Joe Biden granted a relatively small number of individual pardons, but a very large number of total clemency actions when counting commutations and mass actions. The best documented figure for formal presidential pardons (as opposed to commutations) during his 2021–2025 term is about 80 pardons , alongside more than 4,000 commutations.

Key numbers

  • Over his four years in office, Biden granted 4,245 acts of clemency in total (pardons + commutations), the highest recorded for any modern president.
  • Of those, around 80 were pardons and about 4,165 were commutations , including large batches affecting many people at once.
  • Some media and advocacy pieces mention higher “pardon” totals (in the thousands), but these often mix together pardons and commutations or count everyone covered by broad clemency actions, which inflates the apparent number of pardons.

Why counts can look different

  • Different definitions:
    • Legal/statistical sources (like Justice Department-based analyses) distinguish strictly between pardons and commutations.
* Some news or commentary pieces use “pardon” loosely to mean any clemency, or to include mass actions that cover thousands of individuals under one policy move.
  • Mass actions:
    • Biden’s late-term clemency included very large single-day or single-policy actions , where one decision commuted or relieved the sentences of thousands of people at once, which drives up total persons affected even though the number of formal pardons stays relatively low.

Simple takeaway

If the question is strictly “how many pardons did Biden sign?” in the technical sense of presidential pardons, the best-supported answer is about 80 pardons during his presidency , plus thousands of commutations as part of broader clemency policy.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.