Complaining about Windows 11 has become almost a pastime among tech enthusiasts online, whether it’s through publicly switching to Linux, publishing guides on how to tweak the OS, or voicing frustration over app sign-in prompts. However, despite the current wave of criticism, Windows 11 remains the leading desktop operating system.
Windows 11 has recently reached a major landmark, with over 1 billion users worldwide, as confirmed by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during the company's latest earnings call, as reported by The Verge. Interestingly, Windows 11 achieved this milestone in just under 1,576 days from its initial release on October 5, 2021, a faster pace compared to Windows 10, which took 1,692 days from its release date on July 29, 2015, to reach the same point by March 16, 2020.
This achievement is particularly impressive given that Windows 10 was initially offered as a free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8 users, with no change in the system requirements from those older systems. Conversely, Windows 11 posed stricter upgrade requirements, leaving numerous Windows 10 PCs ineligible for the transition.
While it's challenging to ascertain the exact number of PCs still operating on Windows 10 due to inconsistent public data, it's evident that the OS still runs on hundreds of millions of machines, even past its official support end date last October. According to Statcounter, a service that analyzes OS and browser usage statistics, Windows PCs predominantly run either Windows 11 or Windows 10, with the former holding a slight majority. Statcounter’s latest data indicates fluctuations in Windows 10 and 7 usage, but Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke noted that as of late 2025, approximately 1 billion Windows 10 PCs are still active, and around 500 million of them do not meet the necessary criteria to upgrade to Windows 11. This data supports the notion of a nearly evenly split Windows user base worldwide.