.58 billion to religion in 2025, and Hartford's 30% online share of congregations' gifts in 2023.
"17 million Americans regularly visit church websites"
Grey Matter Research, as Christianity Today reported it in May 2012, found that "more than 17 million non-churchgoers visited the website of a local church or place of worship in the past 12 months" (Christianity Today): any visit in a year, by people who do not attend. WebTribunal's list says "17 million Americans regularly visit church websites", credited to REACHRIGHT (WebTribunal). "In the past 12 months" became "regularly", non-churchgoers became Americans, and the 2012 date fell off.
"53% of practicing Christians streamed church services online in 2023"
Barna measured that in the spring 2020 lockdown. In a survey fielded April 28 to May 5, 2020, 53% of practicing Christians said they had streamed their regular church online in the past four weeks, when most churches were closed (Barna Group). Dacast's page says "53% of practing Christians streamed church services online in 2023" (Dacast; the typo is theirs). Use instead: Pew's 26% of U.S. adults in June 2026.
"47% of people do not abandon in-person services for virtual alternatives"
Before COVID, Lifeway asked Protestant churchgoers whether they had ever replaced going to church with a livestream. In September 2019, 47% said they had not done so in the past year (Lifeway Research). Dacast's page renders it as "47% of people do not abandon in-person services for virtual alternatives" (Dacast), a different claim about a different population. Use instead: Lifeway's own trend, 4% watching 18 or more times a year in 2019 and 15% in 2022.
"Pew found 91% were satisfied with what their churches were doing"
Pew asked recent online viewers of any faith, in July 2020, about the services they had watched: nine-in-ten were satisfied, 54% very and 37% somewhat (Pew Research Center). REACHRIGHT's 2021 list says "The Pew study found 91% were satisfied with what their churches were doing" (REACHRIGHT). Use instead: Pew's November 2022 finding that 68% of regular viewers are extremely or very satisfied with online sermons.
"80% of people will check a church's website before visiting"
We found no survey behind it. Subsplash, which sells church apps, websites and streaming, prints "80% of people will check a church's website before visiting in person!" in 2026 (Subsplash), linking to a 2019 post by Pinnacle Leadership Associates, a church consultancy, which credits a church-communications blogger "via Abide Connect" (Pinnacle Leadership Associates); Abide's post names no survey. The oldest form we found is Thom Rainer's May 2013 post, which says "unconfirmed numbers" put the share of potential guests who look at the website first "between 75% and 90%", and that he did not have confirmation of them (Church Answers). We searched the figure and its older wordings, the Wayback Machine for each page, church trade press and each page's cited links. Use instead: Lifeway's measured 37% of church switchers who searched for a new church and used church websites.
"Churches that accept online giving increase donations by 32%"
We found no study behind it either. Nonprofits Source has printed "Churches that accept tithing online increase overall donations by 32%" since at least March 2018, the oldest Internet Archive capture of its page, with no source (Nonprofits Source). Vanco, which sells church giving software, says churches that "promoted online giving saw a 32 percent increase", crediting Nonprofits Source (Vanco). The closest measured comparison is Hartford's per capita income by worship mode ($2,353 for hybrid congregations), which is a correlation, not an effect.
"59% of churches grew after launching an online ministry"
A self-reported vendor survey of churches that were already online. The 2018 "State of the Online Church" survey, run by Pushpay (which sells church software) with the church search firm Vanderbloemen, found 59% of churches had "seen physically growth since launching their online ministry" (Pushpay). Every respondent led an online ministry, so the survey cannot compare churches that stream with churches that do not. StreamingChurch.tv, which sells church streaming, quoted it under the line "Your church can grow with streaming video" (59 percent, StreamingChurch.tv).
"300 million people watch church streams"
A streaming vendor's projection. Vodlix, which sells white-label streaming apps, published a table in February 2026 putting worldwide church-stream viewers at 250 million in 2025 and 300 million projected for 2026, and labelled the numbers "estimates based on current trends" (Vodlix). Sci-Tech Today's August 2026 statistics page leads with "300 million people are projected to watch church streams in 2026" (Sci-Tech Today), citing Vodlix. No organization counts church-stream viewers worldwide; use the national figures above.
We started from the questions people search for about church live streaming statistics and looked for the organization that actually produced each answer. Every figure on this page sits in an evidence ledger with its source, the exact table or paragraph it came from, the measurement period, the population measured, and the date we checked it. This edition holds 249 figures from 45 publishers.
On October 29, 2026, each of the 233 sourced figures on this page was re-fetched with the fetch cache cleared and matched against the recorded wording. 230 matched on that pass, from the publisher's page or file or a dated Internet Archive capture; the other three, from the EKD's 12.7 MB church membership survey report, matched on a slower download the same day after the first fetch hit the verifier's 40-second limit. 57 figures cite Internet Archive captures: Hartford Institute reports, whose websites answer scripts with a bot check; YouTube Help pages, which Google rate-limited for this machine; Meta's developer pages, ONE LICENSE and the Church of Scotland, which refuse scripts; and old vendor pages traced in the popular-numbers section. We left out what we could not read or check: the full Giving USA 2026 report and Barna's digital donor research, which are paid or behind sign-up forms; the American Bible Society's 2026 State of the Bible report, behind a sign-up form, so its figures come from the Society's own press releases; Pushpay's full church technology report, behind a form; Monk Development's 2012 report, whose site did not respond; and a Pushpay release saying 91% of churches livestream, which gives no field dates. The 16 figures marked as our calculations are listed with their formulas below.
We only cite the producer: government agencies, regulators, company filings and official posts, and the survey owner's own report. We do not cite statistics roundups, Statista-style aggregators, or salary sites without a public method. We did not bypass paywalls or sign-up forms; where a full report was gated, we used only the figures its publisher states publicly.
Figures marked "our calculation" are arithmetic on the cited numbers, and anyone can reproduce them:
This edition contains no Mark Studios customer data.
Limitations
Congregation surveys are answered by one leader per congregation. Hartford's, Duke's, Lifeway's and Barna's congregational figures come from a pastor or other key informant, and online attendance is that person's estimate. Hartford does not say whether the estimates count people, devices or views.
Several survey owners work with or sell to churches. Lifeway Research is part of Lifeway Christian Resources, which sells to churches; the American Bible Society distributes Bibles and scripture resources; Pushpay, Ministry Brands and Givelify sell church software and ran their own surveys, which are labelled as vendor surveys and are not samples designed to represent all congregations.
The questions differ. Pew asks about the past month and counts television; Gallup asks about the past seven days; others ask what people do "primarily". For congregations, some sources count any online service, some only live streams, and some include recorded services. The tables name each question; compare within a row, not across sources.
There is no like-for-like pre-pandemic baseline for adults. Pew, Gallup and AP-NORC first asked about online worship in 2020. Congregational figures for 2019 come from different surveys and, at Hartford, from leaders recalling 2019 in 2023 or 2025, which gave 20% and 26%.
Growth and giving comparisons are associations. Hybrid congregations grew more and take in more per person, but larger congregations are the most likely to stream, so the comparisons cannot show what streaming itself does.
Government counts miss most congregations. County Business Patterns counts only employer establishments, and BLS's QCEW and occupational estimates cover only employers in the unemployment-insurance system, from which churches are generally exempt. Treat the BLS staff counts as floors.
Our estimate of congregations streaming applies Hartford's 2025 share (69%, margin of error about 3 points) to the 2020 U.S. Religion Census count and to Hartford's own estimate, so it is a range, not a count.
Platform rules and company claims are a snapshot read on October 29, 2026, several through Internet Archive captures because the live pages refuse scripts. Streaming companies' counts of their own customers are unaudited.
Figures from other countries are not comparable with each other. They come from single churches' own returns (Church of England, Church of Scotland, Baptist Union of Great Britain) or national surveys from 2020 to 2022, each with its own definition. We translated the German figures.
How to cite this page
For a single figure, cite the original publisher named next to it, and link here if the verification trail is useful to your readers. Each figure has its own anchor, so you can link straight to it, for example https://www.markstudios.com/research/church-live-streaming-statistics#DRV-001. To cite the page as a whole:
Mark Studios. "Church Live Streaming Statistics." Last verified Oct 29, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/church-live-streaming-statistics
APA
Mark Studios. (2026, October 29). Church live streaming statistics. https://www.markstudios.com/research/church-live-streaming-statistics
MLA
“Church Live Streaming Statistics.” Mark Studios, 29 Oct. 2026, www.markstudios.com/research/church-live-streaming-statistics.
Chicago
Mark Studios. “Church Live Streaming Statistics.” Last modified October 29, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/church-live-streaming-statistics.
BibTeX
@misc{markstudios_church_live_streaming_statistics_2026,
author = {{Mark Studios}},
title = {{Church Live Streaming Statistics}},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
url = {https://www.markstudios.com/research/church-live-streaming-statistics},
note = {Last verified 2026-10-29}
}
Our calculations and the evidence table are free to reuse with attribution and a link to this page. Each underlying figure remains the claim of its original publisher, and some publishers ask for a link when their figures are reused.
Lake Institute on Faith & Giving, Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, COVID-19 Congregational Study (2020-09-15). Accessed 2026-10-29.
We re-verify every figure quarterly and when a major source publishes a new edition. The next scheduled review is January 2027. Corrections go to contact@markstudios.com.
Oct 29, 2026: First published with 249 figures from 45 publishers, each checked against its original source.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of churches live stream?
About seven in ten U.S. congregations. In fall 2025, 69% offered online or virtual worship in the Hartford Institute for Religion Research's survey of 7,453 congregations, down from 75% in 2023. That is about 246,000 congregations by our estimate. Before the pandemic about one in five live streamed: 20.2% in the 2018-19 National Congregations Study.
How many people watch church online?
In June 2026, 26% of U.S. adults said they had watched religious services online or on TV in the past month, according to Pew Research Center, down from 36% in July 2020. Fewer watch every week: 16% in Pew's 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study. Only 8% of adults take part at least monthly only on screens, without also attending in person.
Has online church attendance declined since COVID?
Yes, but it has not gone away. In Gallup's surveys the share of adults who had attended remotely in the past week fell from 27% in April 2020 to 5% in May 2023. The American Bible Society found that 45% of churchgoers primarily worshipped online in 2021 and 12% in January 2025. Pew's past-month measure has stayed between 24% and 27% since late 2022.
How many people watch a typical church live stream?
About 20 at the median. U.S. congregations that stream estimated a median of 20 online attendees across their weekend services in fall 2025, against a mean of 262, because a few large congregations draw most online viewers. Median in-person attendance in the same Hartford survey was 70.
Do churches that live stream grow?
Some do, but the data cannot show that streaming causes it. Hybrid congregations reported growth of 4.5% from 2019 to 2021 in Hartford's surveys, and hybrid congregations with more worshippers online than in person were up 102% on their pre-pandemic numbers in 2023. The widely shared claim that 59% of churches grew after launching online comes from a 2018 vendor survey of churches that were already online.
How much church giving is online?
About 30% of the gifts a U.S. congregation received in 2023 came in online, up from 10% in 2020, and 69% of congregations used online giving, according to the Hartford Institute. Among Protestant churchgoers who give, 62% still used no electronic method in 2022, Lifeway Research found.
Do churches need a licence to live stream worship music?
Usually, yes. U.S. copyright law exempts performances during services at a place of worship, but the 1976 House Report on the law says the exemption does not extend to broadcasts or other transmissions to the public. Streaming licences fill the gap: CCLI's Streaming License, for example, covers more than 450,000 songs. This is not legal advice.
How often is this page updated?
Every figure is re-checked against its original source each quarter, and sooner when a major source publishes a new edition, such as a Hartford Institute congregational report, a Pew Research Center religion survey or the Church of England's Statistics for Mission. The Last verified date changes only after that check, and each change is recorded in the change log.
