Mobile traffic now accounts for nearly half of requests

Global internet traffic grew by 19 percent during 2025, while nearly half of traffic now comes from mobile devices. A significant and growing portion also comes from bots, many designed to train AI.

In its 2025 Year in Review, Cloudflare notes that internet traffic worldwide grew by almost a fifth, with the increases coming in fits and starts. In fact, traffic was somewhat flat through mid-April and even experienced a mysterious dip before bouncing back sharply to 5 percent growth during May.

Most of the growth occurred after mid-August, however, accelerating rapidly to hit 19 percent by the start of December. This pattern is similar to that seen for the past few years, although growth peaked at about 17 percent last year.

According to Cloudflare, 43 percent of requests across the interwebs were from mobile devices this year, up from 41 percent in 2024. The balance came from "classic" laptop ...