How the count works
The UN publishes every country's population on 1 January of each year, together with the births, deaths and migration it expects during that year. This page draws a straight line from one 1 January to the next and shows where that line is at this second. For the world that works out to about 4.2 births and 2.0 deaths a second.
Born today and died today
These take the UN's births and deaths for the whole year and spread them evenly over every second, counted from midnight in your own time zone. Real births and deaths do not arrive that evenly, so read them as an average day, not as a register.
Why every population clock is an estimate
No country counts its people second by second. Censuses and registers are only updated now and then, so every live population number, this one included, comes from a model. This page follows the UN's model and says so next to every number.
Source: UN DESA, Population Division, World Population Prospects 2024 (medium variant), licensed under CC BY 3.0 IGO. Livecounts.nl turns the yearly figures into a per-second estimate; the UN has not reviewed this page.