There are two common ways to answer “how many reindeers are there,” depending on what you mean:

  • If you mean Santa’s reindeer, the traditional answer is nine : Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, plus Rudolph.
  • If you mean real animals in the world, recent estimates put the global reindeer (including caribou) population at around 9 million individuals.

So: nine for Santa’s sleigh, and roughly nine million out in the wild and in domesticated herds.

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