This is a year-end review of how the sites Furbitron monitors fared in 2023, and how that compares to past years.
tl;dr:
2023 was the third year ever where FurAffinity did not have year-on-year growth. 2023 was the best year ever for e621.
tl;dr, but as a table:
Submission IDs site 2023 2022 change notes Buzzly 17,590 215,000 -92% e621 723,000 684,600 +5.6% e6AI 19,070 860 +2100% FurAffinity 4,566,000 5,140,000 -11% FurryNetwork 50,640 44,000 +15% itaku 429,300 new for 2023 SoFurry 149,400 136,600 +9.4% Weasyl 141,100 109,000 +29%
(submission ID counts are rounded)
Furbitron itself
Furbitron added support for itaku in August.
Also in August, Furbitron added graphs for "all sites except FurAffinity and e621" to the "All except FA" pages. This shows a little more detail for the lower-volume sites that Furbitron monitors.
Furbitron added the "FA art comments" experiment in May, and the "e621 tag backlog" experiment in October.
Buzzly
Buzzly had about 17,590 submissions in 2023, as compared to 215,000 submissions in 2022. 2023 was the first year that Buzzly did not have year-on-year growth.
Buzzly experienced fast growth in late 2021 and early 2022, but the post rate dropped off a lot in mid-March 2022. This low post rate continued throughout the rest of 2022 and into 2023.
Based on data from January to early July, 2023, Furbitron predicted that Buzzly would have 18,400 submissions for all of 2023. The actual result was a little lower than predicted.
Buzzly does not use numeric submission IDs, so Furbitron cannot check the latest submissions to get the highest submission ID. Instead, Furbitron queries Buzzly's API to get the count of submissions Buzzly claims to have had since Furbitron's last query, and adds that count to a running total.
e621
2023 was the best year ever for e621, with about 723,000 submission IDs.
Based on data from January to early July, 2023, Furbitron predicted that e621 would have 725,000 submissions for all of 2023. The actual result was a little lower than predicted.
e621 also experienced a large jump in submission IDs in 2020, 2021, and 2022, compared to the previous few years - there were about 338,000 submission IDs in 2018, 350,000 in 2019, 451,000 in 2020, 546,000 in 2021, and 684,600 in 2022. The 2023 number of 723,000 was still better than 2022, but not as much of a jump from the previous year as seen in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
e621 had year-on-year growth every year from 2008 to 2023. It launched in spring 2007 and had about 14,100 submission IDs that year; 2008 was the first full year of operation, with about 10,700 submission IDs.
e6AI
e6AI had about 19,070 submission IDs in 2023, its first full year of operation.
e6AI specializes in AI-generated images, and is operated by the same people as e621. e6AI went online around mid-October 2022, and had about 860 submission IDs through the end of 2022.
Based on data from January to early July, 2023, Furbitron predicted that e6AI would have 7,560 submissions for all of 2023. The actual result was much higher than predicted.
Furbitron does not yet fully support e6AI. You can see statistics for e6AI on the "All > Statistics" and "All except FA > Statistics" pages, but the individual pages for each graph don't exist yet. Full support is planned for some time in 2024.
FurAffinity
2023 was the third year ever where FurAffinity did not have year-on-year growth; it ended 2023 with about 4,566,000 submission IDs, as compared to 5,140,000 for 2022. The post rate for 2023 was relatively consistent throughout the year, with a slight slow-down in December. The post rate for 2023 was slightly higher than the 2019 post rate all year.
FurAffinity reached submission ID 55,000,000 on December 31, 2023.
Based on data from January to early July, 2023, Furbitron predicted that FurAffinity would have 4,620,000 submissions for all of 2023. The actual result was a little lower than predicted.
FurAffinity launched in late 2005 and had about 12,000 submission IDs that year; 2006 was the first full year of operation, with about 320,600 submission IDs. It had year-on-year growth every year from 2005 to 2020.
FurAffinity experienced a large jump in submission IDs in 2020, 2021, and 2022, compared to the previous few years - there were about 4.0 million submission IDs in 2018, 4.5 million in 2019, 5.5 million in 2020, 5.4 million in 2021, and 5.1 million in 2022. With about 4.6 million submission IDs in 2023, the post rate at FA seems to have returned to just slightly above the pre-pandemic level.
FurryNetwork
FurryNetwork had about 50,640 submission IDs in 2023. This was an improvement over both 2022 (44,000) and 2021 (40,700).
Based on data from January to early July, 2023, Furbitron predicted that FurryNetwork would have 52,000 submissions for all of 2023. The actual result was a little lower than predicted.
FurryNetwork had a slight bump in its post rate in late May and early June. This may be related to FurAffinity's AUP changes in May, 2023.
FurryNetwork's best year ever was 2016, with about 1,063,000 submission IDs. It launched in summer 2015 and had about 286,800 submission IDs that year. 2021 was the slowest full year for FurryNetwork.
itaku
itaku had about 429,300 submission IDs in 2023. This was the best year so far for itaku.
itaku had a bump in its post rate in late May and June. This may be related to FurAffinity's AUP changes in May, 2023.
itaku first went online around October, 2020, but had a very low post rate through about June, 2021. itaku had about 38,900 submission IDs in 2021, and 243,000 in 2022.
Furbitron added monitoring of itaku in August, 2023. Shout out to Deer-Spangle , who found and shared itaku's API.
SoFurry
SoFurry had about 149,400 submission IDs in 2023. This was better than both 2022 (136,600) and 2021 (134,100).
Based on data from January to early July, 2023, Furbitron predicted that SoFurry would have 142,000 submissions for all of 2023. The actual result was better than predicted.
SoFurry had a bump in its post rate in late May and June. This may be related to FurAffinity's AUP changes in May, 2023.
SoFurry's best year ever was 2017, with about 166,700 submission IDs. It launched in spring 2006 and had about 6,700 submission IDs that year; 2007 was the first full year of operation, with about 23,900 submission IDs.
Since at least August 2013, SoFurry has been developing a new version of their site, which they currently call SoFurry Next. SoFurry has not yet announced when SoFurry Next will go into production. When that happens, Furbitron's data collection for SoFurry will most likely be interrupted for at least a few days, until it is updated to handle the new site and its API.
Weasyl
Weasyl had about 141,100 submission IDs in 2023. This was an improvement over both 2022 (109,000) and 2021 (109,100).
Based on data from January to early July, 2023, Furbitron predicted that Weasyl would have 135,000 submissions for all of 2023. The actual result was better than predicted.
Weasyl had a bump in its post rate in late May and June. This may be related to FurAffinity's AUP changes in May, 2023.
Weasyl's best year ever was 2014, with about 526,000 submission IDs. It launched in fall 2011 and had about 40 submission IDs that year; 2012 was the first full year of operation, with about 77,200 submission IDs. 2022 was the slowest full year for Weasyl since 2012.
Notes and disclaimers
The submission ID counts in this post have been rounded off. They should be within about 1% of the un-rounded counts.
The owners of the various sites can directly query their site's database, so they may publish slightly different numbers than are found here.
The numbers here come from Furbitron's monitoring of the sites listed. The historical data was mostly gathered from the sites in September 2021. e621 provides a dump of their site database, so the historical data for e621 came from that dump in September 2021. Since then, Furbitron has done "live" monitoring of each site, once a day.
Thanks!
Furbitron
https://furbitron.com/
