Which language has the most native speakers in the world?

Mandarin Chinese has the most native speakers in the world, with roughly 940 million people speaking it as their first language, far outnumbering Spanish's roughly 485 million and English's roughly 380 million native speakers. This gap exists simply because of China's enormous population, not because Mandarin has spread especially far geographically.

Spanish and English trail well behind Mandarin in native speaker counts, but neither comes close once you count only people who grew up speaking the language from birth.

If you instead count total speakers, including everyone who learned a language later as a second language, English actually overtakes Mandarin overall, which is why English functions as a global lingua franca for business, science, and travel even though it has fewer native speakers.