LankaRank Internet statistics
Statistics, October 2026
Internet users in Sri Lanka 2026, and small business statistics
The figures people most often look for about Sri Lanka online: who uses the internet, on what, how they search and pay, and how many small businesses there are. Each one names its source and the period it covers.
On this page
Key figures
- 62.4%of people aged 5–69 used the internet in 2025Department of Census and Statistics
- 80.6%of devices used to go online were smartphonesDepartment of Census and Statistics, 2025
- 13.9Minternet usersDataReportal, October 2025
- 93.7%of searches in Sri Lanka were on GoogleStatCounter, September 2026
- 14.8%of adults paid a shop or business digitallyWorld Bank Global Findex, 2024 survey
- 1.04Msmall and medium businesses still active in 2023non-agricultural, Department of Census and Statistics
How many people use the internet in Sri Lanka?
62.4% of people aged 5 to 69 used the internet in 2025, according to the Department of Census and Statistics, up from 51.2% in 2023. DataReportal counts 13.9 million internet users in October 2025, 59.7% of the population and 1.5 million more than a year earlier.
The two figures measure different things. The census office surveys households and counts anyone aged 5 to 69 who went online at least once in the year. DataReportal's share is worked out against the United Nations' population estimate of 23.3 million; the 2024 census counted 21,781,800 people.
| Group | Share |
|---|---|
| All of Sri Lanka, 2023 | 51.2% |
| All of Sri Lanka, 2024 | 54.6% |
| All of Sri Lanka, 2025 | 62.4% |
| Urban areas, 2025 | 74.7% |
| Rural areas, 2025 | 60.5% |
| Estate areas, 2025 | 49.7% |
Sources: Department of Census and Statistics, Computer Literacy Statistics 2025, Annual Bulletin; Digital 2026: Sri Lanka; Department of Census and Statistics, Census of Population and Housing 2024, Final Report.
Do Sri Lankans go online on phones or computers?
Mostly phones: 80.6% of the devices used to go online in 2025 were smartphones. Desktop and laptop computers made up 17.4%, and only 21.3% of households owned a computer.
Owning a smartphone is less common than using one. The World Bank's 2024 survey found 44% of adults had a smartphone of their own and 76.6% had a mobile phone of some kind. Mobile connections, 30.3 million in October 2025, are SIM connections rather than people, so they outnumber the population.
| Device | Share |
|---|---|
| Smartphone | 80.6% |
| Desktop or laptop computer | 17.4% |
| Tablet | 1.1% |
| Basic mobile phone | 0.9% |
Sources: Department of Census and Statistics, Computer Literacy Statistics 2025, Annual Bulletin; World Bank, The Little Data Book on Financial Inclusion 2025 (Global Findex); Digital 2026: Sri Lanka. We don't quote web-traffic trackers' phone and desktop shares for Sri Lanka: their monthly figures swing too far to be believable.
What is the digital literacy rate in Sri Lanka?
72% in 2025, for people aged 5 to 69. The census office counts someone as digitally literate if they can use a computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone on their own. Computer literacy, a narrower measure, was 39.2%.
It falls with age: 53.9% of people aged 50 to 59 and 31.5% of those aged 60 to 69 were digitally literate.
Source: Department of Census and Statistics, Computer Literacy Statistics 2025, Annual Bulletin.
| Platform | What's counted | People |
|---|---|---|
| ad reach | 9 million | |
| YouTube | ad reach | 8.82 million |
| TikTok | ad reach, adults 18 and over only | 6.79 million |
| registered members | 2.9 million | |
| ad reach | 2.25 million |
Source: Digital 2026: Sri Lanka, from each platform's own advertising tools.
Which search engine do Sri Lankans use?
Google, for 93.66% of searches in September 2026. On phones Google's share was 98.25%. Bing does better on computers, with 10.88% of desktop searches against Google's 86.7%.
| Search engine | Share |
|---|---|
| 93.66% | |
| Bing | 4.91% |
| Yahoo | 0.97% |
Source: StatCounter Global Stats, September 2026.
How fast is the internet in Sri Lanka?
The median mobile download speed was 59.24 Mbps in August 2026, and 36.88 Mbps on fixed broadband, going by Ookla's Speedtest Global Index. Half of the tests Ookla recorded were faster than this and half slower.
Source: Ookla, Speedtest Global Index, Sri Lanka, August 2026 edition.
How many Sri Lankans pay digitally?
47.3% of adults made or received a digital payment in the past year, in the World Bank's 2024 survey, down from 55.1% in 2021. Only 14.8% paid a shop or business digitally, and 11.8% paid a bill online. 81.7% had an account at a bank or other financial institution.
In April 2026 the government said LankaQR, the national QR code payment system, was accepted at 450,000 merchant locations.
Sources: World Bank, The Little Data Book on Financial Inclusion 2025 (Global Findex), adults aged 15 and over; President's Media Division, Launch of the National QR Payment Promotion Programme.
How many small businesses are there in Sri Lanka?
About 1,037,100 non-agricultural micro, small and medium businesses were still active in May 2023, according to the Department of Census and Statistics: 79.8% of the 1,300,300 that were active at the end of 2018. The count leaves out farms and businesses started after 2018, so the true total is higher.
The Ministry of Finance puts the small and medium business sector at 52% of the economy (GDP), 45% of employment and 20% of exports, without giving a reference year. Newer counts will come from the 2025/26 Economic Census, which hasn't published results yet.
Sources: Department of Census and Statistics, Impact of the economic crisis on MSMEs in Sri Lanka (media release); Ministry of Finance, Department of Development Finance, Performance Report 2024; Department of Census and Statistics, Advance Release Calendar.
How many Sri Lankan small businesses have a website?
Fewer than one in three, in the last national survey. In LIRNEasia's survey of 403 small and medium businesses (late 2018 to early 2019), 40% used the internet or social media for business at all, and only some of those had a website. 79% of the rest said they saw no need to go online.
Business directories show the same gap today. When we checked them in October 2026, 5% of businesses in SLT Rainbow Pages listed a website, and 39% of the 2,061 listed websites we tested didn't work. In Google Maps results, 80% of the 2,635 businesses we sampled had no website. Read our study.
Among businesses that are online, Facebook's apps matter most. In a 2021 survey of 1,026 businesses with a shop or office, 29% of those online called Facebook's apps very important for marketing to customers, against 2% for any other tool, 30% had used WhatsApp to market to customers in the past month, and 64% went online mainly on a phone. The most common difficulty for businesses not yet online was not knowing how to use digital tools (45%).
Sources: LIRNEasia, ICT access and use by SMEs in Sri Lanka (policy brief); DAI and Ipsos, with Facebook, Future of Business: Sri Lanka Country Brief (not nationally representative); our own study of Sri Lankan business websites.
How many .lk domains are there?
About 50,000 to 57,000 active .lk domains in October 2026, going by two independent trackers. The LK Domain Registry, which runs .lk, publishes no total.
The trackers count differently: one counts domains with a recent security certificate (50,140), the other domains with any address record (57,548). What a .lk domain costs.
Sources: DNSniffer, 18 October 2026; Domain Metadata, 19 October 2026.
How big is Sri Lanka's digital economy?
About Rs 1,342 billion, or 4.5% of GDP, by the Institute of Policy Studies' estimate in its State of the Economy 2025 report. That combines information and communication businesses (Rs 606.7 billion) and e-commerce (Rs 735.2 billion).
It's a policy research institute's estimate; the government hasn't published an official figure.
Source: Institute of Policy Studies, reported by the Daily FT, Lankan digital economy estimated at Rs. 1.3 t, 27 October 2025.
Sources and how to quote this page
Every figure above comes from the source named beside it. We read each one on 19 October 2026 and update this page when a source publishes new figures. You're welcome to quote any figure; please name the original source, and link to this page if it helped.
- Department of Census and Statistics, Computer Literacy Statistics 2025, Annual Bulletin (June 2026)
- DataReportal (Kepios), Digital 2026: Sri Lanka (November 2025)
- StatCounter Global Stats, Search engine market share, Sri Lanka (September 2026)
- Ookla, Speedtest Global Index, Sri Lanka (August 2026)
- World Bank, The Little Data Book on Financial Inclusion 2025 (Global Findex) (September 2025)
- President's Media Division, Launch of the National QR Payment Promotion Programme (5 April 2026)
- Department of Census and Statistics, Impact of the economic crisis on MSMEs in Sri Lanka (media release) (13 February 2024)
- Ministry of Finance, Department of Development Finance, Performance Report 2024 (July 2025)
- Department of Census and Statistics, Advance Release Calendar (checked 19 October 2026)
- LIRNEasia, ICT access and use by SMEs in Sri Lanka (policy brief) (March 2020)
- DAI and Ipsos, with Facebook, Future of Business: Sri Lanka Country Brief (February 2022)
- DNSniffer, .lk domain statistics (18 October 2026)
- Domain Metadata, .lk domain list (19 October 2026)
- Institute of Policy Studies, reported by the Daily FT, Lankan digital economy estimated at Rs. 1.3 t (27 October 2025)
- Department of Census and Statistics, Census of Population and Housing 2024, Final Report (2025)
LankaRank, "Internet users in Sri Lanka 2026, and small business statistics", updated 19 October 2026. https://lankarank.lk/research/sri-lanka-internet-statistics
How many people use Facebook in Sri Lanka?
Facebook's advertising tools could reach 9 million people in Sri Lanka in October 2025, the most of any platform, according to DataReportal. It counts 9 million social media user identities in all, equal to 38.7% of the population.
Ad reach is the audience a platform says advertisers can reach, not a count of active users, and one person can have several accounts. Treat these as a rough guide to each platform's size.