Largest known prime number

The largest known prime number is the biggest known integer which is a prime number. To date, it equals 2^136279841 − 1,^[1] it would take 41,024,320 digits to write that entire number out. The number was found on October 11, 2024

A merssene prime number is when 2 is raised to the power of a prime number minus 1. This will always equal a prime number. An example would be 2 to the power of 5 is 32 - 1 = 31.

History

This table lists every number that was once the largest known prime number. The first known record was from 1456. The number 524,287 was the largest known prime number for 144 years.

M_n is short for 2ⁿ − 1, the Mersenne number with exponent n.

Prime number		Number of digits	Year found	Notes
M13	8,191	4	1456	Finder not known
M17	131,071	6	1460	Finder not known
M19	524,287	6	1588	Found by Pietro Cataldi
(232+1)/641	6,700,417	7	1732	Found by Leonhard Euler
M31	2,147,483,647	10	1772	Found by Leonhard Euler
(264+1)/274177	67,280,421,310,721	14	1855	Found by Thomas Clausen
M127	170,141,183,460,469,231,731,687,303,715,884,105,727	39	1876	Found by Édouard Lucas
(2148+1)/17	20,988,936,657,440,586,486,151,264,256,610,222,593,863,921	44	1951	Found by Ferrier. The largest record not set by computer.
180×(M127)2+1		79	1951	Using Cambridge's EDSAC computer
M521		157	1952
M607		183	1952
M1279		386	1952
M2203		664	1952
M2281		687	1952
M3217		969	1957
M4423		1,332	1961
M9689		2,917	1963
M9941		2,993	1963
M11213		3,376	1963
M19937		6,002	1971
M21701		6,533	1978
M23209		6,987	1979
M44497		13,395	1979
M86243		25,962	1982
M132049		39,751	1983
M216091		65,050	1985
391581×2216193−1		65,087	1989
M756839		227,832	1992
M859433		258,716	1994
M1257787		378,632	1996
M1398269		420,921	1996
M2976221		895,932	1997
M3021377		909,526	1998
M6972593		2,098,960	1999
M13466917		4,053,946	2001
M20996011		6,320,430	2003
M24036583		7,235,733	2004
M25964951		7,816,230	2005
M30402457		9,152,052	2005
M32582657		9,808,358	2006
M43112609		12,978,189	2008
M57885161		17,425,170	2013
M74207281		22,338,618	2016
M77232917		23,249,425	2017
M82589933		24,862,048	2018
M136279841		41,024,320	2024