Amateur radio in numbers

Additions and removals

Since mid-2024 the Bundesnetzagentur has published a new edition of the list almost every week, before that about once a month. A callsign is new if it was missing from the previous edition, gone if it's no longer in it. Changing class means a new callsign, so it counts once as new and once as gone. If you upgrade from N to E, for example, you're in both bars.

Upgrades and newcomers

A callsign is tied to its class; upgrading gets you a new one. afu.tools recognises which old and which new callsign belong to the same person by the name in the list. No name is stored for this, only a hash from which the name can't be worked out; only totals are shown.

History since 2015

Each edition of the list is one point. Each chart has its own scale so that class N shows something too. Where no edition of the list survives, monthly values from the same list are used. Grey areas: periods with no data at all.

Licences since 2000

Bundesnetzagentur figures as of 31 December each year. A licence is a person with a personal callsign.

Exams

For 2025 the Bundesnetzagentur gives the passes per class for the first time, but no longer the candidates per class. So there's no pass rate per class for any year. Certificates divided by candidates comes close, but it isn't an official figure. For 2020 and 2021 the individual figures in the report don't add up to the reported total; both values are in the tooltip.

Exam dates

The Bundesnetzagentur publishes its upcoming exam dates as a list and replaces it every few days. All surviving versions since 2015 show when and where exams took place and how quickly dates were fully booked. From 2022 on, 96 to 97 % of exams are captured, before that only some, because the archive rarely saved the list back then.

Prefixes and series

Which beginnings personal callsigns have, and from which series the Bundesnetzagentur has recently issued new callsigns.

Other countries

Only countries whose authority publishes a figure that can be checked at the source. The UK, Switzerland and Italy are missing because no current official figure could be verified there.

Only callsigns are counted; individual entries are never shown. The callsign list names people with name and address; none of that arrives here. Older editions of the list come from the Internet Archive. People who objected to publication are still in the list with their callsign and are counted. Short-term licences are not in the list.

Sources: callsign list of the Bundesnetzagentur (official work under § 5 UrhG, German copyright act), older editions via the Internet Archive. Exam dates from the Bundesnetzagentur date list, older versions also via the Internet Archive. Annual figures from “Amateurfunk in Deutschland, Teilnehmerzahlen” 2000 to 2025, Bundesnetzagentur, CC BY-ND 4.0, numbers presented anew. Other countries: ARRL from FCC data, MIC Japan, Fernmeldebüro Österreich, population from the World Bank (CC BY 4.0). Raw data: rufzeichen-statistik.json.