<p>Not very accurately, because it depends on what you consider a node. A host is even more unclear. </p>

<ul>
<li>Is it only full nodes?</li>
<li>Does it include light clients?</li>
<li>What minimum level of verification must it be doing?</li>
<li>Must it be listening for peers?</li>
</ul>

<p>Websites such as <a href="https://bitnodes.earn.com/dashboard/?days=365" rel="nofollow noreferrer">bitnodes.io</a> provide a number of listening nodes, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee that they are operating as such, or doing any transaction verification:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Bitnodes is currently being developed to estimate the size of the
  Bitcoin network by finding all the reachable nodes in the network. The
  current methodology involves sending getaddr messages recursively to
  find all the reachable nodes in the network, starting from a set of
  seed nodes. Bitnodes uses Bitcoin protocol version 70001 (i.e. >=
  /Satoshi:0.8.x/), so nodes running an older protocol version will be
  skipped. The crawler implementation in Python is available from GitHub
  (ayeowch/bitnodes) and the crawler deployment is documented in
  Provisioning Bitcoin Network Crawler.</p>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-09-11T13:53:20.043Z
2018-09-11T13:53:20.043Z
JBaczuk
<p>Is it possible to estimate the amount of nodes (hosts) are connected to the Bitcoin network in a given time?</p>

<p><strong>Note:</strong> Here node means host.</p>

<network><nodes><terminology><hosting>
Can we estimate how many node has the Bitcoin network?
Questioner
# Can we estimate how many node has the Bitcoin network?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-09-11)

Is it possible to estimate the amount of nodes (hosts) are connected to the Bitcoin network in a given time?

**Note:** Here node means host.

**Tags:** network, nodes, terminology, hosting


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2018-09-11. Score: 3

Not very accurately, because it depends on what you consider a node. A host is even more unclear.

* Is it only full nodes?
* Does it include light clients?
* What minimum level of verification must it be doing?
* Must it be listening for peers?

Websites such as [bitnodes.io](https://bitnodes.earn.com/dashboard/?days=365) provide a number of listening nodes, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee that they are operating as such, or doing any transaction verification:

> Bitnodes is currently being developed to estimate the size of the
> Bitcoin network by finding all the reachable nodes in the network. The
> current methodology involves sending getaddr messages recursively to
> find all the reachable nodes in the network, starting from a set of
> seed nodes. Bitnodes uses Bitcoin protocol version 70001 (i.e. >=
> /Satoshi:0.8.x/), so nodes running an older protocol version will be
> skipped. The crawler implementation in Python is available from GitHub
> (ayeowch/bitnodes) and the crawler deployment is documented in
> Provisioning Bitcoin Network Crawler.


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