How Many Signatures Does an Online Petition Get?
We analyzed 1,548 petitions created on our platform in July 2026 to show what petition performance looks like beyond a few viral success stories.
The headline results
The median is a better description of a typical petition because a small number of very large campaigns pull the average upward.
What happens after the first five signatures?
The biggest hurdle is getting a petition started. When petitions with fewer than five signatures are excluded, the median rises from 9 to 92 and the average rises from 292 to 512 signatures.
| Group | Petitions | Average | Median |
|---|---|---|---|
| All petitions with at least five signatures | 883 | 511.9 | 92 |
| Publicly listed petitions with at least five signatures | 828 | 530.4 | 99 |
| Unlisted petitions with at least five signatures | 55 | 232.4 | 40 |
The five-signature filter excludes 665 petitions, or 43 percent of the cohort, which together had only 595 signatures.
Does appearing in public petition listings matter?
Public petitions can appear in our petition listings and search results, while unlisted petitions are normally reached through a direct link.
| Visibility | Petitions | Average | Median | Reached 100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Publicly listed | 1,457 | 301.8 | 9 | 28.3% |
| Unlisted | 91 | 141.0 | 8 | 18.7% |
The median is nearly identical across all petitions, but public listing visibility is associated with a much stronger upper half of the distribution. Among petitions that reached five signatures, the public median was 99 compared with 40 for unlisted petitions.
This is an observed association, not proof that listing visibility alone caused the difference, because authors choose whether their petitions are public.
Results by petition language
Language markets vary greatly in size, subject matter and the presence of unusually large campaigns, so the median should be read alongside the number of petitions. The five-signature columns show what happens after a petition clears the initial activation hurdle.
| Language | All petitions | At least five signatures | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Petitions | Average | Median | Petitions | Average | Median | |
| Bulgarian | 86 | 753 | 67.5 | 61 | 1,061.5 | 148 |
| Danish | 20 | 590 | 22.5 | 14 | 842.9 | 106 |
| Czech | 102 | 441 | 2 | 45 | 998.8 | 64 |
| Slovak | 27 | 422 | 14 | 17 | 669.4 | 134 |
| Croatian | 26 | 417 | 19.5 | 20 | 541.5 | 104 |
| Hungarian | 129 | 411 | 17 | 80 | 662.2 | 96.5 |
| Serbian | 70 | 398 | 6.5 | 36 | 773.7 | 67 |
| Romanian | 160 | 378 | 9 | 94 | 642.3 | 70.5 |
| Swedish | 43 | 376 | 53 | 35 | 461.7 | 102 |
| Finnish | 31 | 354 | 9 | 16 | 684.7 | 173 |
| Polish | 195 | 329 | 44 | 122 | 526.0 | 139.5 |
| Dutch | 76 | 263 | 20.5 | 46 | 433.3 | 108.5 |
| Portuguese | 39 | 148 | 5 | 20 | 287.1 | 100.5 |
| French | 172 | 100 | 5 | 90 | 190.3 | 80.5 |
| English | 141 | 89 | 4 | 68 | 183.2 | 48 |
| Spanish | 80 | 80 | 4 | 39 | 162.9 | 101 |
After the five-signature threshold, every language shown has a median of at least 48 signatures, and 11 of the 16 languages have a median above 95.
The table shows languages with at least 20 petitions in the full cohort, plus Finnish.
Why might petition performance vary?
Language and market maturity may be part of the explanation. Performance varied substantially between language markets, suggesting that language, audience structure and competition for attention may influence petition growth. Large and mature petition markets may expose people to more competing petitions and fundraising appeals, creating petition fatigue and making attention harder to win. Smaller language communities may face less competition and may have tighter social networks.
This remains a hypothesis rather than a demonstrated cause because language is not the same as country, and petition topics, audience size and promotion practices also differ between markets.
Account requirements may affect signing conversion too. Change.org creates an account when a person signs a petition. Many people prefer not to create yet another online account, so this requirement may cause some potential supporters to leave. Petitions.com allows people to sign without becoming registered users, but we do not have comparable abandonment data to measure the size of this effect.
Post-signing design may matter as well. Change.org offers supporters the option to chip in, which pays Change.org to advertise the petition to more users. If a payment request receives more emphasis than asking each signer to share with friends, some organic person-to-person growth may be exchanged for paid distribution inside the platform. Petitions.com emphasizes sharing after signing, but comparable data on sharing, chip-in conversion and the signatures produced by each channel would be needed to test this explanation.
These possible explanations are speculative and should not be read as causal conclusions from the data.
How this compares with Change.org
Change.org does not publish a directly comparable current monthly cohort average. A 2017 University of Washington study of Change.org petitions reported a median of 8 signatures, a mean of 1,291, and 24 percent of petitions reaching 100 signatures.
Our July 2026 cohort had a median of 9 signatures and 27.8 percent reached 100 signatures. The typical result and the share reaching 100 were therefore similar, while the historical Change.org mean was much higher because a small number of very large campaigns dominated its distribution.
Change.org currently reports more than 2,000 petitions created and more than 500,000 signatures collected each day. The ratio of those advertised figures is approximately 250 signatures per newly created petition. Measured the same way, our sites averaged 317 signatures per new petition in July to September 2026. This places the two figures in the same broad range, but the Change.org figure is an activity ratio rather than a published petition average because daily signatures also go to older petitions and both inputs are rounded minimums.
Methodology
The cohort contains non-draft, non-removed petitions created from July 1 through July 31, 2026, and signature totals were measured on August 12, 2026. Signature counts continue to change after the measurement date.
Petition language is based on the author language, falling back to the site language when necessary. Public means that the petition can appear in our public listings and search results, while unlisted means that it does not appear there.
The AI-assisted creation flow and pre-publication moderation gate had been active in production since June 27, 2026, so they applied throughout this cohort. A broader Cloudflare rollout took place during July, but this analysis does not attribute petition performance to that infrastructure change.
External benchmark source: University of Washington study of Change.org petitions.