How Many Zeros in a Quintillion?
A quintillion has 18 zeros: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000. In scientific notation this is 1018. The number contains six groups of three zeros beyond the leading 1 — a helpful way to count them without losing track. To put the scale in physical terms: scientists estimate there are roughly 7 quintillion grains of sand on all of Earth's beaches combined. And if you tried to count to a quintillion at the rate of one number per second without stopping, the task would take approximately 31.7 billion years — far longer than the current age of the universe. Related: Zeros in a septendecillion.
A quintillion has
18
zeros
- Written Form
- 1 followed by 18 zeros
- Scientific
- 10¹⁸
How Many Billions Are in a Quintillion?
There are exactly 1 billion billions in a quintillion. A billion is 109 and a quintillion is 1018. Dividing those gives 1018 ÷ 109 = 109 — which is one billion. So a quintillion is a billion times a billion. See also: Zeros in a duovigintillion.
This also means a quintillion contains 1,000,000,000 groups of one billion. It can help to think of it in steps: a billion billions = a quintillion, just as a thousand thousands = a million, or a thousand billions = a trillion. Each step multiplies by a factor of one thousand on the short scale.
| Relationship | Result |
|---|---|
| 1,000 × trillion (1012) | 1 quadrillion (1015) |
| 1,000 × quadrillion (1015) | 1 quintillion (1018) |
| 1,000,000,000 × billion (109) | 1 quintillion (1018) |
How Many Zeros in 10 Quintillion?
Ten quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) has 19 zeros. The rule is straightforward: multiplying by 10 adds one zero. So while 1 quintillion has 18 zeros, 10 quintillion has 19, and 100 quintillion has 20. Related: Million zeros.
One place where numbers near 10 quintillion come up in practice is particle physics. The Large Hadron Collider has produced roughly 10 quadrillion to 10 quintillion proton collisions during its operational runs. Quantities in this range also appear in calculations about the number of atoms in small objects — a grain of sand contains on the order of a quintillion atoms (1018).
For reference, 1,000 quintillion equals one sextillion (1021), the next step up in the short-scale sequence.