Veganism’s Popularity over 15 years - Google Trends Analysis
25 June 2025
Summary
Gathering data on the growth or decline in the number of vegans is hard and held back by limited availability of samples in time and location. This report uses the rich and fine-grained data publicly available on Google Trends to estimate the change in number of vegans over the last 15 years, controlling for keyword popularity. We estimate that the number of vegans has increased by 2.3x in this period. This is down from a peak at the end of 2019 of 3.2x. There is a difference between dietary and non-dietary estimates, where estimates based on dietary search terms peak sooner, higher, and end lower (peak=3.6x 2019, end=2.1x) than non-dietary ones (peak=2.9x 2021, end=2.4x). This highlights there are separate trends for terms tracking ethical vegans and those tracking people focused on a vegan diet only.
Introduction
Vegans represent a minority in the world, with their proportion measured as less than a percent to a few percentage points in different countries. Notable exceptions are India and Mexico, which are estimated to have 9% vegans in their populations [1].
Reliable global numbers are hard to find. In a blog post no longer directly available, 1% or 79 million, is estimated based on per country statistics in 2019 [2]. No estimates were found for any African country, representing a large gap that is hard to estimate from similar cultures.
Google Trends has been used before to gauge the popularity growth of veganism. A peak of search terms "veganism", "vegan diet" and "vegan recipes" is found at the end of 2019 with a decrease after that, reported on by Sky News [3]. A report by Chef’s Pencil finds a peak around 2020 and stagnation or slow decline since then [4].
Finder runs annual research on the proportion of vegans in the UK; they found a 40% increase of the number of vegans in 2020 [5]. And in terms of the total population 2.6% in 2023, 4.7% in 2024, and 2.1% in 2025 [6][7]. These are large swings, and Finder makes no estimates of trends beyond 1-year periods, making it hard to extract a longer trend.
Veganism can also refer to different things. Abstaining from animal products for food is at the core of the term, however beyond that the reasons people have for going vegan and the extent to which non-food animal products and exploitation is avoided differs. Veganism brings benefits for the environment, potentially for personal health, taste and texture for some, and of course for ethical reasons around the animals otherwise exploited for their products. This last group of ethical vegans is where the term originally comes from, as supported by The Vegan Society, which defines veganism as:
“Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”-- The Vegan Society [8]
Ethical vegans can be expected to behave different to people who abstain from animals for personal health reasons. E.g. wearing leather clothing has no discernible effect on a person’s health, while obtaining it from a farm exploits one or more animals for their skin. From an environmental vegan’s perspective, leather may be problematic for its polluting tanning process rather than its impact on the animals. These different groups are hypothesised to gain and lose popularity in different ways.
E.g. sticking to any diet for health reasons is hard. Specifically for weight loss, 95% of diets fail in the long run, resulting in either no effect or even higher weight, and an end to following the diet [9]. In 2014, Faunalytics found that 84% of the group of people eating vegetarians and vegans quit their diet [10]. Assuming vegetarian and vegan diets fare no better on adherence for weight loss compared to other diets, those not in it for the weight loss must do better and lower the average. This in turn could affect the change the trend growth and decline.
This report aims to estimate the trend of veganism’s popularity over the last 15 years and hypothesise this will be different for diet-only and ethical vegans. We analyse the searches people have made on Google.
Selecting searches that are uniquely done by vegans are used as a proxy for the relative number of vegans. Variability in search term usage is controlled for by comparing the vegan-specific search terms to those used by the whole population. This is essential as many terms vary seasonally, and the time period includes possibly dramatic changes of search terms during the pandemic lockdowns, and any number of other variations.
In addition, a split is made between dietary and non-dietary search terms, to distinguish vegans for health or diet form ethical vegans. This approach is applied to the worldwide dataset, for English speakers at least.
Method
Many common searches like “jacket” or “restaurant” can be modified by adding the word “vegan” in front of it, i.e. “vegan jacket” and “vegan restaurant”. This gives a pair of search terms that are fed into Google Trends (GT), for 6 July 2010 to 7 June 2025 (e.g. “vegan jacket”). Certain terms may become more or less popular over time. Using a pair allows us to control for any such changes over time, under the assumption that the version with “vegan” in front of it has a similar popularity change, and that this term represents searches made predominantly by vegans.
A list of search terms was created, using terms that make sense to be veganized [see appendix “Terms” tab]. These should ideally be unambiguous and must have enough search traffic - GT data available is sampled, limiting the breath of terms usable. The search terms are split into three categories, those related to diet (dietary), those not related to diet (non-dietary), and additional terms not included because these don’t fit neatly in these groups, method or have missing data (exploratory). We assume that ethical vegans will contribute to both dietary and non-dietary term usage, while those motivated by health and diet contribute to the dietary terms only.
The search term pairs were put into GT individually, and the results downloaded in CSV format. Because of sampling by GT, search terms that have too few searches at a given time, register as 0. Any term pair with more than 3 of those 0 values is considered too limited to use and was discarded.
Trend data received from GT is normalized to have the highest value at 100. These are transformed to have 100 match the first-year average instead. Next, the values of each term with “vegan” are divided by the values of their corresponding control term of that time. Finally, the average of all term pairs in the dietary and non-dietary groups are calculated.
Results
The trend in all term pairs follow a similar pattern: they start (2010) with fewer vegan searches at 1x, then rise to a peak, and fall again more slowly or sometimes stabilise from there. The timing of the peak differs from 2018 (shirt) to 2023 (leather), as does the magnitude of the peaks, from 1.3x (candle) to 8.5x (leather), and end values of 0.8x (candle) to 8x (leather). Anomalies to this general pattern are a drop from 2010-2012 for “shoes” and an upward trend from 2024 onwards for “omega 3”.
Figure 1. The averaged results of all vegan search terms controlled for by their general search term.
The combined average represents the same general pattern. Measured over a 12-month rolling average, the peak is 3.2x higher than the first year, in August 2019. The last year to mid-2025 decreases this to 2.3x.
Figure 2. The averaged results of vegan search terms, split between dietary and non-dietary groups, all controlled for by their general search term.
The dietary and non-dietary signals are very similar from the start of the measured period to the beginning of 2017. After this, dietary based terms suggest a much larger increase of the number of dietary vegans than the non-dietary ones do, and subsequently the dietary vegan terms drop a bit lower at the end too. The vegan dietary terms 12-month average peaks at 3.6x in August 2019 (the same times as the total). The last year this decreases to 2.1x. This is only 59% compared to the peak. The vegan non-dietary terms 12-month average peaks at 2.9x in October 2021. The last year this decreases to 2.4x, or 84% of its peak.
Discussion
This report shows a clear signal for a peak in veganism’s popularity amongst English speakers, with still a marked increase of over twofold over the 15 years to June 2025. This peak is consistent with reported growth before 2021 [5] and decreases from a peak reported by other estimates [3][4]. This method can be repeated for specific countries or languages. It can also extend over a longer period as time passes. The distinction between dietary and non-dietary terms indicates an important difference between people being vegan for dietary and ethical reasons.
One way to interpret this data shows a temporary diet-focused vegan trend. Assume that dietary terms are influenced by both diet-only and ethical vegans. Then add that non-dietary terms are used only by ethical vegans. This shows a vegan diet only trend that starts in 2017, peaks very early 2020, and dies out again abruptly by 2021.
Inevitably, this separation of the groups will not be as clear cut as assumed above. Some ethical vegans will appreciate health benefits of the diet, and some starting because of their diet may pick up other vegan habits to fit in the group. A limitation of this report is that these differences could not be directly measured. E.g. the large drop in diet-based vegans could also have had some downward pressure on the non-dietary terms without the number of ethical vegans decreasing. However, even if this were a large effect, significant growth of the ethical vegan population in the last three years is unlikely based on this data.
Author's Note
While not the result we, as vegans ourselves, had hoped for, we believe that an accurate understanding of the world is the best way to improve it. In general, science is on veganism’s side: whether that be on animal ethics (yes, they are conscious and feel pain [11]), environmental impact (which is significant [12]) and disease risks (think of antibiotic resistance and pandemic risks [13]) of animal farming, and possible gains on human health (e.g. a whole foods plant based diet supports weight loss and lowers cardiovascular disease risk [14]).
Nonetheless, there is a sliver of hope. All included search terms showed a remarkable similarity in shape. While it is too soon to predict a reversal of the recent slow decline, the term “omega 3“ might just tentatively indicate growth to come again. Practically, vegan outreach might benefit from focusing to convert dietary vegans to ethical ones. This is presumably easier than converting non-vegans, with similar benefits to the animals when measured over a convert's lifetime.
The difference between dietary and ethical vegan trends is also clear, with possible practical implications for vegan activists. Dietary veganism as a trend does not appear very stable. While it may grow fast, it can decline even faster. Ethical veganism on the other hand is more stable and a long-term trend to benefit the vegan movement, as well as the animals.
