It’s that time of year again, when Kanka celebrates its birthday and becomes one year older! We were too busy last year to release these stats, but we’re back, so let’s have a look at what exciting things happened for Kanka this past year.
Highlights of the past year
By far the biggest and most exciting change this year was the introduction of custom modules. I had been dreaming of offering this for years, but it took just as long to adapt the code to support it. We still have quite a few improvements planned for it (allowing custom modules to be linked to locations for example) but that will require a whole other refactoring.
What we hope for our next anniversary
We recently ran a survey regarding the text editor, which confirmed that it’s time to find a replacement. We expect to work on this for most of 2026, as it’s such a central and important part of the Kanka experience. We want to get it right, rather than get it fast. This will be by far our biggest programming challenge to date.
Another aspect we want to work on this upcoming year is the technology of “websockets”, which will allow us to do more collaborative interfaces in Kanka. This will become more obvious why in Kanka’s next update, so stay tuned for that!
Statistics
And lastly, the thing you’ve all been wanting, our stats. Note that for this year, stats are only up to mid october.
| What | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accounts created | 347,500 | 293,000 | 225,000 | 170,000 |
| Active accounts | 36,300 | 27,000 | 22,000 | |
| Biggest campaign (members) | 538 | 350 | 206 | 283 |
| Largest campaign (entities) | 16,300 | 16,300 | 12,300 | 9,500 |
| Campaigns created | 350,000 | 291,000 | 221,000 | 150,000 |
| Public campaigns | 5’200 | 4’100 | 4,000 | 3,400 |
Entity stats
| Entity type | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Characters | 2.1m | 1.8m | 1.3m | 805k |
| Locations | 1.8m | 1.5m | 1.2m | 721k |
| Races | 874k | 760k | 551k | 301k |
| Items | 551k | 484k | 357k | 210k |
| Abilities | 614k | 519k | 348k | 160k |
| Tags | 505k | 425k | 323k | 212k |
| Organisations | 394k | 339k | 257k | 164k |
| Notes | 298k | 271k | 225k | 155k |
| Families | 224k | 194k | 147k | 95k |
| Events | 199k | 174k | 133k | 85k |
| Journals | 156k | 132k | 98k | 60k |
| Quests | 137k | 120k | 93k | 60k |
| Maps | 118k | 96k | 70k | 40k |
| Creatures | 170k | 130k | 64k | |
| Attribute Templates | 34k | 31k | 26k | 16k |
| Timelines | 39k | 33k | 25k | 13k |
| Calendars | 30k | 26k | 20k | 13k |
| Pinned relations | 217k | 170k | 137k | 95k |
| Pinned attributes | 957k | 824k | 702k | 455k |
| Posts | 1.03m | 825k | 497k | 222k |
| Custom modules | 440 | |||
| Custom entities | 4.3k |
About 5% of those custom modules are for deities, give or take (lots of non-english module names I can’t decypher)
Top five countries
| Position | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Hong Kong | – | USA | USA |
| 2nd | USA | – | Germany | Brazil |
| 3rd | Brazil | – | France | Germany |
| 4th | France | – | Canada | United Kingdom |
| 5th | Singapore | – | Brazil | Canada |
These stats are now polluted by AI bots, making them a lot less useful. Most request to Kanka are now from non-human sources. I cannot get 2024 stats retroactively.
Top 10 RPG systems
| System | % 2025 | % 2023 | % 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| D&D | 7.4% | 51% | 38% |
| D&D 5e | 41% | 13% | 35% |
| Other | 21% | 20% | 14% |
| Homebrew | 6.7% | ||
| Pathfinder 2e | 5.3% | 1.77% | 1.12% |
| Vampire the masquerade | 1.73% | ||
| Savage worlds | 1.47% | 1.9% | 1.66% |
| Call of Cthulu | 1.24% | 1.46% | 1.25% |
| Daggerheart | 1.21% | ||
| Pathfinder | 1.08% | 5.27% | 1.12% |
| Warhammer 40k | 1.01% | ||
| World of Darkness | 0.88% |
D&D’s dominance continues to waver, down below 50% for the first time in these stats. Pathfinder 2 saw the biggest growth. Daggerheart and Warhammer 40k make their appearance in the top 10 for the first time. DSA, Fate, GURPS, and Chronicles of Darkness have all seen big drops in usage.
Random stats
| Stat | Light | Dark | Midnight |
|---|---|---|---|
| User themes | 88% | 7% | 4% |
| Campaign themes | 98% | 1% | 0.6% |
Plugin stats
At the request of our Plugin and CSS wizard Salvatos, here are some plugin stats.
| Metric | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Created plugins | 1’300 | 1’100 | 860 | 490 |
| Published plugins | 217 | 196 | 175 | 124 |
| Installed plugins | 22’800 | 17’800 | 11’800 | 5’500 |
| Artisans | 77 | 66 | 52 | 32 |
Closing words
As we reflect on yet another year gone by here at Kanka, we continue to be amazed by our community. We are both incredibly grateful and humbled by everyone’s continued support. We’re not just saying that, we truly mean it. Sometimes passion projects like Kanka can be tough and our motivation can wane , but then we get nuggets from you reminding us why we do this. I (Jon) remember checking our inbox a couple months ago and reading the sweetest message from one of our users thanking us for doing what we do and sharing their love of Kanka. In difficult times I hang on to moments like these as a reminder of how incredible you all are and why we do what we do. Thank you all for being with us on this wild journey, and we hope to see you in a year!
Jay & Jon
Kanka Blog 