The 10 Most-Certified Singles in U.S. History

The crown moved quietly, and the new holder is a debut single. Bruno Mars's "Just the Way You Are" stands at 21 million RIAA certified units, certified in October 2025 — the highest figure any single has ever reached in the United States. The last time this lead changed hands, in February 2024, Post Malone and Swae Lee's "Sunflower" became the first single ever certified double Diamond at 20 million units, and three songs now sit at that mark behind Mars.

Bruno Mars Holds the Record at 21 Million Units, and Three Songs Share Second Place

Here's the contract for this ranking, stated before a single entry runs. Criteria: total certified units in the RIAA Gold & Platinum database, singles only, United States only. Scope: the RIAA's digital-single certifications, where every all-time leader sits. Cutoff date: November 9, 2026. Ties share a rank, and the next rank skips ahead — so this top ten holds exactly ten singles, and the No. 11 single runs below the list with its figure attached.

One rule explains the whole table. The RIAA counts a single unit as one permanent download or 150 on-demand streams, and that formula rewired the record book: a song doesn't need a sales era anymore, only a permanent place in the rotation. Every entry below arrived after 1981, and nine of the ten arrived after 2009 — the exception being a 1981 arena anthem that streaming resurrected. The producers and writers sit up top in these entries (the Smeezingtons built Mars's early sound in a tiny Los Angeles studio) because the streaming era rewards records engineered to loop, and the loop starts with the people who built the track.

The 20-Million Club: Three Songs, Three Different Roads

1. "Just the Way You Are" — Bruno Mars — 21 million units (21× Platinum). Mars, Philip Lawrence and Ari Levine — the Smeezingtons — wrote and produced it, with Needlz co-writing, and the song introduced Mars as a solo artist in 2010. Fifteen years of weddings, talent shows and slow dances later, it's alone at the top.

2 (tie). "Tennessee Whiskey" — Chris Stapleton — 20 million units (20× Platinum). Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove wrote it, George Jones and David Allan Coe recorded it first, and Stapleton's 2015 version — produced by Dave Cobb — became the first country single ever certified double Diamond, in January 2026. A cover of a cover, out-certifying almost every original ever tracked.

2 (tie). "God's Plan" — Drake — 20 million units (20× Platinum). Producers Cardo, Boi-1da and Noah "40" Shebib built it, and the song's giveaway video turned a single into a year-long event in 2018. Drake's streaming volume is a genre of its own, and this is its peak unit count.

2 (tie). "Sunflower" — Post Malone and Swae Lee — 20 million units (20× Platinum). Carter Lang and Louis Bell produced it for "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse," and in February 2024 it became the first single ever certified double Diamond. First to the mark still counts for something here — it held the outright record for twenty months. (A soundtrack song broke the record book; the comics kid in row three approves.)

The 18-Million Tie: Five Songs Deep

5 (tie). "Thinking Out Loud" — Ed Sheeran — 18 million units (18× Platinum). Sheeran and Amy Wadge wrote it, Jake Gosling produced it, and the ballad became the wedding standard of its decade — a slow song with a fast unit count.

5 (tie). "Don't Stop Believin'" — Journey — 18 million units (18× Platinum). The oldest song in this ten by three decades, written by Steve Perry, Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain in 1981 and kept alive by karaoke, sports arenas and one famous television finale. Streaming didn't create this total; streaming refused to let it stop growing.

5 (tie). "All I Want for Christmas Is You" — Mariah Carey — 18 million units (18× Platinum). Carey and Walter Afanasieff wrote and produced it in 1994, and the song now earns a fresh stack of units every December on schedule. A seasonal single competing with year-round catalog is the strangest math on this page, and it works every year.

5 (tie). "Counting Stars" — OneRepublic — 18 million units (18× Platinum). Ryan Tedder wrote and produced it, and the song's slow-burn build — a songwriter's trick Tedder has sold to half the industry — carried it past flashier hits from its own year.

5 (tie). "Closer" — The Chainsmokers featuring Halsey — 18 million units (18× Platinum). Andrew Taggart sang on his own production here, Halsey carried the other half, and a song built almost entirely out of a loop became the loop era's defining unit machine.

Tenth Place, and an Honest Word About the Cutoff

10. "Somebody That I Used to Know" — Gotye featuring Kimbra — 17 million units (17× Platinum). Gotye wrote and produced it in his parents' barn studio in Australia, sampling a 1967 Luiz Bonfá guitar record, and the strangest production story in this ten produced its tenth entry.

No. 11: "Radioactive" — Imagine Dragons — 17 million units (17× Platinum). Here's the honest part, printed instead of buried: No. 11 carries the same 17 million units as No. 10. The cutoff in this ranking is a count of ten titles, not a gap in the figures, and three more singles share the 17-million line behind it — Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road," Miley Cyrus's "Party in the U.S.A." and Travis Scott's "Goosebumps." Any one of them could claim tenth on the next recertification, and this list will move when the RIAA does.

One more pattern hides in the release years, and it deserves its own sentence before the verdict. The ten span five different decades of recording, yet the units cluster in the streaming window because the formula pays for endurance rather than arrival — a song that a million people play every week forever out-earns a song that a million people bought once. Wedding DJs, arena playlists and December radio are infrastructure now, and the records plugged into that infrastructure keep collecting units while their owners sleep, tour or do nothing at all.

Read the table whole and the digital-single era effect stops being a theory. Before streaming entered the count, a single's commercial life ended at the register; under the 150-streams-per-unit formula, a song's life never has to end at all, so the all-time table now belongs to records from the last fifteen years plus the few older songs the loop adopted. If you're tracking how the same effect plays out across whole albums, our companion ranking of the most-certified albums runs the long-form version, and our ranking of the highest-grossing tours shows where the money moved once the single stopped being the product.

The Full List, Printed Whole

1. "Just the Way You Are" — Bruno Mars — 21 million units
2. "Tennessee Whiskey" — Chris Stapleton — 20 million units
3. "God's Plan" — Drake — 20 million units
4. "Sunflower" — Post Malone and Swae Lee — 20 million units
5. "Thinking Out Loud" — Ed Sheeran — 18 million units
6. "Don't Stop Believin'" — Journey — 18 million units
7. "All I Want for Christmas Is You" — Mariah Carey — 18 million units
8. "Counting Stars" — OneRepublic — 18 million units
9. "Closer" — The Chainsmokers featuring Halsey — 18 million units
10. "Somebody That I Used to Know" — Gotye featuring Kimbra — 17 million units No. 11: "Radioactive" — Imagine Dragons — 17 million units