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Trypophobia was Wikipedia’s most-read phobia of the past decade, with 16.2 million views
Our count of 10 years of Wikipedia pageviews across 36 phobia articles puts trypophobia first with 16.2 million views from 2016 to 2025, though agoraphobia has drawn more readers since 2025.
Trypophobia, the aversion to clusters of small holes, was the most-read phobia on English Wikipedia over the past ten years. Its article drew 16,183,389 views from 2016 to 2025, about a quarter of the 63,324,825 views we counted across 36 phobia articles.
We pulled ten years of monthly pageview figures for each article from the Wikimedia Pageviews API and added them up ourselves. The table below is the result. As far as we know, this ranking has not been published anywhere else.
The three headline findings
- Trypophobia leads the decade with 16,183,389 views, ahead of agoraphobia with 12,360,087.
- Agoraphobia is now the bigger draw. In 2025 it had 893,275 views against 495,719 for trypophobia, and from January to September 2026 it had 734,944 against 355,905.
- Interest in almost every phobia article fell. Of the 32 articles that already drew at least 1,500 views in 2016, 31 drew fewer in 2025. The one exception is emetophobia, the fear of vomiting, which rose 25%.
The 20 most-viewed phobia articles, 2016 to 2025
| Rank | Phobia (Wikipedia article) | Views 2016 to 2025 | Views 2016 | Views 2025 | Change 2016 to 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Trypophobia | 16,183,389 | 3,154,504 | 495,719 | -84% |
| 2 | Agoraphobia | 12,360,087 | 1,444,319 | 893,275 | -38% |
| 3 | Social anxiety disorder | 3,750,207 | 493,415 | 235,323 | -52% |
| 4 | Thalassophobia | 3,578,817 | 240,059 | 212,750 | -11% |
| 5 | Acrophobia | 3,520,460 | 410,853 | 206,316 | -50% |
| 6 | Claustrophobia | 2,085,997 | 330,551 | 109,847 | -67% |
| 7 | Arachnophobia | 1,892,933 | 207,702 | 149,629 | -28% |
| 8 | Mysophobia | 1,817,307 | 217,475 | 123,963 | -43% |
| 9 | Triskaidekaphobia | 1,781,456 | 216,180 | 142,787 | -34% |
| 10 | Emetophobia | 1,753,580 | 114,888 | 143,122 | +25% |
| 11 | Scopophobia | 1,072,699 | 106,639 | 90,129 | -15% |
| 12 | Fear of flying | 1,039,309 | 152,627 | 70,526 | -54% |
| 13 | Cynophobia | 912,359 | 100,028 | 41,670 | -58% |
| 14 | Ailurophobia | 907,626 | 74,104 | 53,365 | -28% |
| 15 | Nyctophobia (Fear of the dark) | 899,368 | 99,038 | 57,969 | -41% |
| 16 | Aquaphobia | 834,863 | 99,772 | 54,220 | -46% |
| 17 | Nomophobia | 817,033 | 121,307 | 52,683 | -57% |
| 18 | Ophidiophobia | 791,646 | 87,811 | 50,618 | -42% |
| 19 | Ornithophobia | 779,655 | 109,983 | 98,087 | -11% |
| 20 | Hemophobia (Blood phobia) | 731,457 | 68,103 | 42,887 | -37% |
What stands out
Trypophobia’s total is driven by its early years. It drew 3,154,504 views in 2016 alone and 495,719 in 2025, a drop of 84%. Agoraphobia fell far less over the same period, 38%, which is why it now leads.
Thalassophobia, the fear of deep water, held up better than most. It lost 11% between 2016 and 2025 and still drew 212,750 views in 2025, more than arachnophobia (149,629) or claustrophobia (109,847).
Emetophobia went the other way, from 114,888 views in 2016 to 143,122 in 2025. Triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13, is the oddity in the top ten, with 1,781,456 views over the decade.
We did not measure overall traffic to Wikipedia, so part of the broad decline may reflect fewer people reading Wikipedia in general rather than less interest in phobias.
How we got these numbers
- Source: Wikimedia Pageviews API, endpoint
/metrics/pageviews/per-article/en.wikipedia/all-access/user/<article>/monthly/2016010100/2026093000. - Scope: English Wikipedia, desktop and mobile combined, agent type “user”, which excludes identified bots and spiders. Calendar years 2016 to 2025, plus January to September 2026 in the CSV.
- Articles: we started from 42 phobia names. Where a name redirects, we followed the redirect and counted the target article, shown in brackets. We dropped six names whose redirect led to a broader or different article (for example, coulrophobia redirects to Evil clown), leaving 36. Views of the redirect pages themselves are not included.
- Growth is left out of the headline figures for articles with almost no views in 2016, because those articles were created or renamed later.
- Retrieved: 31 October 2026. The full data, with every year for all 36 articles, is in the CSV above.
- Limitations: pageviews measure curiosity, not how common a phobia is. A viral image or news story can lift an article for months. Automated traffic was labelled less precisely before 2020, so early years may include some unfiltered bot views.