How does the Unicode Consortium choose which new emoji to add to the Unicode Standard? One important factor is data about how frequently current emoji are used. Patterns of usage help to inform decisions about future emoji. The Consortium has been working to assemble information about how frequently various emoji are used and is making that data available to the public. 

Scroll down to see a list of the Unicode v12.0 emoji ranked in order of how frequently they are used.

Why Measure How Frequently Emoji Are Used?

Evidence of frequency is one of many considerations taken into account when reviewing emoji proposals.  The Consortium is now ready to assist people proposing new emoji by publishing this list of current emoji ranked by how frequently they are used overall.  This is a summary ranking — within a particular geography or on particular platforms or programs the ranked frequency order may be different. (Also please note that not all browsers and systems display all the Unicode emoji, which may affect how this list appears to you.)

The ranked order is based on the median frequency of use of each emoji across multiple sources. The gender and skin-tone variants are tabulated together, thus ?‍?, ??‍?…??‍?, ?‍?, ??‍?…??‍?… are all collected into one representative item, ?‍?, to give a clearer picture of how frequently the concept is being employed. Note that newer emoji tend to be of lower frequency, since it often takes time for them to roll out to all devices. The emoji are divided into groups based on a comparison to the frequency of the top emoji: ?. Each group contains emoji that have roughly ½ the frequency of use as those in the group above.  Thus, items in Group 1 have less than ½ the frequency of ?, those in Group 2 have less than ¼ the frequency of ?, and so on. Those in Group 11 and beyond are below median frequency (and less than 1/2048 the frequency of ?). The very low frequency emoji have little data: rows 16 and 17 contain just some samples of those. The emojis are displayed in descending order within each group. This data may be updated at any time, as new information becomes available.