This is a list of the largest Protestant denominations. It aims to include Protestant communions, federations, alliances, councils, fellowships, and other denominotional organisations in the world and provides information regarding the membership thereof. Shown here, they are divided into international transdenominational, international and national bodies with more than 100, 10 and 5 million members, respectively. It is inevitably partial and generally based on claims by the denominations themselves. The numbers should therefore be considered approximate and the article an ongoing work-in-progress.
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The most numerous international bodies account for more than a half of worldwide Protestant population, while the most numerous national bodies account for more than 200 of the world's 800 million Protestants.
Some of these groupings cannot be considered churches in mainstream Protestant ecclesiology. For example, the Evangelical Church in Germany differs denominationally, encompassing Lutheran, Reformed and United subchurches.
Transdenominational organisations
Transdenominational international bodies include people across all denominations that participate in a movement which goes way beyond their Protestant branch, like Evangelicalism, Charismatic movement, or Neo-charismatic movement.
The World Evangelical Alliance is so far the only transdenominational organization that operates internationally and brings together as much as 600 million Evangelicals.
International denominations
International bodies tend to bring together only one Protestant grouping which shares common founders, tenets and history. Among the most sizeable international bodies are the Anglican Communion, the World Communion of Reformed Churches, the World Methodist Council and the Lutheran World Federation – each with more than 70 million members.
Although there are national denominations that have a far larger membership than required to be on this list, like the United Methodist Church, the Apostolic Church or Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), they operate worldwide and cannot be considered alongside other national bodies like, for example, the Church of Christ in Congo, which operates solely in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
National denominations
The Church of England, the Church of Christ in Congo, the Evangelical Church in Germany and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement constitute the most numerous national bodies with more than 20 million members each.