How many euro banknotes are in circulation?

How to get close to this number

Divide the value by the average note. The explanation gives the total value at roughly one and a half trillion euros, and the average denomination in circulation is somewhere around fifty euros once you weight for how many small notes exist. Value divided by average denomination gives tens of billions of notes.

The mix is heavily weighted toward small denominations by count and toward large ones by value. Most notes in your wallet are tens and twenties; most of the value in circulation sits in hundreds and above, which is why the count and the total value tell completely different stories about what cash is used for.

The discontinued five-hundred note is the detail that makes that explicit. It was withdrawn from issuance in 2019 because a note worth that much is impractical for retail and extremely practical for moving value without a bank — a denomination whose primary users were not the people it was designed for.