55T Australian File Transfers in 2025 – How We Calculated that Number

We recently shared that Australians performed about 55 trillion file transfers in 2025.  Here’s how we were able to arrive at that total. 

More than Manual 

When we talk about digital activity, we tend to picture the visible layer: emails, shared documents, cloud uploads, and messaging app attachments. However, these human‑initiated actions represent only a sliver of the real story. Beneath the surface lies a vast, automated, always‑on ecosystem of backups, sync operations, content delivery networks, and machine‑to‑machine exchanges. 

No dataset directly reports “file transfers,” so I needed rely on authoritative adjacent metrics: including internet usage, cloud adoption, CDN penetration, and digital‑behaviour statistics. Using AI to comb and extrapolate from available data sources, I built a structured model which quantifies each of the contributing layers.  

Human‑Initiated File Transfers (~82B) 

I began with the most intuitive category: files deliberately sent or uploaded by people. Using Australia’s 2025 population (~27M), daily internet usage (97%), and workforce composition, we modelled two groups: 

• Digital workers sending ~22 files/day (email attachments, cloud uploads, collaboration tools). 

• General consumers sending ~2.3 files/day (messaging media, photo uploads, social posts). 

This produced a national total of ~225M files/day, or ~82B per year. Significant, but only the beginning. 

Automated System Backups (~11T) 

Modern organisations rely heavily on incremental cloud backups. We estimated: 

• ~200,000 Australian organisations using automated backup 

• ~5M files represented in each organisation’s backup set 

• ~3% of files changing daily 

This yields ~30B backup‑related file movements per day, or ~11T annually. Backups alone dwarf all human‑initiated activity. 

Cloud Sync Events (~115B) 

Cloud sync is the quiet workhorse of digital life - photo libraries, document updates, app data, and multi‑device workflows. With ~60% of Australians using at least one active sync service and ~20 sync events per user per day, we estimate: 

• ~314 million sync events/day 

• ~115 billion/year 

CDN Object Transfers (~34.4T) 

Every webpage or app screen is assembled from dozens of discrete objects — scripts, images, stylesheets, media chunks. We modelled: 

• ~300 page/app requests per user per day 

• ~15 objects per request 

• ~80% served via CDN 

This produces ~94B CDN object transfers per day, or ~34.4 trillion per year. This is the single largest contributor. 

Machine‑to‑Machine Movement (~11.4T) 

Microservices, logs, IoT payloads, replication events, and internal API calls generate enormous background traffic. Using a conservative multiplier (25% of the combined backup + sync + CDN volume), we estimate: 

• ~11.4 trillion M2M object movements annually 

The Total: 50–60T Transfers 

Summing all layers — human, automated, infrastructural, and machine‑driven — produces a national estimate of ~55T file and object transfers in 2025. Humans account for less than 0.2% of the total. The rest is infrastructure talking to itself. 

Why This Makes MFT a Must 

When file movement reaches this scale, traditional ad‑hoc transfer methods — email attachments, unsecured FTP servers, manual uploads — simply cannot cope. They lack visibility, governance, encryption consistency, and auditability. Worse, they create blind spots where sensitive data can leak or compliance obligations can be breached. 

Managed File Transfer (MFT) provides a structured, policy‑driven, encrypted framework for moving data across systems, partners, and cloud environments. It centralises control, enforces security, and ensures every transfer — human or automated — is logged, governed, and compliant. 

In a world where trillions of transfers happen without human involvement, MFT isn’t just a convenience. It’s the backbone of digital trust, operational resilience, and regulatory assurance. 

Here to Help 

At Generic Systems Australia, we’re Australia’s and New Zealand’s experts in helping businesses implement and take advantage of MFT solutions. We’ve assisted dozens of organisations to make their file transfers resilient, secure and reliable — boosting their efficiency in the process. 

If you’d like to discuss what MFT can do for your organisation, please feel welcome to get in touch with me. I’m always happy to have an obligation-free chat and explain how easily we can transition you from your current approach to the world’s leading MFT solution, GoAnywhere.