What 38,000+ Open When Letters Show
How people seal, time and open Open When letters, from every letter written on OpenWhen between February 4, 2026 and September 29, 2026. Counts and timings only: nothing here comes from inside a letter.
By Albert NahasUpdated
The short version
70%
of Open When letters are opened. Letters locked behind a guardian question are opened more often (75.5%) than letters with no lock at all (69.8%).
3 min
is the median wait between a letter becoming openable and being opened. 56.8% of opened letters are read within five minutes, and 96% within a day.
1 in 3
letters (33.2%) is sealed with a guardian question only the recipient can answer.
85
letters are sealed to open more than a year from the day they were written. 8.7% of all letters carry a date lock; the median lock is 9 hours.
87%
of senders write their own title. Of those who pick a ready-made one, 36.1% choose "Open When You Miss Me".
10.4%
of letters are replies, written by someone who had just opened a letter of their own.
Most letters are opened within minutes
The Open When idea is patience: a letter for later. In practice, once a letter can be opened, most are opened almost at once. 56.8% of opened letters were read within five minutes of becoming openable, and only 4% waited longer than a day. For a date-locked letter the clock starts at its unlock time, not when it was written, so this measures the wait the recipient chose, not the lock.
- Within 5 minutes56.8%
- 5 to 60 minutes18.6%
- 1 to 24 hours20.6%
- Later4%
"Open When You Miss Me" is the one people reach for
87% of senders give their letter a title of their own. The rest choose one of the ready-made labels on OpenWhen, and a handful of those do most of the work. Missing someone and wanting to feel loved account for 62% of them between them.
- Open When You Miss Me36.1%
- Open When You Want to Feel Loved25.4%
- Open On Our Anniversary10.4%
- Open When You're Sad9.5%
- Open When You Can't Sleep2.3%
- Open on your birthday1.7%
Written mostly in Asia
The Philippines and India together write more than half of all letters whose country we know; the United States writes 5.9%. "Open When You Want to Feel Loved" is most often sent from Philippines (33.7%). "Open When You Miss Me" is most often sent from India (39.7%). "Open On Our Anniversary" is most often sent from Philippines (23.2%). "Open When You're Sad" is most often sent from India (32.6%).
- Philippines27.5%
- India26.7%
- Indonesia13.3%
- United States5.9%
- Pakistan3%
- Malaysia1.4%
- Vietnam1.4%
- United Kingdom1.4%
The days that spike
Against the week either side of it, the biggest single-day jumps fell on friendship occasions, not romantic ones. Sunday is the busiest day of the week, 37% busier than Wednesday.
| Date | Occasion | vs normal |
|---|---|---|
| June 8 | National Best Friends Day | 2.6x |
| August 1 | Girlfriend's Day, Friendship Day weekend | 2.3x |
| August 2 | Friendship Day | 2x |
What people add
Half of all letters (50.9%) carry a sticker and a third (34.6%) a song. Photos (1.5%) and voice notes (0.4%) are rare, and 1.7% of letters are premium. The letter itself is the product; the decoration is optional.
How these numbers were made
- Metadata only. No letter body or guardian question was read or categorised. Titles were only matched against our own ready-made labels; any other title counts as custom and nothing else about it is recorded.
- Nothing small is shown. Every published figure covers at least 50 letters.
- All 38,227 letters sealed from February 4, 2026 to September 29, 2026, excluding our own tests. Days are in UTC.
- Opening figures cover the 9,157 letters sealed September 5 to September 21, the period in which every first open was recorded the same way, each given at least a week. An open is the first time the letter was revealed in a browser other than the one it was written in; a sender checking it from a second device would still count.
- Countries come from where a sender first arrived from, known for 51.4% of letters. Replies are letters started from the reply button shown after opening one.
- Spikes compare a day with the median of the seven days on either side, so growth alone does not look like a spike. Only spikes that fall on a known occasion are listed.
The privacy policy says we may publish aggregate statistics like these, never text from any letter.
Using these numbers
Quote freely, with a link to this page. Each chart is available as an image to embed.
Albert Nahas, OpenWhen. "What 38,000+ Open When Letters Show." September 29, 2026. https://www.openwhen.cards/open-when-letters-study
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