Digital 2025: Iran
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This page contains all the data, insights, and trends you need to help you understand how people in Iran use digital devices, online platforms, and connected services in 2025.
If you want to know whether this is our most recent report on Iran, or if you’re looking for data on digital trends and behaviours in Iran for other years, you can find DataReportal’s full collection of (free!) reports on Iran by clicking here.
You’ll also find the complete Digital 2025 report for Iran in the “full report” section towards the bottom of this page, but we’ll start this article by taking a look at the essential headline numbers for Iran this year.
Just before that, we’d like to say a big thank you to Meltwater and to We Are Social for their support of the Global Digital Reports series in 2025.
Now, let’s start exploring the data…
The “state of digital” in Iran in 2025
Here are DataReportal’s essential headlines for the adoption and use of connected devices and services in Iran in 2025:
A total of 152 million cellular mobile connections were active in Iran in early 2025, with this figure equivalent to 166 percent of the total population. However, note that some of these connections may only include services such as voice and SMS, and some may not include access to the internet.
There were 73.2 million individuals using the internet in Iran at the start of 2025, when online penetration stood at 79.6 percent.
Iran was home to 48.0 million social media user identities in January 2025, equating to 52.2 percent of the total population.
These headline stats offer a great overview of the “state of digital” in Iran at the start of 2025, but in order to make sense of how digital trends and behaviours have been evolving over time, we need to dig deeper into the data.
Let’s take a closer look at what the numbers tell us, starting with some valuable context relating to the population of Iran.
Population of Iran in 2025
The population of Iran stood at 92.0 million in January 2025.
Data shows that Iran’s population increased by 906 thousand (+1.0 percent) between early 2024 and the start of 2025.
Meanwhile, in early 2025, 77.9 percent of Iran’s population lived in urban centres, whereas 22.1 percent lived in rural areas.
At that time, 49.2 percent of Iran’s population was female, while 50.8 percent of the population was male.
Note: gender data were only available for “female” and “male” at the time of report production.
Iran’s population by age
At the beginning of 2025, the median age of Iran’s population was 34.0, with half of Iran’s population above this age, and the other half of the population below it.
For added context, here’s how Iran’s total population broke down by age group at the start of the year:
6.4 percent was between the ages of 0 and 4.
12.6 percent was between the ages of 5 and 12.
7.3 percent was between the ages of 13 and 17.
9.1 percent was between the ages of 18 and 24.
14.7 percent was between the ages of 25 and 34.
19.1 percent was between the ages of 35 and 44.
13.2 percent was between the ages of 45 and 54.
9.0 percent was between the ages of 55 and 64.
8.6 percent was aged 65 and above.
Note: percentages may not sum to 100 percent due to rounding.
Mobile connections in Iran in 2025
Data from GSMA Intelligence shows that there were 152 million cellular mobile connections in Iran at the beginning of 2025.
For perspective, many people make use of more than one mobile connection, so it’s not unusual for mobile connection figures to significantly exceed figures for total population.
For example, the same person might have one mobile connection for personal use, but also use a separate mobile connection for work activities. The rise of eSIMs has made this even easier over recent years.
Indeed, GSMA Intelligence’s numbers indicate that mobile connections in Iran were equivalent to 166 percent of the total population in January 2025.
Looking at trends over time, the number of mobile connections in Iran increased by 6.1 million (+4.2 percent) between the start of 2024 and the beginning of 2025.
Meanwhile, GSMA Intelligence’s data suggests that 93.1% of mobile connections in Iran can now be considered “broadband”, which means that they connect via 3G, 4G, or 5G mobile networks.
However, devices that connect to “broadband” mobile networks do not necessarily use cellular mobile data — for example, some subscription plans may only include access to voice and SMS services — so this broadband figure should not be considered a proxy for mobile internet use.
Internet use in Iran in 2025
At the time of report production, the latest available data indicated that there were 73.2 million internet users in Iran in January 2025.
This means that Iran’s internet penetration rate stood at 79.6 percent of the total population at the start of the year.
Meanwhile, Kepios’s analysis indicates that the number of internet users in Iran increased by 721 thousand (+1.0 percent) between January 2024 and January 2025.
And for added perspective, Iran’s internet adoption rate (i.e. the percentage of the total population that uses the internet) remained unchanged during the same period.
But these user figures also suggest that 18.8 million people in Iran did not use the internet at the beginning of 2025, suggesting that 20.4 percent of the population remained “offline” at the start of the year.
However, complexities associated with the collection and analysis of internet user data mean that it can often take several months before research is ready for publication.
As a result, the latest published figures for internet use may under-represent current realities, and actual rates for internet adoption and year-on-year growth may be higher than the figures shown here suggest.
Please see our comprehensive notes on data for further details.
Internet connection speeds in Iran in 2025
Figures published by Ookla indicate that internet users in Iran could have expected the following internet connection speeds at the beginning of 2025, reported in megabits per second (Mbps):
Median mobile internet download speed via cellular data networks*: 38.88 Mbps.
Median fixed internet download speed: 16.03 Mbps.
Ookla’s data reveals that the median mobile internet download speed in Iran increased by 7.06 Mbps (+22.2 percent) in the twelve months to January 2025.
Meanwhile, the company’s data shows that the download speed of the typical fixed internet connection in Iran increased by 3.27 Mbps (+25.6 percent) during the same period.
*Note: values for mobile internet connection speeds only include data transfer via cellular mobile networks (e.g. 3G, 4G, and 5G connections), and do not represent the speed of mobile connections via WiFi where the WiFi router connects to the internet via “fixed” infrastructure.
Social media statistics for Iran in 2025
DataReportal’s figures show that there were 48.0 million active social media user identities in Iran in January 2025.
For perspective, this figure was equivalent to 52.2 percent of Iran’s total population at the start of 2025.
However, while our methodology strives to “de-duplicate” social media users across different social platforms — and, wherever possible, to remove accounts that do not represent individual human users — it’s important to stress that our social media user identities figures may not represent unique individuals (see our detailed notes on data to learn why).
Moreover, due to complexities associated with de-duplicating users across different social platforms, the methodology that we use to calculate social media user identities may sometimes only factor users of the social media platform that has the largest active audience in the respective country at the time of report production.
As a result, the figures that we publish for a country’s overall social media use may sometimes look very similar to the statistics that we publish for the most popular social media platform in that country.
Separately, please also note that the signals and sources that we rely on to inform these social media figures make regular changes and corrections to their data.
As a result, the values for social media use shown here might appear to be quite different to the numbers that we published in previous years.
Because of this, we advise significant caution when comparing the values for social media user identities published in this year’s reports with those published in previous years, especially because changes in our reported values may be the result of “corrections” in the source data, and not all trends will be the result of changes in actual user behaviour.
This is particularly pertinent when it comes to trends in social media use over time, and we recommend that readers use the change figures published below, rather than trying to re-calculate growth figures using data published in our previous reports.
And on that note, Kepios’s analysis shows that social media user identities in Iran remained unchanged between early 2024 and the beginning of 2025.
Turning our attention to user demographics, data published in the ad planning tools of top social media platforms indicates that there were [N/A] users aged 18 and above using social media in Iran at the beginning of 2025, which was equivalent to [N/A] of the total population aged 18 and above.
And for added context, it may be helpful to know that 65.5 percent of Iran’s total internet user base (regardless of age) used at least one social media platform in January 2025.
Note: due to source data limitations, we’re only able to report gender data for “female” and “male”.
Additional resources
Just before we get to the full report, here are some suggestions for further reading, which will provide additional context for our full set of Digital 2025 numbers for Iran:
Read our complete Digital 2025 Global Overview Report to get a comprehensive overview of the “state of digital” around the world in 2025.
Click here to see all of the Global Digital Reports we’ve published for Iran over the years.
Explore all of our reports on countries in the Southern Asia region by clicking here.
Find all of the reports in the Digital 2025 series via this handy index page.
Visit our complete online library to see all of the (free!) reports in the Global Digital Reports series.
If you’d like to receive updates when we publish new reports, click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Full report
You’ll find our complete Digital 2025: Iran report in the embed below (click here if you can’t see that, or if you can’t change the slides).